Hiring as an Early Stage Startup

[kadokaelan]

I'm failing to find any strategy that discovers what I'm looking for in a 5th engineer hire for my team.

About Us:

- Building AI creative tools on the web

- We have 11 months of runway

- Are offering competitive US Bay Area (non-MAGMA) salaries.

- We are raising our seed round with good prospects

- We are offering 1% equity

- We are growing ~25% monthly in active users with over 1000 already

Point is, we're doing alright, and offering a good job.

What I'm Looking For:

- Full Stack Web Engineer(React, Typescript, Node, Server Mgmt.)

- Someone passionate about the product, Individualistic, who can build things from scratch and work independently, with their own side projects (basically, a great engineer).

Why They Should Chose Us:

- We are a engineering oriented team working on an interesting problem in applying generative AI to 3d asset creation

Things I've Tried:

- Joining engineering discords

- Exploring open source commits

- Tech twitter

- job postings

My Results:

- Weak responses on most cold outreaches

- The responses showed people not looking for work

- When I post on job boards like LinkedIn and AngelList the applicants don't meet the standards.

Thoughts?

[icyfox]

Are you the alumni of any other companies or engineering schools? I've had to hire for similar sized startups and find the most success with reaching out to past colleagues or friends in the same space, and either pulling them in directly or having them extend a quick pitch to the people within their networks.

Until you get to ~15-25 engineers, this has been my highest yield way to hire.

[kadokaelan]

I consulted my network a bit but didn't push too hard because it almost feels exploitive but maybe I should revisit that

[synicalx]

The three results/problems you listed, I think, are all related;

- Cold outreach has low uptake anyway, especially if not targeted properly. People tend to largely just ignore or decline these kinds of messages.

- People not looking for work confirms you're probably targeting the wrong people, especially on LinkedIn.

- Job ads by design, will get a lot of responses. Filtering them out quickly and effectively is an art.

I've had all these same problems myself when hiring, crafting the ad and targeting the right people is BY FAR the hardest part to get right.

Find a good tech recruiter that's experienced in your area, maybe even a couple of them, and let them do the work. It's very hard to compete with the years or even decades of connections, skill, and networking that a good recruiter will have.

I've had the best experiences with people who aren't just ex-HR drones looking for more money - ideally you want someone mildly technical themselves who's able to tell if a candidate is a BS artist and screen them out early. One of the main benefits of using a recruiter is not having to do 90% of the screening yourself, so make sure they're good at it.

[kadokaelan]

I originally thought it might be too early to rely on recruiters, but I will look into it!

[synicalx]

It's definitely worth a look I think. Just make sure you fully understand their fee structure before signing anything - they have the potential to be very expensive if you're not careful.

A lot of the really good ones can add value in other ways as well; in the past I've had recruiters get us presenting at events without having to pay sponsor fees, free conference tickets and training vouchers for successful candidates, pre-baked employment contracts and other HR-ey documents you can use etc etc.

[BadCookie]

Is the “3d asset creation” for NFTs? Because that’s an automatic “no” from me.

Otherwise, making the position remote (if it isn’t already) is my main suggestion. Or consider being more flexible with your requirements (e.g., be willing to accept someone without experience with your specific stack).

[kadokaelan]

No NFT's here! We're building a creative tool for professional artists and designers.

Seems like remote is almost a must these days. Thanks for the suggestions

[version_five]

I've recently been in a similar situation and it's very tough. Agree 100% on the LinkedIn (I didn't try AngelList) the quality was terrible, which I think is because of how easy they make it to apply, so you just end up getting randoms that don't actually have any interest in working for you.

I ended up finding peopl through a personal connection. After going through lots of personal connections that were not interested. I think that (unfortunately) one of the key things you are expected to bring as a founder is the connections to hire people.

[kadokaelan]

It is tough out here! Interesting point that the founder should inherently have a large network to pull from. As a younger and first time founder, that's one place I am lacking

[mstipetic]

Startups aren't as cool anymore, people understand how the business works and the risks involved and (especially senior) people don't want to work in them. I think soon early stage startups will have to allocate a much larger pool of stock for employees (think 25-30%), low single digits won't cut it anymore.

[sl9dmk2]

- 11 months of runway feels tight given market conditions have tightened; are you close to closing seed?

- Does your 25% MoM growth translate to revenue? If so, be clear about that

- Can your existing engineers refer friends they know?

What you're experiencing is pretty typical of a pre-seed startup that's unknown right now

[kadokaelan]

We are aiming to close in June so we will be fine. I could utilize our networks more throuoghly. Maybe it'll be a bit easier once we've raised out seed

[streetcat1]

Have you tried posting the actual salary in the ad.

Per of what I saw, the going rate for experience engineer (3 years and above) in the bay area is 500K, can you compete with that?

[ipaddr]

Are you not remote friendly? That could be an issue.

[newusertoday]

is the position remote? have you tried who wants to be hired thread in hn?