Dan Martell - How To Hire Top Startup Talent (Technical & Developers)

00:00:00.120 The challenge is for a lot of entrepreneurs,

00:00:02.080 they don't know anybody that's technical,

00:00:04.240 they don't know designers,

00:00:05.160 and when they get introduced to somebody,

00:00:06.800 they don't even know how to vet them,

00:00:09.080 how to decide if they're good.

00:00:22.520 How to vet top startup talent.

00:00:24.880 Maybe you're in a situation where you wanna hire a developer

00:00:27.960 and you're not technical,

00:00:28.800 want to hire a designer and you don't even know

00:00:31.040 what good design looks like.

00:00:32.280 You know, aesthetically, if it looks good.

00:00:34.360 This video is really to help you address that challenge

00:00:37.020 of hiring people where you have no background or skill

00:00:40.520 or talent or know how whatsoever.

00:00:42.900 You know, I remember when I was hiring sales people

00:00:45.700 for my company Flowtown, that was scary

00:00:48.280 because A, I was like, how much do I pay them?

00:00:50.680 They're going to be talking to my customers.

00:00:52.320 What's the process?

00:00:53.700 You know, if they close a lot of accounts,

00:00:55.480 what if they want too much commission

00:00:57.800 and then I can't even make a profit.

00:00:59.460 I had no clue how to hire those salespeople. 1.00

00:01:01.900 My background was technical.

00:01:03.140 I was a startup tech builder,

00:01:05.680 and that's what I wanna share with you guys today

00:01:07.200 is how to think through the way to vet

00:01:09.780 the top talent in your startup,

00:01:11.120 especially when you're in the early days

00:01:12.480 and you're just getting going,

00:01:13.860 or you're hiring even C-level people

00:01:16.220 that you've never hired before,

00:01:17.220 like a COO or a CMO in your business.

00:01:20.020 So number one is do your research.

00:01:21.620 Did you know, if you search,

00:01:24.720 what a top developer looks like,

00:01:26.720 or what a top designer, what makes a top designer,

00:01:29.980 you will find a list of criterias from people

00:01:33.400 that are way smarter than any of us watching this

00:01:35.680 that have done this at scale, that have talked about,

00:01:38.280 here are the characteristics of top designers,

00:01:40.760 developers, et cetera.

00:01:41.700 So any type of hire you wanna make,

00:01:44.460 it already exists online.

00:01:45.540 You can Google it to get the information.

00:01:47.480 So the number one thing I did

00:01:48.520 when I was hiring those salespeople is do my research.

00:01:51.320 I wanted to make sure that I understood

00:01:53.520 what is the right process, not only for hiring,

00:01:55.920 the questions to ask, the books that people recommended,

00:01:59.000 the process to have them execute as a salesperson,

00:02:02.060 how they should interact with customers,

00:02:03.920 all those areas, it's available online.

00:02:06.420 Just make sure you Google it.

00:02:08.840 Second is use your advisors or mentors.

00:02:11.080 You know, there are people in your life

00:02:12.360 that have gone through this before.

00:02:13.780 They have experience.

00:02:15.240 Maybe you don't know what a great developer looks like,

00:02:17.580 but one of your advisors might hire developers all the time.

00:02:19.900 So you can actually ask them to do first level reviews.

00:02:23.520 You do the work to create a funnel

00:02:25.480 to track the talent, but then once you filter out

00:02:28.240 maybe core value fit or background and skills,

00:02:31.620 then you can invite your advisor

00:02:33.280 to have a one-on-one conversation with those people

00:02:35.720 to actually use them to vet the top talent.

00:02:38.460 I've done this all the time.

00:02:39.520 I've even used my investors in past companies

00:02:41.960 to say I'm trying to hire this person

00:02:43.900 and I need you to convince them to take my job,

00:02:46.840 not go work at Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft, etc.

00:02:50.540 So there's really neat strategies to use your advisors

00:02:53.080 to not only vet, but actually attract top talent.

00:02:56.120 The third one is just to pay somebody.

00:02:57.980 If you don't have the experience,

00:02:59.280 you can actually go on sites like Upwork or others

00:03:02.160 to actually pay somebody that's got the experience

00:03:04.720 to vet the recruits that you've got put together.

00:03:07.220 So you do the work to recruit those people

00:03:09.060 that are potential candidates,

00:03:10.160 then you can pay somebody to do the vetting for you

00:03:13.200 at a fraction of the cost,

00:03:14.600 maybe a thousand bucks to vet four or five people,

00:03:16.940 have those calls, review that information.

00:03:19.600 That is a very, very good use of your time

00:03:21.840 because the most expensive mistake you can make

00:03:23.940 is a bad hire.

00:03:25.100 And number four, I want you to always, always

00:03:28.240 run a test project.

00:03:29.480 Here's how it works.

00:03:30.320 A test project is you've got some candidates,

00:03:32.820 they pass all the other filters in your recruiting process,

00:03:35.720 and then finally maybe you have three left.

00:03:37.580 What you want to do is negotiate with them

00:03:39.760 to do the exact same test project regarding,

00:03:42.800 you know, related to their field.

00:03:44.100 Maybe it's for designers, you'd ask them to do

00:03:45.940 a user onboarding design project, or for a developer,

00:03:49.340 you'd ask them to build some kind of

00:03:51.460 little small applications that interacts with an API,

00:03:53.960 just to keep it simple.

00:03:55.660 And yes, you might want to consider paying them,

00:03:57.860 but the whole idea is to convince them

00:03:59.760 and really just suggest like this is your opportunity

00:04:01.960 to get to know us and it's our opportunity to get to know you.

00:04:04.860 It's a small project, 10 hours, you can get it done in a week

00:04:07.760 and what you're looking for is how they interacted,

00:04:09.960 how they communicated, how they developed the project.

00:04:13.960 What questions did they ask you and your team about the specs?

00:04:17.360 Did they go away and then come back after 10 hours

00:04:20.460 and just deliver the product?

00:04:21.560 Or did they show you an early release

00:04:23.000 or clear up some areas that they were confused about?

00:04:25.660 That is the point of the test project.

00:04:27.760 So real quick, do your research.

00:04:29.200 Go online, identify it.

00:04:31.100 Use your advisors and mentors to filter them out.

00:04:33.580 If you don't have that set up, you wanna move quickly,

00:04:35.580 pay somebody to do it, it's so simple.

00:04:38.020 And then fourth, make sure that you run a test project.

00:04:41.240 I wanna invite you to leave a comment below

00:04:43.020 and let me know what's your top tip

00:04:45.160 when it comes to vetting great talent to join your team.

00:04:48.820 Leave a comment below.

00:04:49.580 I'm going to read them all, respond to them.

00:04:51.240 I want to thank you guys for watching this video.

00:04:53.080 And as per usual, I want to challenge you to live a bigger life and a bigger business.

00:04:56.420 And I'll see you next Monday.

00:04:57.740 If you like this video, be sure to subscribe to my channel to get top strategies on how

00:05:02.340 to start and grow your business.

00:05:03.620 I'd also invite you to join my newsletter where I send out exclusive invites to events,

00:05:09.000 community contests, and free training.

00:05:12.240 And if you're ready to get going, you're hungry, I've queued up a couple videos to

00:05:15.380 get you started right now.

00:05:17.240 Excited to have you here and I'll see you in the next video.

00:05:19.580 You

Dan Martell - August 15, 2016

How To Hire Top Startup Talent (Technical & Developers)

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