How to Play the Talent Game

People in that veteran generation are looking for management stability. They want to see solid funding sources -- Benchmark Capital as the venture capitalist, Goldman Sachs as the investment banker. They actually care about job titles -- they want a title that pushes them ahead on their career path. And they still want a lot of stock. But now they don't want to take a big cut in pay.

Then there's a younger generation -- those people who are coming out of college. They're not as willing as veterans are to work 18-hour days for what could be a financial crapshoot. At the same time, they do expect to hit it big. KPMG did a poll of college seniors about their work expectations. Fully 74% of those students said that they expect to become millionaires.

This is the kind of world in which startups operate. It's no wonder that CEOs and HR people have so many headaches!

So how do you maneuver in this new world?

The first thing that you do is take a lesson from the restaurant industry. Your job is not only to create a sound, solid company. It's to create a work environment that people want to be a part of -- to make your company a fun, fresh, hip place to be. There's not just one right way to build a work environment -- but you do have to have an environment that job candidates will find compelling.

Also, now more than ever, you've got to have some marquee names associated with your company -- either on your board or in senior-management positions. With so many startups making so many claims about their prospects, one way that candidates cut through clutter is to focus on people with genuine track records of accomplishment: Successful people tend to attract other successful people.

The third big-ticket item for this new generation is "wingspan." People want job titles and work roles that are open-ended enough to let them do all kinds of different things. They want to spread their wings. We just lost a candidate for head of HR at a promising startup. The candidate chose instead to sign up with a high-risk Internet incubator. Why? The incubator job had incredible wingspan: "Come work for us, and you'll get to work with a dozen small companies, learn their technology, and help them recruit." This candidate knows that the other job is a crapshoot. But if that company makes it, not only will everybody in town know her (and notoriety's a big thing too), but she'll be at the nexus of a dozen companies and she'll have all kinds of opportunities to grow. It's hard to argue with that kind of wingspan.

What kinds of questions and techniques won't work?

What won't work anymore are questions like "How many manhole covers are there in Seattle?" What won't work are obnoxious, aggressive, confrontational interviews, like those that Microsoft has perfected. The only company that can still get away with that approach is, well, Microsoft.

People have a low tolerance for those tactics nowadays. Those interviews make people testy. Job candidates have already been through similar hoops with other companies, earlier in their careers. It will be harder to attract talented people if part of your evaluation process is to make them uncomfortable, because they can simply walk across the street to a company that won't make them uncomfortable.

Of course, you still have to figure out what makes job candidates tick, how they solve problems. Are they the kinds of people -- in terms of personal attributes and values -- who tend to flourish at your company? For an answer to this question, old-fashioned "situationals" are back in vogue. Companies are judging candidates on how well they handle real-life scenarios, as opposed to brainteasers.

But let's get real for a moment. You can ask all the interview questions you want and probe for the values and attributes that you think are important. But when it comes right down to it, you want to know four basic things from candidates, in terms of experience: How have they helped their companies to increase revenue? How have they helped them to decrease costs? What kinds of problems have they solved, and how have they solved them? How creative are they? If you can get accurate answers to those four questions, you've done a good job of evaluating candidates.

People still invoke the mantra, "Hire for attitude, train for skill." What kinds of attitudes should startups be looking for in candidates?

A few years ago, the important thing was for candidates to demonstrate that they were "can-do" types -- that they had limitless energy and that they would get a job done, no matter the cost or the consequences. That was the kind of attitude every company wanted in a candidate.