I've never been involved in hiring at a startup, but for 8 years I was involved in hiring as a prof in academia. In that context, there is a peculiar and consi

I've never been involved in hiring at a startup, but for 8 years I was involved in hiring as a prof in academia. In that context, there is a peculiar and consistent gap between the best hiring strategy and the strategies institutions actually use. For hiring faculty whose main focus is research, the best strategy is targeted attempts to hire superstars -- the research equivalent of a Guido van Rossum, say, or a Linus Torvalds, or someone near that level -- or early-career people where you have very good reason to be confident they will be future superstars. It sounds obvious to say "go after superstars". But what's strange is that in any given field only a very short list of institutions actually do it. At most academic institutions it's surprisingly difficult to convince the institution to go after superstars. I think the reason for this aversion is instinctive. If you're hiring it's much more comfortable to go the conventional route, advertising a position, interviewing a short-list and so on. This produces a situation where most of the interviewees want the job pretty badly. This gives the hiring committee a lot of power, which is a comfortable position to be in. Unfortunately, it also produces lower-quality candidates than identifying the best people and going after them directly. A superstar will be interviewing you more than you are interviewing them. You'll need to get creative in convincing them that you have something to offer, something they can't find anywhere else. This is much less comfortable. A useful heuristic: if most of your job offers are being accepted, your standards are way too low.