Teamable.Me - The new way of smart recruitment

Mike was thinking about recruitment processes in StartUps vs. recruitment process in Tech mogul companies like IBM, Microsoft, Oracle or new school Google, Amazon, Netflix, Facebook or Twitter.

Indeed, hiring and/or recruiting nowadays in one of the most challenging problems to overcome. Especially if you live in San Francisco, where every another guy is in tech.

How the companies starting to growth the small team.

First step is to read a couple of good books, good because they are really useful, and also good, because they are trendy, which mean all around already read them.

Books like: Zero to One (which is by the way really good book)

Second, you are trying to find right people, because you know that "proper execution is one of the key factors of successful startup".

And here you have million dollar question: HOW???

Well, let's discuss couple of possible scenarios

1. Recruiters - Possibly, but here is the problem, since recruiters are not always very tech knowledgable, the most common sense for them to look for keywords like web crawlers do :), which means, depends on your CV/resume your candidate can be selected even if s/he has a average skills, but perfectly (Harvard style)  shaped cover letter and CV. (BTW, who gives a shit for cover letter nowadays, it's always, Yeah, I was dreaming about this job, I'm looking for new challenges and other blah blah blah)

2. Find them yourself. And that's a better way to find exactly those people you are looking for, but... here is another unanswered question: how reach them?

Introducing 

TEAMABLE.ME

Teamable is transforming the network of your employees and friends into a big pool of talents.

Using ML and DL the application connect people to work with people they want to work.

Teamable helps companies hire faster and smarter by leveraging their collective employee networks and making it searchable.

So how it works? It's simple like "2 + 2" Let's say you need a someone who:

a. knows Ruby and/or Python

b. lives in San Francisco

c. has particular title

d. name starting with ...

e. connection of friend A or Friend B or Friend C

Application is finding right people with exact skills you are looking for, as well as indicating list of people who can possibly suggest that people to you upon your request.

But that's the only first part of the Teamable Application, second part is even more exciting to Mike, because he is struggling with finding right team composition every time when starting new projects. (like always and everywhere, everyone wants to have champions and gorillas in own team) 

Imagine, you work for big company which has lot of projects. And every time you have upcoming project, you are asking yourself "How should I find best core team"?

All these challenges are applicable not only for Tech industry. For example, you are planning to start shooting new movie in Hollywood, and you need best camera guy, best lights engineer, best audio engineers, best make-up artist, etc. 

Having existing pool of available resources is not enough anymore, so Teamable will help you to match the name of the best people taking into consideration key factors such an:

1. Years of experience,

2. domain of expertise, 

3. Last projects involved (like background check for projects:) )

4. Success Rate from involved project

Mike strongly suggest you to check Teamble.me which will be big help for your HR and Resource Managers. 

Choose right over easy - lessons from Satya Patel

Mike would like to ask you: How much you love your product? How passionate are you?

Here is the short lessons from Satya Patel, Partner at HomeBrew and  former VP of Product at Twitter

Love your products. First, focus on delivering value to our users. Always remember who you are building for and what you are building. Build your product to long term. Communicate with anyone and everyone who is interested, but most importantly to your teams.

Let your teams determine how to build the product. (In other words don't tell them what to do excatly, tell them what you are expecting to get as results, don't be Product MicroManager)

Pursue excellence by thinking bigger and bolder than is comfortable. Don’t settle for definition good enough, i.e. choose right over easy. Chose simplicity over complexity.

Product manager - don’t make excuses, take responsibility.

Empower your team to be “can do - will do” players. Trust others to do their jobs well, don’t tell them what or how to do, just verify that they have right results.

Mike is happy :)

P.S. Read full material here
http://venturegeneratedcontent.com/2013/07/11/we-are-product-managers/?utm_source=buffer&utm_campaign=Buffer&utm_content=bufferaceac&utm_medium=twitter

10 excellent lessons from Vinod Khosla

Mike was watching the YouTube Video podcast of Stanford Business School, and found one with this brilliant guy, please meet Vinod Khosla, founder of Sun Microsystems, 

1. Customer is NOT always right, (The opposite of what you learn in Business Schools)

2. People don't remember your failures (Data Dump)

3. If actually believe what you do, it's happen most of the time

4. Willingness to fail is that gives you ability to succeed 

5. Enough persistence makes impossible things - possible

6. Have a belief system, and follow your internal compass

7. We prefer brutal honesty to hypocritical politeness (khoslaventures.com)

8. Generally, learning experience of a startup is recognized as extremely valuable whetever it's successful or unsuccessful 

9. Neither VC firms nor entrepreneurs can't predict success of startups or good market cap, look at Facebook, Google, Twitter, GoPro, (i.e. calculation of IRR is not actually gives you real data)

10. Discover the edges where things are happening and changing

Mike was amazed of this guy, and strongly suggest everyone to spend 1 hour and watch the full video... This is life learning lesson.

P.S. Do you already know about www.abc.xyz Go check it out new changes in Tech World are happening right now 

Startup suggestions from Mike

Yesterday Mike thought about a few things: What are the main mistakes done by startups and how to prevent them?

1. Right amount of co-founders

One founder can't really handle everything. It's better to have 2 more fellas who will help you with all ideas and will definitely be the first guys who will criticize your crazy ideas in order to place them to the right pace. Here is some examples for you: Facebook - 5 founders, Google - 2 founders, WhatsApp - 2 founders, Reddit - 2 founders, Microsoft - 2 founders, Apple - 2 founders.

From another perspective too many founders can have different visions/opinions about "how it should work" or "who is the boss". Usually, startups with such problems die fast.

2. Startup is not a hobby

You should have 200% commitment if you want to be a startup. Mike was watching Shark Tank and he continuously noticed that entrepreneurs are failing to understand that you can't get investment if you are not committed to things you do or believe. Most likely Kevin O'Leary and Mark Cuban will ask you how much time you spend on your business, and if you tell them 2 hours every morning YOU ARE OUT, because it's your hobby, not your life...

3. Raise RIGHT amount of money

Raising less than you need –You might run out of money fast without being able to push to the market to the best of your potential.

Raising more than you need – is risky because it might make you feel like a star, so you might forget to deliver everything you should. Plus, you might have couple of more rounds to raise, so the more money you raised in the beginning – the more you would need to raise later. For some companies it is lethal. Last but not least to mention is the more money you raised the more dependencies and pressure from investors you will have.

4. Listen to your customers

This is a key factor for your success. Don't listen to your investors, I mean, take their opinion into consideration, but never take it as a 100% path to success. They financed your idea and vision, not vice versa.

HOWEVER, do listen to your customers. Listen and hear them (See Mike's Blog Here). Do A/B testing, ask for surveys, and organize target group discussions (even if you need to spend time and money). Starbucks gift cards are always handy here. :)

5. Team, Team, Team

Right team is like a unicorn-almost difficult to achieve. Please, spend time and hire right people-teamable work and spirit are vital factors of your young company.

It's easy to give suggestions (you are probably thinking) but Mike had all these flaws during his career in 5 different startups... He is learning with you, so no judgement, and just a few suggestions from a friend.