6 ms·

Actually my hiring policy was ridiculous. Because I was "too busy to bother", I'd just ask my current employees if they had any friends that needed work. Some

• edanm 16y ago
  I wonder why hiring isn't done this way more often? Specifically the "friends-of-employees" approach.
  • StavrosK 16y ago
    I'm guessing it's because, in sivers' case, he didn't really need extremely skilled labour? Or maybe people just try to overoptimise when "good enough" will do very well.
  • kleinsch 16y ago
    Everywhere I've worked, the first step to hiring a new developer is to ask all the good developers if they have any friends that are also good and interested in work.
  • _delirium 16y ago
    It's relatively common for tech companies to try to encourage employees to recommend people, with a ~$500-$2k bonus if you refer a friend who ends up getting hired. Not sure if it's actively taken into account on the hiring-decision side, though, or if it's just seen as a way of getting in more applicants.
    • mnutt 16y ago
      The last company I worked for (hot startup in NYC) was offering a $10k bonus for referring a friend. Or at least that was what it was up to when I left, for all I know it could be higher now. It still beats the cost of a headhunter.
    • patrickk 16y ago
      Not just tech companies. Investment banks also. Probably many other industries too. As the cliché goes, "Imitation Is The Best Form Of Flattery".
    • bartonfink 16y ago
      From my perspective, most referral bonuses aren't big enough to make it worth my while to try to get a friend in the door. When I know that my referral saves them $20k on a headhunter fee, getting < 10% of that rubs me the same way a nickel-an-hour raise would.
      • acangiano 16y ago
        Not only that, but some companies' HR departments are best buddies with the headhunters and agencies. As a result, their candidates tend to be preferred (intentionally or not) over the "refer a friend" candidates you refer as an employee. I know it's a serious accusation, but several years ago I had statistical evidence that this was happening at a certain company where I referred more than 20 highly qualified candidates at a time when they were struggling to fill positions.
        • lsc 16y ago
          >some companies' HR departments are best buddies with the headhunters and agencies. Considering the average quality of the candidates brought in by the agencies, this is the only rational explanation I can think of as to why companies still use agencies.
      • eftpotrm 16y ago
        Then I'm not sure you're the person to be working as a startup employee.
        • bartonfink 16y ago
          Fair point, and I'd agree. My career goals aren't particularly amenable to most startups, and with a child I have little interest in the risk/reward profile of startups. Further, I have little interest in mixing my personal and professional relationships - that seems like a needless complication for little gain. That said, my point still stands. $2000 isn't worth it for me to do my company's dirty work and knowingly save them $18000 in the process.
        • lsc 16y ago
    • edanm 16y ago
      I was talking about the second part of the equation, i.e. taking it into account on the hiring-decision side. I know refer-a-friend schemes are common, but I think most companies (including Google?) don't give any weight to the fact that someone referred a friend. In fact, considering the incentive structure (you get lots of money to bring in friends), companies shouldn't take into account recommendations. It would have to be done differently in order for the recommendations to actually mean something, which I'm guessing is more common in startups than large companies.
  • tastybites 16y ago
    It's done in nearly every business too small to hire a head hunting firm or spend 100 man hours conducting interviews. Contrary to popular belief, most companies, even tech companies, are not google and do not need geniuses and PhD's to write their web apps or stock their shelves. Most of the time someone skilled who needs money to pay bills will show up and do a job pretty well. This is an old and not-very interesting concept and doesn't lead to blog hits though.
    • nostrademons 16y ago
      Google still prefers to hire through employee referrals. I guess they figure that friends of geniuses and PhDs tend to themselves be geniuses and PhDs...
  • j_baker 16y ago
    The biggest problem you have to watch out for is that good friends aren't always good coworkers. And the fact that someone is a good friend can cause people to purposely overlook things that might make them a bad fit. So that said, I personally would be hesitant to hire someone solely because they're someone else's friend.
  • michaelbuckbee 16y ago
    I'd say this is actively encouraged pretty much everywhere. Many places even have bonuses along the lines of: "Refer a friend and get a $1000".
  • ajju 16y ago
    There is a startup that is doing this www.topprospect.com
• jacquesm 16y ago
  Second that strategy, I've used it to good effect. One but though, I also found one guy like that that wanted to bring his friends on board when there was a need for more people and they were simply not good enough and this led to him quitting as well.
• jedberg 16y ago
  This is how youtube got most of their initial employees. Since all the core people were from PayPal, the first 100 or so people were pretty much all ex-PayPal. It worked out pretty well for them.
• lsc 16y ago
  friends of employees have been my best hires. My very best employee was a friend of an employee who was looking for work. he ended up being better than the people I had known and worked with in the past. Random chance, maybe? but I think it works better than people think. I think employees put more thought in to it than we give them credit for when they are asked for recommendations. Don't we all know that one person who is really good but unemployed because s/he isn't very confident?
  • goombastic 16y ago
    Didn't work so well for us. My boss ended up hiring someone a team-member recommended off of LinkedIn. The new guy pretty much ended up making the team go bust because of stuff he did with clients. I later enquired with the guy who recommended him if he even knew the guy. Turns out, he was just an arbitrary LinkedIn connection with equally arbitrary recommendations. Sucked big time. My advice: figure out how well the team member knows the new guy before you decide. Also check if the guy doing the recommendation is doing it because of religion, language, or some other crap. Also, I don't hire team members' wives or boyfriends any more.
    • megrimlock 16y ago
      Yes. The majority of "recommendations" we receive were provided as a polite favor to someone's former co-worker, relative, neighbor, etc. These are rarely better than random applicants, perhaps because they trying to exploit social connections rather than relying on the strength of their work. It's important to sniff out these obligatory "Sure, I'll pass your resume on" recommendations from truly vouched-for "We must hire this person" statements that can be truly valuable. Also, be wary of recommendations from people who work in a different part of your company. They may think they understand what you do when they don't, and use up your time with unqualified recommendations. Learning how to politely decline can save a bunch of time.
    • lsc 16y ago
      "My advice: figure out how well the team member knows the new guy before you decide. Also check if the guy doing the recommendation is doing it because of religion, language, or some other crap. " seems like good advice to me. My "Best hire ever" was the roommate of someone who worked for me at the time, and, as usual I kinda eased into the relationship, with short and well-defined contract gigs at first. But yeah, it is important to know the motivation of the recommending employee, and to do some evaluation of your own. But in my experience, it's a pretty good place to start.
• 16s 16y ago
  You sound like an awesome guy to work for! I love your hiring philosophy. No, I'm not joking ;)
• banditaras 16y ago
  Our best hires are friends of our employees. In fact it works so well when we want to hire someone we think of job ads as a waste of time. And there is some explanation to that: Good employees (and you'll surely have one) have friends on the same level. If your company / environment / team is good then employees are happy and try to convince their friends to join so that they can work together. We have 17 employees and only 3 of them have been hired through job ads.
• Jayasimhan 16y ago
  A tangential thought: I deeply appreciate the process of selecting the right people for the business. I also think that the idea of "random hiring" has some juice in it for small businesses. When someone goes through layers of interviews and then gets selected, their expectation from the company gets higher. They have a feel that they are the 'chosen one' for the job. But when someone is hired at random, he/she knows she is just filling an open slot. The expectations are low. Such employees can be moulded the way the organization wants him to perform. Also, This is even better than the interview process in one aspect, that it is not enough to prove the worth on the first day, but he/she now needs to sustain the performance level at the job.
• rwhitman 16y ago
  I honestly think the current tech bubble will be sunk by how overly picky most startups are these days about hiring
• robyates 16y ago
  Hiring friends-of-friends seems rather common actually, especially for startups and small companies. (This is the whole reason why people join LinkedIn, right?) From the job seekers' point-of-view, this is "It's not what you know, it's who you know." I'm all for recommendations, but sometimes it seems it's more about networking (i.e. having a good friend refer you) than about your actual skills. There are probably plenty of talented people out there who just don't have the right connections to get jobs.
• kunley 16y ago
  This is actually how every small company I know started hiring when they've had less than 20 people. Seems the rule not the exception. At least in my country.