Hiring your startup’s first operations manager (or head of operations / operations director) isn’t easy but it’s critical to achieving your vision. I’ve learned from experience by hiring dozens of talented people into startup operations roles.
Like any hiring process, if not well executed it can be a frustrating experience for candidates and founders alike. The difference between hiring the best ops person or not usually comes down to thorough planning and managing expectations.
Using your tailored job description you should now have lined up some quality candidates and conducted a bespoke job assessment. Now it’s time to meet your candidates.
Remember it’s an interview, not a date (nor an interrogation)!
Job interview with or without coffee?
Finding the best fit in an ops manager can come down to setting realistic expectations.
I’ve seen too many people sold into jobs by recruiters, only to freak out when they realise they don’t have time to spend all afternoon at the ping pong table drinking bottomless soda. It’s fine to tell candidates about your desk beers and nap caves but overdo it at your peril.
By the same token avoid selling candidates out of the job with harrowing war stories of 80-hour weeks and nights spent sleeping under your desk, unless that’s truly representative of your working conditions… in which case you have bigger problems than hiring!
Honesty is the best policy. By all means buy the candidate a brew but don’t try to wow them with a Champagne-fuelled lunch if you’d never normally do that. Be yourself and show them the realities of the role. If that turns them off, they’re not right for your startup.
Respect candidates’ time as you would your own
If you can’t interview a candidate, don’t invite them to interview.
Ever turned up as a candidate to an interview only to be told the interviewer is running late? Stuck in an important meeting? Dealing with a super duper urgent crisis?
Ever been asked by a colleague to interview a candidate you know nothing about, for a role you haven’t seen the job description for, because they’re too busy to do it themselves?
Don’t be that person who values their own time more than everyone else’s, just don’t!
Finally, it’s great to involve your co-founders and team members (if any) in the hiring process – to get other opinions and give candidates more perspective. But please don’t go overboard and expect candidates to come in multiple times or sit through hours of back-to-back interviews just for the sake of it. If in doubt, less is more. You’ve already seen application forms, CVs, LinkedIn profiles, assessment results… trust in your hiring process!
Fail to respect candidates’ time and you’ll not only lose good talent, you’ll also build a bad reputation for your startup on sites like Glassdoor. This may make future hiring more expensive and laborious. It’s also symptomatic of deeper cultural issues at your company.
Prepare your job interview questions and stick to them
Just like the job assessment, an effective interview process needs structure, time management and consistency.
Plan your questions ahead of time and allocate a rough number of minutes for the candidate to answer before you move on. Feel free to ask clarifying questions or pick up on aspects of a candidate’s answer but don’t deviate too much from your plan. This is particularly important in first round interviews. As you narrow the field and progress to final interviews you’ll inevitably need to probe different candidates on different things.
It can feel tedious repeating the same questions over and over, I sympathise. But how can you possibly compare candidates fairly if you speak to one mainly about process optimisation, another about their keen interest in scuba diving and another about your shared memories of Warwick University? Resist the temptation to freestyle until you’re down to the last handful of candidates.
Which candidate was that again..?
Take notes. The worse you memory and the more candidates you’re going to see, the more detailed your notes should be. If you’re unable to take notes effectively during interviews, which is no mean feat, try to have a colleague in the room tasked with doing so. Alternatively you could ask the candidate’s permission to record the interview.
As you progress through interviews your understanding of the role may change and it’s easy to forget where you started. It’s also quite common to develop bias for candidates you saw more recently, or if you see a really strong one early on to discount later candidates.
By keeping detailed notes, which relate to the same set of questions, you’re in a better position to evaluate candidates objectively. It’s also hugely helpful if you need to seek a colleague’s opinion, arrange follow-up interviews or refer them for another role.
Keep in touch and offer feedback
In case it’s not abundantly obvious, I feel very strong about this.
In my opinion it’s unconscionable to “ghost” a candidate you’ve interviewed. You might as well send them a company branded email, subject line “Be gone, peasant!” Depending on your business, you may also lose a potential customer. It’s almost as bad not to offer candidates feedback when you reject them, especially if they request it. I’ve heard every excuse under the sun for this, often from companies with armies of recruiters and admin staff: too many candidates, time constraints, legal ramifications… HORSES**T!
Say “thanks for your time but we don’t think you’re the best candidate for the role”, tell them 3 strengths you saw in them and 3 things they weren’t so good at. How difficult was that? If you do a lot of hiring you could even make an email template to save yourself effort.
For me the most important outcome of any hiring process is finding the best candidate for the role and getting them over the line. The second most important is coming away with everyone who took part in the process – candidates and interviewers alike – understanding what they did well, what they didn’t do so well and what they can work on improving.
You never know when a candidate who isn’t right for one role might be right for another. I myself have been hired that way following an initial rejection. Don’t burn bridges.