Recruiting - a framework

I've spent countless hours on recruiting, from building my team at Docon to an unsuccessful attempt at a startup in the space. Along the way I picked up a framework — the beggar-chooser dilemma, first shared with me by Abhishek — that's helped me evaluate the hiring problem ever since.

It categorizes both candidates and companies as beggars or choosers, where a 'beggar' just means someone who isn't a natural fit for the other side. A candidate is often a beggar because they're pivoting into a new function, lack the expected brand names on their resume, or can't yet convert interviews. A company is often a beggar because it lacks a founding-team or investor brand, isn't in a hot industry, or is high risk. Because of that, the equilibrium tends to land at beggar-beggar or chooser-chooser, which makes it important for beggars on either side to find a way to the chooser side.

For a candidate, that means showing rather than telling — writing, building, or actually solving a problem for the target company; using social media (Twitter far more than LinkedIn, in my experience) to get in front of hiring managers directly; building a side project to prove a pivot is real; and, for a conversion problem, simply practising interviews relentlessly.

For a company, that means building founder and company brand through writing or speaking, creating buzz around what makes the company interesting, showing rather than telling about culture, and rallying people around a big mission. Wherever you sit on the beggar-chooser matrix, moving from one side to the other is possible — it just takes time.