The playbook I use to recruit a team

The tools companies use to hire right now are changing dramatically, with AI-powered screeners, interviewing agents, and prototyping tests popping up everywhere.

But many fundamentals stay the same — finding candidates, setting up interviews, and closing people. I know many talented people who are working hard to find the right opportunity in a changing industry, and I wanted to share how I've hired in case that sheds light on the mechanics.

Adding great people to the team remains one of the most important jobs of a manager. Every person we add can be a multiplying force for the team, and it’s paid off to hire in a disciplined and fair way.

What’s helped me over the years:

1. Get specific about the role.

   1. Ask: do I really need a new hire? When someone leaves a team or when I’m handed a new headcount, I reflexively try to fill it. But pausing to think about the overall team structure gives me a chance to understand whether the team can operate more effectively. Could we reallocate work around the existing team to give someone a growth opportunity? Could we automate repetitive tasks people are doing today so they could take on more of this role? This isn’t just a chance to do more with less, but to give people growth paths they’re excited about.

   2. What am I looking for in a new hire? If I do need to add someone to the team, what are the most important skills we need? Do I need a creative problem-solver who can come up with fresh, occasionally outlandish ideas? Or a detail-oriented executor who can take an idea and turn it into an outcome? It’s tempting to look for a “unicorn” who can do it all, but they don’t exist. Instead, I need someone who can solve the job in front of us and keep growing. Given how fast our industry changes, I generally look for someone who has a track record of learning quickly. That means they’ll keep learning no matter what problem pops up.

   3. Craft a tight pitch for the role. What impact will this job have? What are the downsides? What will this person learn? I practice actually saying it out loud. Many candidates will make a call on whether to interview and take a job based on me and my pitch.
      

2. Own the process.

   1. As a hiring manager, I’m on the hook for finding and closing the right people. Even if I have an official recruiting partner, I’m ultimately responsible for identifying what I’m looking for, reaching out to candidates directly, making sure interviewers are prepped, and closing a great hire.

   2. Invest the time. When my team is growing, I block time every day on my calendar for recruiting. I spend that time on outreach, exploratory conversations to convince people to come in for a full interview loop, interviews, or post-interview debriefs. Carving out the time isn’t easy, but when we close someone great, the 1 hour / day I spent recruiting turns into 8 hours / day of a new colleague being an expert at their job. What else gives that ROI?

   3. Process and cadence are important. Just like with product execution, having clear goals, canonical docs, and regular tracking make the entire recruiting process more efficient. Even bumping a weekly recruiting check-in to twice weekly has been a good forcing function to see candidates twice as fast.
      

3. Build the pipeline.

   1. Allot time to find the right person. It’s tempting to fill a role with the first qualified person I run across. But I’m building a team for the long term, so I need to see the best candidates across the board even if it takes a few weeks longer.

   2. Fill the top of the funnel with great candidates. Great roles are a good way to attract people who might not normally interview with my team. Meeting these folks is an investment — it’s a small industry, and I’ll see those people again even if they don’t end up interviewing for this role. I’ve closed candidates for my team years after I had first talked with them about a different role.
      
      When I have a new role, I reach out to several extremely senior people who wouldn’t normally be interviewing and tell them, “I’m sure you’re happy where you are. Even if now is not the right time to move, I’d love to connect” (something I learned from the great Fidji Simo). Then I get a new connection for the long-term, and after learning about the role, the candidate might be interested after all.

   3. Always have multiple candidates in the pipeline until the offer is closed. Otherwise I get too attached to a particular candidate without having all the info. I once got so excited about a candidate after an intro meeting that I found myself planning future projects around them only to hear that they didn’t pass the interview. And I once paused interviews after offering a job to someone great, only to have to restart the process again when that person declined the offer.
      

4. Execute the interview and decision process fast.

   1. Build a consistent interview loop. I send the interviewers context on the role, and divide up the list of specific skills we’re looking for so each interviewer is assigned ~1-3 specific skills to get a sense of during the interview. That way we’re getting info on all the candidate skills we really need, without the interviewers repeating the same areas.

   2. Debrief ASAP. I ask everyone to write down how the candidate did on the specific skills each interviewer was assigned to look for plus any other pros / cons within a few hours of the interview. Then I bring everyone together (within 24 hours if possible) to discuss the candidate in a structured way. If people use squishy words, I push for concrete details. If an interviewer says a candidate is “coachable”, can they point to examples of when the candidate took feedback real-time and changed their plan?

   3. Hiring is always a judgment call. There’s no oracle who can guarantee a candidate will be a great fit. It’s often tempting to ask for endless follow-ups or more information, but I generally find that after a full interview loop, we have all the information we are likely to get and just need to make a call. I once dragged out a decision on a strong candidate because I was worried about one interviewer's lukewarm feedback. By the time we circled back for a follow-up conversation, the candidate had accepted another offer.
      

5. Close a great candidate.

   1. Be honest about the job. I try to fast-forward to six months after the person joins, and share what I think that looks like. How will they feel? What will they be excited about, and what will they be frustrated by? It can be tempting to do anything I can to close a candidate since I’ve worked so hard to find someone good. If they ask for a higher level or a different title, why not just give it to them? But those exceptions slowly erode team morale as their colleagues lose trust in the system, and it doesn’t set up the candidate for success if they’re not prepared to deliver at that level.

   2. Address concerns head-on. Instead of hoping a candidate’s concerns will go away, I try to surface them directly by asking,”What would prevent you from taking this job?” Is it compensation, scope, team dynamics? It can feel awkward for a candidate to ask questions about work-life balance, so can I proactively raise my experiences with balancing my family with work so they’ll understand the norms? Once I understand what's holding them back, I can either address it directly or help them think through whether it's actually a dealbreaker.

   3. Become their partner as they plan their future. Once I’ve made an offer to a candidate, I put myself in the position of being their partner and coach as if they were already on my team. Can I help them plot out up front what their growth could look like on the team and how I’ll support them?
      

6. Onboard intentionally. After all the work to hire and close someone, now I need to make sure they ramp successfully. This past post has six tips that have helped me onboard new leaders.

Metrics, product launches, and quarterly goals are all important. But a manager’s underlying job is also to build the team that builds the product. No hiring approach is foolproof, but investing in a fair, disciplined process has been worth every hour that it takes. The joy of watching great people work together and grow (and getting to be part of their team!) is one of my favorite parts of every job I’ve had.