@patio11 is worth following on twitter, but in particular recently he posted this tweetstorm talking about the hiring and onboarding process that really struck me as being worth a read:
If there is a talent shortage, it is of people who know how to run a hiring process like it is a business.
— Patrick McKenzie (@patio11) August 31, 2016
I know you like *your* company's hiring process, but your peers'… if your sales team executed like that, you'd fire them in two weeks.
— Patrick McKenzie (@patio11) August 31, 2016
"How many leads did you talk to today?" "I dunno." "Guess for me." "Three? Could have been four."
— Patrick McKenzie (@patio11) August 31, 2016
"What's the status of this lead?" "Oh I DQed them." "Why?" "Culture fit." "What does that mean?" "Fit. For our culture."
— Patrick McKenzie (@patio11) August 31, 2016
"When's the last time you talked to Bob?" "Yesterday." "Show me the email." *shows email from 3 weeks ago promising a callback*
— Patrick McKenzie (@patio11) August 31, 2016
"Where's sell sheet vs Google?" "Our what?" "When they're considering us and Google, what tested message do we repeat?" "I wing it, dawg."
— Patrick McKenzie (@patio11) August 31, 2016
"Suppose an engineer intros you to a warm prospect. What's next action?" "Thank them." "And then?" "I'm thinking call w/ no script or CTA."
— Patrick McKenzie (@patio11) August 31, 2016
"What's our conversion rate?" "What's that word mean?" "How many leads did we get this quarter?" "Ooh, quarter means three months."
— Patrick McKenzie (@patio11) August 31, 2016
"Describe to me how we developed our sales process." "We copied a ten year old blog post repeating Google's third-hand." "Why?" "Google's!"
— Patrick McKenzie (@patio11) August 31, 2016
"Tell me how we do lead nurturing here." "What's that?" "Even if they're not ready to take a job we send them something, right?" "Lol why."
— Patrick McKenzie (@patio11) August 31, 2016
"You still working Amy?" "Yep." "Who can know that she trusts who we can ask to talk us up to Amy?" "That's both useless and impossible."
— Patrick McKenzie (@patio11) August 31, 2016
"How's our pricing compare to competitors?" "Better than market." "I know we tell people that but is. It. True." "Why does it matter?"
— Patrick McKenzie (@patio11) August 31, 2016
"So how did that sales call go?" "I asked an engineer to take it." "… You have a plan." "He flaked. Prospect was alone for an hour." /2
— Patrick McKenzie (@patio11) August 31, 2016
"JESUS CHRIST." "What?" "How do we salvage that prospect?" "He got pissy. Poor culture fit. DQed." "How do we never do this again?" "Why?"
— Patrick McKenzie (@patio11) August 31, 2016
"How'd last call go?" "Crap lead man." "OK, so how would you rate your performance on selling?" "Oh I only do that when excited about lead."
— Patrick McKenzie (@patio11) August 31, 2016
"What's customers purchasing process look like?" "Is that a trick? They use our sales process." "… OK. What's that look like?" "Wing it!"
— Patrick McKenzie (@patio11) August 31, 2016
"Who's the leads economic buyer?" "The lead. Duh." "They make all decisions." "Of course." "They ever ask anyone for input?" "Prob no. Why?"
— Patrick McKenzie (@patio11) August 31, 2016
"What were the deals you were happiest about last year at time of close?" "X, Y, Z." "Which is best one year later?" "What do you mean?"
— Patrick McKenzie (@patio11) August 31, 2016
"Explain to me how you qualify." "I've got hard DQs and soft DQs." "Name a hard DQ." "None exist." "A soft DQ." "Lead's school is subpar."
— Patrick McKenzie (@patio11) August 31, 2016
"What's the difference between a soft DQ and a hard DQ?" "Oh, a DQ is a DQ, unless I've got a vibe." "A vibe." "You know, like passion."
— Patrick McKenzie (@patio11) August 31, 2016
"Where do we source?" "Industry standard is to buy leads from 1 provider and scrape 1 free one." "And where do WE source?" "Like I said."
— Patrick McKenzie (@patio11) August 31, 2016
"What's your job here?" "Protecting the company from bad sales." "… Explain." "One bad deal closed worse than 100 good ones missed."
— Patrick McKenzie (@patio11) August 31, 2016
"Man we lucked out on X." "Yeah." "Where'd they hear about us." "Dunno." "Freebie: it was that blog post from Bob in DevOps." "Cool." /2
— Patrick McKenzie (@patio11) August 31, 2016
"So what are you going to ask Bob in DevOps to do for us?" "I don't follow." "How can we use Bob to accomplish our goals?" "Not on our team"
— Patrick McKenzie (@patio11) August 31, 2016
"I've got good news for you: Bob is writing another post." "Cool." "What are you going to ask Bob to say in that post?" "Uh I don't DevOps."
— Patrick McKenzie (@patio11) August 31, 2016
"Why'd you DQ this lead?" "Spelling mistake in an email to me." "… Explain." "Well that says 'careless.' They know how important I am."
— Patrick McKenzie (@patio11) August 31, 2016
"Why'd you DQ this lead?" "Spelling mistake in an email to me." "… Explain." "Well that says 'careless.' They know how important I am."
— Patrick McKenzie (@patio11) August 31, 2016
"What do we have that Competitor X doesn't have?" "Culture." "Imagine you worked for X and question reversed. Answer?" "Hmm, culture."
— Patrick McKenzie (@patio11) August 31, 2016
"What's an ask you could make of any team in company that would make your sales job easier?" "Dunno." "Make one up." "We could use Ruby?" /2
— Patrick McKenzie (@patio11) August 31, 2016
"GREAT. OK, who do we have to ask internally to start using Ruby?" "Dunno." "Probably VPEng. How would we ask him to?" "Not my job to."
— Patrick McKenzie (@patio11) August 31, 2016
"What happened to Susan?" "Went with a competitor." "Which one?" "She wouldn't tell me." "… So which one?" "What so we hire private eye?"
— Patrick McKenzie (@patio11) August 31, 2016
"Susan went with a competitor." "Sucks, yeah." "So when are you following up with Susan?" "Did you not hear 'went with a competitor' boss?"
— Patrick McKenzie (@patio11) August 31, 2016
"But… what if Susan isn't happy with the competitor?" "Good. She was disloyal. No culture fit." "Why'd she owe us loyalty?" "Well DUH."
— Patrick McKenzie (@patio11) August 31, 2016
"Who out-executes us at sales?" "Competitor X." "Why?" "They're Internet famous." "What does that mean?" "They have a blog." "Do we?" "No."
— Patrick McKenzie (@patio11) August 31, 2016
"So they're out-executing us, on something important, because they have a blog." "Yeah." "So when are you starting to blog?" "I'm busy."
— Patrick McKenzie (@patio11) August 31, 2016
"Why should people join us?" "The mission!" "Who articulates the mission best?" "The CEO." "Do we have her talk to candidates?" "Lol no."
— Patrick McKenzie (@patio11) August 31, 2016
"Why not?" "Because she's the CEO and has important work to do." "OK but we have video of her talking right." "Yeah." "Do we send it?" "Why"
— Patrick McKenzie (@patio11) August 31, 2016
"Explain 'equity' to someone who has never heard it before." *does* "Explain why we use NQSOs to 10 year veteran." *same explanation*
— Patrick McKenzie (@patio11) August 31, 2016
"So you're in the biz of convincing highly mathematical individuals to trade stock for money." "Yep." "How much is our stock worth?" "Lots."
— Patrick McKenzie (@patio11) August 31, 2016
"Your answer on valuation is 'lots.'" "Well 'not lots' clearly wouldn't get it done right?"
— Patrick McKenzie (@patio11) August 31, 2016
"Could we give devs well-designed Excel spreadsheets with valuation calculators." "A good idea." "Do so." "I don't design/Excel sorry."
— Patrick McKenzie (@patio11) August 31, 2016
"You don't do design or Excel." "No." "OK, let me take another tact: who in a software company does design or Excel?" "Lol nobody."
— Patrick McKenzie (@patio11) August 31, 2016
"What we spend on outsourced lead gen last quarter?" "$0." "What do we pay recruiters?" "$25k a placement." "How many placements?" "Ten."
— Patrick McKenzie (@patio11) August 31, 2016
"OK, so imagine you had a $250k budget for making stuff." "They'd never give me a budget." "Play along. What would you make?" "Sounds risky"
— Patrick McKenzie (@patio11) August 31, 2016
"OK, I get that. Imagine its your hated rival at Competitor X. What could *they* get made for $250k?" "Dunno." "How many books/movies/apps?"
— Patrick McKenzie (@patio11) August 31, 2016
"Dunno." "What's a book cost to make?" "Dunno." "I assert it can be done for $50k." "Sounds unlikely." "Can you turn book into candidates?"
— Patrick McKenzie (@patio11) August 31, 2016
"I can't imagine devs read books." "OK, do they use websites?" "Yeah." "Can you get a website made?" "We have a jobs page." "Think bigger."
— Patrick McKenzie (@patio11) August 31, 2016
"Bigger than a jobs page?" "Yeah." "Like, a jobs *listing* page?" "Like something that an engineer outside our company would enjoy using."
— Patrick McKenzie (@patio11) August 31, 2016
"I don't know, that sounds like a Project." "Ever asked any dev in this company what they did over a weekend?" "Apps or some shit I dunno."
— Patrick McKenzie (@patio11) August 31, 2016
"Could your hated rival, with $250k, possibly cause an app that devs would use to exist?" "Buy dev time? Lol. Impossible right."
— Patrick McKenzie (@patio11) August 31, 2016
As the CEO of a company dedicated to improving the technical hiring process, he is to some degree talking his own book here, but his points are incredibly valid. Hiring is fundamentally a sales process, and yet at most companies it is run by people who do not understand that (or, typically, anything about the roles they’re trying to fill, but that’s a rant for a different day).