当VC问你打算怎么招贤纳士的时候，你该这么答
猎云网（微信：ilieyun）编译：阿莉莎
编者注：本文作者Hunter Walk曾就职于YouTube和Google，2013年成立了一家为初创企业提供种子轮基金和商业咨询服务的风投公司Homebrew。
“扩建团队”往往是初创公司拿到投资之后的一大用途。不论是为现有项目增加资金，还是为团队招募新的人才，掩盖筹资讲稿背后的真实目的是不对的。我所感兴趣的不仅仅是招募的人员将来会完成什么工作，更多的是在于他们将在什么时候、以什么方式被招聘。所以当Homebrew问及你的招聘计划时，以下是我想要了解的信息。
需要怎样的高级人才
卓越的人才往往很难寻觅，但是如果你只想找一个有网络营销基本技巧的人、一个初级视觉设计师或第一个社区支持团队，那这基本上没什么大问题。但如果你的执行计划中需要非常专业的经验、人脉关系或认证技术，我就要花更多时间理解你的需求。这是因为，我们能否成功找到这样一个人才关系到公司业务的成败。
比如说，如果你要处理些关于唱片的事务，真正能够了解那些公司的动态，并且知道该给谁打电话的业务开发主管并不多。再比如说，如果你要扩展服务，一个普通的工程师和那些曾经在Google、Facebook、YouTube、Dropbox有过成功经验的工程师还是有很大差距的。如果创始人需要招募一个不在初创团队工作的高级人才，我的建议是：第一，在融资之前识别出这些人；第二，准备好给他们慷慨的股权回报。
知道自己要招谁
几个月前，我在和一个小公司谈论他们种子轮融资的相关事宜。他们的最终目标是开发一个本地化手机应用，但是他们仅仅是在网页上进行了概念验证。创始团队中没有人有足够的开发本地化手机应用的经验，因此他们准备拿一部分资金招聘两个手机端iOS工程师。
这听起来不错，于是我问他们：“你们知道要招聘谁吗？”他们的反应是：“你是指具体的某个人吗?”这些创业者与其他初创公司有保持联系，他们并非孤立无援，但他们心里没有任何一个备选者。如果合作意向书签署之后没人能立即被你签约录用，这对投资人来说是一个危险信号。除非作为创始人的你有能力在短时间内组建起一支精良的团队，或者说你有资本吸引大量人才。
我的建议是在你计划融资之前开始招聘，这有助于展示出良好的发展势头。比较简单的方法就是在AngelList或类似的网站上列出空缺职位，然后收集反馈。即使你还没有准备好正式录用他们，也不妨试试这么做。这样，当投资人问起团队人员时，你就可以说：“我们已经有75个候选人在名单上了，并且他们都对自己将要承担的角色十分有把握。”注意，我并不认为这只是对投资人使用的把戏，事实上它是保持高增长必要的手段。
招聘执行风险
Pitch应该包括一系列被VC期待的关键信息，比如产品特色、员工数量、开展城市、营收运转率等等。这样会使人感觉这轮融资的目的是完成一个特定的计划。而在这个计划中招聘常常被忽略。所以我常常会问：“招聘新员工的进度上有风险吗？”
比方说，如果明年必须每个月都有新工程师入职才能实现设定的目标，我希望你能确保招聘进度，同时不要影响招聘质量。当招聘花费的时间比预期长时，你需要预留一些缓冲时间来调整进度或缩减项目建设计划。
当创始人已经考虑到这个问题后，他们该怎么去完成。一个考虑周全的计划除了假设外还应该有Plan B，如果招聘工程师的时间真的比预期长，创始人们也应该知道哪些外包公司可以提供帮助。
符合企业文化
公司文化在第一次招聘中就已显现。我们想了解你的优先级排列是怎样的，以及你是否知道通过什么样的提问实现它。很多初次创业者以前没有经历过完整的招聘流程，特别是在超出他专业范畴的领域。这很正常，我们并不期待早期的创业者了解所有事情，而创业者们总是希望表现出能解决一切问题的样子。我们可以帮助创业者确保严谨的招聘流程——符合招聘对象的类型。如果你说你只在乎团队能否把工作完成而不在乎公司文化，那么我们可能并不适合你。
创始人的心态：最后询问一下招聘计划和未来的组织结构表，再谈论一下你的领导方式。花哨的头衔和组织架构表对初创公司来说是不健康的。需要雇佣一个产品主管成为你10名创始员工之一吗？除非你是一个纯粹的商业创始人，不然我们更希望在创始团队中看到产品愿景和领导力，而不是雇佣的人员。
想要建立一个高级团队，却只能雇佣一般人才？那你是永远也成为不了Top 10创企的。你展示的招聘计划，将能折射出你日后想领导的公司，而不是一张组织架构图。
Source:hunterwalk
When The VC Asks: About Your Hiring Plan
“Growing the team” is almost always one of the ways entrepreneurs utilize new investment dollars. Whether it’s adding capacity to an existing function (#MawrEngineers) or bringing new talents onboard (“we intend to make our first marketing hire”), glossing over these bullet points towards the back of the pitch deck would be a mistake. I’m interested in not just what these people will be doing but how and when they’ll be hired. So when Homebrew asks about your hiring plan, here’s what I’m often looking for:
Unicorns Needed? Excellence is always hard to find (and should be valued no matter what the discipline) but if you’re looking for someone with, for example, general online marketing skills, a junior visual designer or the first community support team hire, I consider it pretty low risk. Those people are out there. If your execution roadmap is dependent upon a very specialized set of experiences, relationships or accreditation, I’m going to spend more time understanding the need, both because maybe we can help you fill the position and getting this person (or not) could result in a binary outcome for the business. For example, if you need to deal with record labels, there are a handful of really good business development executives who understand the dynamics of those companies and know who to call. If you’re scaling a service, the difference between an average smart engineer and a few dozen people who have successfully done it before with Google, Facebook, YouTube, Dropbox is enormous. I recommend to founders that if there’s a unicorn you need who isn’t on founding team, (a) start identifying those people in advance of fundraising and (b) prepare to compensate them generously via equity.
Do You Know Who You’re Hiring? A few months back I was talking with a small company raising their seed round. Their ultimate goal was a native mobile app but they’d built a proof of concept on web (with some light mobile web responsiveness). It was pretty nice but neither of them had sufficient native mobile app development experience (they were smart and likely could have learned, but that’s additional investment risk). Accordingly, some of their capital raise was aimed at hiring two mobile iOS engineers. Sounds great. My question to them was “Do you know who you’re going to hire?” Their response: “you mean like literally who?” The entrepreneurs had some ties into the broader startup community so weren’t completely on an island but hadn’t sourced or vetted any candidates. There was no one waiting to sign on as soon as the term sheet was signed. For an investor this can be a red flag unless you have proven experience building up high quality team quickly or clear access to large talent pools that will want to work with you for some reason (the tech is so cool; you’ve got brand heat; etc).
My general advice is to start your hiring process ahead of fundraise so you can show momentum. One easy tactic – place the job listing on AngelList or similar and collect responses, even if you’re not ready to bring people in yet. Then when the VC asks about the role you can say “we’ve got 75 candidates in the pipeline who were excited enough about the role and our vision to apply.” Note that I don’t think this is just kabuki for your potential VCs, it’s actually the momentum required to remain on a high growth pace, which brings us to…
Execution Risk Tied To Hiring Plan? Pitch decks usually have a set of expected milestones – features, number of customers, city launches, revenue run rate, etc – that this funding round is intended to accomplish over an estimated time frame. One often undiscussed aspect of this plan is it assumes a certain hiring plan, so I usually ask “is there schedule risk tied to new hires?”
For example, if you are assuming the goals are only realistic if a new engineer is onboarded monthly for the next year, I want to make sure you’re going to be able to hire at that pace without impacting quality. You may need slightly more runway, or if a hire takes longer than expected, to readjust the schedule or shrink the build list. I’m not looking for a binary “correct” or “incorrect” assessment, I’m trying to understand if the founders have considered the topic and how they intend to manage. Thoughtful discussions recognize the the assumptions and even have some fallbacks, such as, if engineer hiring takes longer than expected, they know contracting firms they can lean on.
Will You Be Hiring for Culture Fit? Your culture starts with your first hire. We like to get a feel for what attributes you’re prioritizing and do you know what questions to ask in order to assess. Many first time founders haven’t run hiring processes before, especially outside of their functional discipline. That’s fine – early stage founders aren’t expected to know everything. You want to show that you can solve any problem. Ensuring you have a strong hiring processes which fits the type of candidates you are evaluating is something we can help with. Saying you don’t care about culture so long as the team gets the job done? We’re probably not a great fit for you then.
Founder Mindset: Lastly asking about your hiring plan and future org chart tells me a bit more about how you’re approaching leadership. A bloated org full of fancy titles and layers of management? That’s not healthy for a startup. Hiring a Head of Product as one of your first 10 employees? Unless you’re purely a business founder we want to see product vision and leadership on the founding team, not hired on. Building a senior team but pushing back on having a healthy employee option pool? Won’t work out well. Present your hiring plan as a reflection of the company you want to lead, not just one where you’re a box on the org chart.
Hopefully this was a helpful overview of what VCs are really asking about for early stage financing discussions of hiring (or at least what we think about at Homebrew). If there are other topics that fit into the WhenTheVCAsks format just suggest them in the comments.
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