[joonix]

The article makes Vidyard and particularly "Mike" look pretty bad and lacks perspective and empathy. The fact that he's OK with ignoring personal communications just because they look like a "cover letter" speaks volumes. I don't buy the "I'm busy" argument. I've emailed people like Mark Cuban and received prompt replies in the past.

Worse, he interviewed the guy and made him do free, unpaid work to further prove himself, and then ignored him for four weeks after he did the task! Absolutely pathetic. I can only think about my friend's startup cleaning company: he has prospective cleaners clean an apartment as part of their interview to see their cleaning skills, but he pays them the standard hourly rate ($20/hr+) for their time. And he follows up. And he doesn't have any funding himself yet.

Posts like this one just reinforce and validate this kind of behavior in the startup community. Just because you're a "busy startup guy" doesn't mean you get to ignore labor laws and have free reign to be a prick. Just FYI, having people work for free is almost always illegal if they're not receiving academic credit.

All people deserve to be treated with common decency. It doesn't matter how bad the economy is, how new the employer is, and how inexperienced the applicant is. As soon as we deem it acceptable and in fact encourage the abandonment of these principles and laws, we descend into a third world black market business culture. I wouldn't be surprised if the next boulder we crash into on this slippery slope involves applicants bribing their way into jobs: "In exchange for letting me work for you for free, I'm willing to "fund the overhead" of my training by providing you with a monthly stipend of $500/month during my free labor period!"

[freshhawk]

I'm also troubled by the expansion of the New York finance style intern culture.

We find that having someone do real work for a decent length of time is a great way to evaluate them when they are inexperienced or otherwise hard to evaluate in an interview format.

Internships have their place, but not when it's taking advantage of the applicant. That's when we hire them for short term contracts, we pay them contractor rates (so slightly more hourly than the paycheque would be) to compensate for the lack of security.

We're finding that we end up with people who can treat the business seriously and professionally when that's needed as well as the normal stuff everyone wants like enthusiasm, intelligence and work ethic. Someone willing to run on a treadmill because I'm dangling a carrot in front of them like a jerk is not someone I want on my team, I want someone who will spend their time wisely when I'm paying them for it.

Who would have guessed that treating applicants with respect would pay off, even for a small startup? Oh yeah, we did. And we were right.

[michaelrlitt]

You're right - I did lack perspective and empathy.

I never thought I'd be the busy guy without time or energy to filter through and respond to every application we get.

The problem that I've encountered is that at < 15 employees, the best hires are generally people we pursue. Literally 90% of people we've spoken to who apply through standard means are ill-fitted for the role.

This post is designed to open the perspective of myself, the "busy startup guy" as well as Amar, the "I want to be a part of a startup guy".

The idea is that everyone should go above and beyond to get noticed. Most people don't. If you don't really really really think you can make an impact in my business (and haven't shown me so via initiative) how can I really know that you're not just another tire-kicker?

Remember, a seed-stage startup is on an egg-timer. Every minute needs to be productive and every conversation needs to create value. We need to pick and choose our battles wisely.

[joonix]

I don't mean to be hard on you, I was really just ranting against this pervasive behavior, not specifically just you. I can see how this could happen. I just think we should all try to proactively hold ourselves to higher standards of doing business and employing people.