Building a great team starts with attracting great candidates, and there are three channels we can use to attract candidates: referrals, outbound recruiting, and inbound interest. We should keep all three channels open, but be thoughtful about the biases that result from each channel so that we can make them work for our team-building goals and values.
Referrals from people who already work at Clef are one of the best signals we can get about whether or not a candidate will be successful at Clef. Clef employees understand Clef’s needs and what it’s like to work at Clef, and their relationship with the candidate means they know a lot more than we can learn during an interview process.
In order to get good referrals, everyone needs to know which positions are open, know how to start the recruiting process, have time to search their network, and feel aligned with the company incentives. Open positions should be posted on getclef.com/about and also in the #hiring channel so that everyone sees who we’re trying to hire. We’ll host a company lunch with food on the second Tuesday of every month where we talk about which positions are open and go through everyone’s online networks looking for and thinking about candidates. Employees will do initial outreach to interesting connection, which will give us a good space to talk about how we start the recruiting process.
We also offer a $5,000 referral bonus for any new hire that comes from an employee referral to help align company incentives with individual incentives.
The danger with referrals is that we are most likely to refer candidates who are like us, which can result in a homogenous team instead of the diverse one we want to create. We should emphasize diversity as a priority in our referral lunches and also search the local networks we are involved in. We should also continue to look for other ways to offset this bias on an organizational level.
For every position open at Clef, there should be one team member (a founder for these first 10 employees) who is in charge of the recruiting efforts for that position. This starts with writing the job description and publishing it on the getclef.com, but also means proactively searching for people who might be a good fit, looking for pools of candidates that we can recruit from, and asking friends for introductions to promising candidates.
It is critical that we find talent pools of diverse candidates to pull from, and that our outbound recruiting intentionally target underrepresented groups. If we are recruiting from universities, we need to be careful about which schools we draw from. If we are pulling people from other companies, it’s important that we are thoughtful about the location and industry biases of those companies. Clef works with and supports many local and national organizations that focus on growing the number of underrepresented minorities in the tech industry, including Hack the Hood, Women Who Code, and Qeyno Labs. Our work with these communities should help us find pools of candidates to recruit from.
All of our job openings and descriptions will be posted on getclef.com, and some will be posted on other sites where we can advertise our open positions. Careful thought should be given to where we post job openings, as traditional boards have homogeneous audiences. We will also have people reading about Clef through our blog and social media, developers working with our tools and participating in our community, and a broad audience hearing about Clef through news or using the product.
Inbound applications give us the highest number of candidates that are outside of our personal networks, but also have the lowest initial filter because no one at Clef is making any judgment about the candidate before they enter our pipeline. Because of the light filter, it can be tempting to dismiss these candidates, but an inbound application is a strong signal that the candidates believe in what we’re doing at Clef. This means that a smaller percentage of candidates from a broader pool will progress through our interview funnel. Regardless, we still need to treat inbound applications with respect.
Every inbound application should receive a response from the Clef team within 3 days so that they feel heard and like they were able to reach us personally.
Note: We use Workable to manage candidates, but when you "Disqualify" a candidate on Workable, it does not send the candidate an email or let them know that they have been disqualified. You should always send the candidate an email before you Disqualify them.