1/11 - Most startups are not able to hire because they hire like big companies. Big companies don’t have to work that hard to attract talent, as a startup you have to. For a startup, hiring is a selling process. Your process is your differentiator

2/11 - Treat the process like a sales funnel - You will never have a 100% success rate at any step, play the number game, when the funnel is not moving, experiment at each step, and iterate.

3/11 - Know your competition - Try to know who you are competing with for every candidate. It is stupid to think you have an exclusive talent pool, everyone is talking to multiple companies.

4/11 - Be aggressive - Too many companies are too slow to move. Be aggressive, smart people want to work with companies who get stuff done quickly.

5/11 - Build a good pipeline - Never rely on a candidate who hasn’t joined. Keep the pipeline going, invest in your recruitment team.

6/11 - Ask uncomfortable questions - Why do you want to join our startup? Why don’t you interview for Google? What things will make you leave if they don’t work?

7/11 - Handle large deals with high touch - You can do a few non-scalable things bigger companies can’t. Do them at least with your senior hires.

8/11 - Involve the right stakeholders - Get everyone who matters involved, make the candidates talk to all the right stakeholders.

9/11 - Build confidence - Let your candidates speak to anyone in your team, they are anyway going to do it, offer that option up front.

10/11 - Weed out non-serious candidates / bad actors - Be okay to push them out of the funnel. There is no point in being nice and wasting everyone’s time.

11/11 - Learn and iterate - Be humble, take feedback, learn from it and iterate to make the process better. Don’t take any feedback personally.