Planning the first hire
Hey everyone, I'm preparing to make the first hire for Landen and am curious about the experiences of other IHs who've already been there. I'm especially interested about solo founders who've made their first hire and where they found the right person (friends/network/local/global).
Have you already been there or know of someone who has? I'd love to talk to you. Also if you know any good IH interviews that cover this, please let me know!
Hey, I have done this for Ministry of Testing. Now at around 10 full time people. I'd be happy to chat further, but two main things spring to mind:
I too often made the mistake of trying to hire and work with people, then realising that they weren't quite the right fit. What seems to have worked well is to hire people that we have gotten to know previously to some extent. It's not always possible, but is worth a shot if you can try.
Our first hires came from within our community. To date our accounts and event manager are people who have come from outside, everyone else has developed relationships with us before we hired them.
Thanks Rosie, that makes a lot of sense! Landen is less community driven right now so it'll be a bit harder to find people there but I'll try.
When hiring someone new eg. via Upwork, do at least a phone call or skype call and try to get an idea of whether you can trust this person and get a grasp of the character the person has.
Surprisingly enough, freelancers already pull out just because you ask for a phone call.
General rule for freelancers:
Congrats on this new journey! 💪
Hi Felix, I'm currently pulling together some content that's intended to be a guide for someone like you to start hiring engineering staff and then growing a high performing culture. I've only just begun, but you might find see nuggets of value within. Let me know !
https://trboteam.com/2020/02/10/how-to-build-a-startup-engineering-team-the-right-way/
I hired on Upwork, freelancer and others. You should be lucky to get a good dev on freelancer.
Toptal and Upwork both are expensive. On upwork fixed price is the best way, hourly billing slowly become expensive.If you go for hourly have a proper plan of the activity and clear estimated hours.
Among all the remote devs I hired, Ukraninens (and Russains) are the best.