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Our first employee, Alice, has been amazing. Unfortunately she's from Shanghai (Mike met her when he was working in Google's Shanghai office) and in a month she heads home. So we're hiring a new employee in Guangzhou!
Hiring is a difficult process and something we want to get right, particularly when:
Google was a great training ground for hiring, they do it very thoroughly. I had 13 interviews before being hired (I went for 2 different roles) and I enjoyed being involved in hiring great new people for our team in Sydney. Some of the things I learnt there which I'm applying now:
1. Don't rush hiring, be thorough.
It's an obvious thing to say but harder to actually do when you have a to do list that's a million items long, but I keep reminding myself that it will cost a hell of a lot more time if we hire the wrong person. To this end:
2. Develop a good set of criteria for what you're looking for in a person.
Our criteria:
3. Take good, thorough notes and review the person as soon as the interview finishes
Again, easier said than done when you're busy, but Alice and I chat about each person as soon as the interview is over and review them against our criteria above. It's easy to get straight back into your work after an interview, but when interviewing a lot of different people if you don't review them and take good notes you'll forget. I also want to keep track of my areas of concern for each person so if we ask them back for another interview, I can ask Mike and Jodie to focus on certain areas.
Any thoughts on what else we should be looking for? A few people have asked about what we have Alice do over here so I'll do up a post detailing the job description soon.