http://www.forbes.com/sites/danwoods/2013/02/15/what-students-really-need-to-learn-to-get-a-startup-job/

Check our our new blog discussing startups like Uber who are trying to disrupt heavily regulated industries.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-roberson/ubers-fare-playing-field_b_2332477.html

Be sure to check it out.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-roberson/7-tips-for-writing-a-job-_b_2258175.html

We discuss the importance of companies writing a good job post if they want to attract great candidates, but it still remains that candidates need to pay attention to their own resumes and cover letters too.

What makes a job post attractive to you? What turns you off?

There are a lot of blogs and articles out there about what it’s like to work at a startup, but I don’t feel like any really convey the experience I have had at Firefly.  That’s not to say that they’re not valuable.  Blogs like Danielle Small’s provide great condensed, organized points. Unfortunately, for those considering internships, there aren’t many blogs that give insight into the day-to-day lifestyle of interning at an early stage startup. My goal, in writing this, is to provide something a little different from the standard “10 Things I Learned” post.  I hope to provide real, detailed insight into how I got started at Firefly and what my summer there was like.

How it all started

I didn’t really seek out Firefly, nor did they hunt me down.  I don’t really fit the mold for a tech startup employee, if there is one.  I’m a Philosophy, Politics & Economics major at Penn with no coding background.  Until recently, I was dead set on working in finance.  My internship search, in my sophomore year, reflected this.  With the exception of Firefly, my applications were all to very conventional internships in the area of corporate finance.

It wasn’t until Patrick Leahy, a friend and fraternity brother of mine, mentioned that Firefly was looking for an intern that I even thought of applying.  It seemed exciting, trendy, and different.  I decided to give it a shot, and submitted my resume through Penn’s career search portal.

When I showed up for my interview, I didn’t know what to expect.  It took place at a coffee shop at the corner of campus.  I sat down at a cramped table with Dan, Patrick, and Justin, all with their laptops in front of them.  Questions started with typical interview fare “Tell me a little bit about yourself…” and quickly got more challenging.  I was asked about my interest in the startup area, and was given case problems to solve. The interview tied up with me asking some questions about their plans for the summer, and then I left and went on with my day.  I few weeks later, I was offered the job.

My decision

In addition to an offer from Firefly, I got an offer for a corporate finance internship at a leading telecom company.  To be honest, my first instinct was to take the corporate finance offer.  It seemed safe.  It would look good on an investment banking internship application a year later.  In very practical terms, it would pay close to $10,000.  On the other hand, Firefly had great but uncertain upside, and pay on commission.  I decided to talk with close friends and family about my dilemma.

After a few long conversations, I came to the conclusion that Firefly was for me.  I was only halfway through college.  The window to take a risk and fail is pretty short.  The upside at Firefly was huge.  I’m human.  I couldn’t help but get carried away with dreams of being an early member on the team of the next Box or Workday, helping to shape a huge company while making millions in the process.  In a worst case scenario, if everything failed, I still had two years left of college and my whole life ahead of my to take the traditional track.  It was a no-brainer.  I accepted the offer from Firefly.

Joining the team

As the only non-founder on a four-man team, I work with and answer to guys who live and breathe their company.  I have never encountered people so passionate about and absorbed in their work.  In addition to their programming skills, each of the founders brought something special to the table.  Dan’s ability to communicate and build a network astounded me.  Patrick’s grasp of business and metrics is beyond his years.  Justin’s attention to detail and problem solving kept us all grounded and focused.  As a team, the founders were greater than the sum of their skills – I needed to keep this trend going with my contributions.

Fortunately, the guys made this easy for me.  From the moment I started, Patrick, Dan, and Justin have definitely made me feel at home as part of the team.  I was consulted on every major non-technical decision, and my opinion was valued.  The guys made it clear that I had been brought on to do something they did not know how to do.  Their humility made my job a lot easier. In a very uncertain industry, the founders didn’t pretend to be experts or try to look tough.  They just wanted to see results, however I achieved them.

Our workplace

Our team worked out of a subletted suite in an apartment this summer.  In between a kitchen, a washing machine, and some small bedrooms, we fit all of our desks into the same room and worked about an arm’s length away from each other. To be honest, I was uncomfortable with it at first.  I always imagined going to work in a suit every morning, walking into a stately office with a full security, and sitting at my desk in my own little cubicle or office (lame, I know).  I quickly embraced it, though. Every day felt like working on a group project with some friends.  While we all had our own work, there was a constant discussion throughout the day.

I had a lot of fun while I got my work done.  I appreciated the opportunity to joke around a bit at work – all of the guys have a good sense of humor.  Further, the addition of Tony Diepenbrock and Ryan Shea of Graphmuse created a fun co-working space where a bunch of smart people bounced ideas off each other and fit a few jokes in between. The friendly environment helped mix things up and prevent burnout.

My job

My official job title is Account Executive.  My goal for the summer was to develop the sales process for Airtime for Email, and then Firefly.  I was given free reign over my work, with the hopes that I would produce a system that could be replicated, again and again, to sell our products.  This system including generating leads, making contact, establishing a relationship, initiating a trial, and negotiating a contract.  This system would be established by trial.  My summer would be spent tracking people down, establishing relationships, and selling our products.

Essentially, my job was to hunt people down and give them a call.   Thus, I spent most of my time in the office generating leads and contacting people.

Generating leads is mind numbing.  For hours, I would rip through directories, do Google searches, peruse LinkedIn, and basically use every legitimate method available to hunt down contacts.  Early in the summer, most of my day consisted of prospecting, and it was miserable.  Later on, I prospected as necessary to maintain a pipeline, but fortunately, it only made up about two hours of my day.

Calling people was more enjoyable.  Cold calls were a scary at first, but I got over my fear of rejection.  I developed a script.  I learned how to establish rapport, pitch our products respond to objections, and get people to commit to a follow up.  Sometimes, I’d reach out en masse by cold email, personalizing each message to the recipient.  Although it’s quicker and easier than calling, it’s less effective, so I’d try to get on the phone whenever I could.

Once you move past the first call, you begin to establish a working relationship with a customer.  You understand their job, their needs, and their problems.  You demo your product, and see if it is a good fit for their needs.  The interaction might end early, due to a lack of interest, or it could proceed through a conference, a demo, a negotiation, and eventually, a sale.

All the while, in the spirit of the lean startup, I would keep track of what worked and what didn’t.  I met with the founders, and based on my work, we formed an effective process for selling Airtime and Firefly.  Outside of the office, I would handle calls and emails to fit clients’ needs.  Overall, I spent most of my time talking to customers and potential customers.

The lifestyle

Once I finished up at the office, I’d head to my second job.  Bootstrapped startups face some unpleasant realities.  Five months after I started, I got my first paycheck a few days ago.  In order to cover living expenses, I took a part-time night job at a local bar, where I still work.  I consider myself lucky to have two jobs, but anyone who has left their day job to go to their night job can tell you that it is a uniquely exhausting experience.

Day to day, you’ll probably have to live a more simple lifestyle. It was good to know that everyone on the team was on the same page here.  We all lived in cheap subletted apartments over the summer.  We cooked (read: learned how to cook).  Nights out weren’t that elaborate or crazy.  You can complain about your limited budget, or you can work harder and make more money.  Complaining doesn’t get you paid.

Once you finally get home, everyone seems to be really interested in what you’re doing, even if they don’t understand it.  Although my sales job is pretty traditional, I found myself answering questions about Airtime and Firefly all the time.  People are naturally interested in what you do, but unfortunately, they also love to tell you what to do.  Advice is great, but when people are constantly telling you how to do your job, it can get irritating.

What have I gotten out of it?

My level of responsibility taught me new problem solving skills and how to handle high-pressure work.  The lack of bureaucracy allowed me to start working with customers on day one.  I learned how to pitch a product, respond to criticism, answer questions, and negotiate.  If you make a sale, you learn what it means to serve a customer well after a deal is done.   If you don’t make a sale, you learn, and you meet some great people. In the short time I have been working with Firefly  I have developed a network of contacts throughout the technology industry.

Most importantly though, my experience opened my eyes to opportunities I had never considered before.  At the end of the summer, I got an offer to stay on with the team, and I gladly accepted it.

You can look at my work as uncertain, high pressure, low paying.  I prefer to see it as experimental, exciting, and satisfying. In a way that I don’t feel like I could anywhere else, I feel a sense of excitement in my work every day.  I have picked up a new skill set, established a new network, and made a large, positive impact on Firefly.

I’d love to hear from you.  Email: nick[at]usefirefly.com   Twitter: @kowalskisn or Firefly’s @usefirefly   Tumblr: snkowalski.com

(Source: blog.usefirefly.com)

We’ve recently made some new hires at Personera, and the process made me aware of a couple of key “go/no-go” markers that show themselves again and again. So what are some of the strikingly common as well as more nuanced factors when deciding if a candidate is a good fit?

This is my litmus test:

Positive Markers (“Go”)

1. Smart and motivated: This is needs to be determined right at the starting gate. Any good team member is going to need to be smart because of the fast pace of a learning that takes place in a startup, and their motivation level will influence their ability to persist through the oftentimes tough three to six month beginning period to see what comes next, not to mention giving them an important sense of pride in their work.
2. Extremely keen to join company: This is more important that people think. When a candidate is genuinely excited about a company’s product, or people, or both, that passion leads to much a better fit and sense of stickability with the startup over time.
3. Has something to prove: The best startup team members always have a deep desire to prove something (either to themselves or to others), build something amazing, or leave a special mark on the world. They want to stand out from the crowd and escape business as usual. Over time, this defining characteristic is often the difference between a goodoutcome versus a great outcome when choosing a new team member.
4. Likes working in small teams: Small teams allow for open and fast communication, lots of independence and responsibility (i.e. no handholding), and no office politics. The candidate should light up at the mention of that!
5. Handles stress well: Startups can become very stressful at times. I’m not an advocate of keeping things insane all the time (or else people will go insane), but from time to time teams need to work weekends, weeknights, and deal with highly stressed out managers or (worse) customers. This can easily push somebody who has an anxious personality over the edge, so I think it’s important to bring people into a startup who are of a generally calm demeanor and don’t allow undue stress to shut down their nervous systems, so to speak.

Negative Markers (“No-go”)

1. Focuses on shiny qualifications: There’s nothing worse than an interview where a candidate who wants to talk more about their degrees, course qualifications, and previous titles than what they actually do, or have accomplished with their work. This can also be a telling clue as to where their sense of professional pride stems from, and while not necessarily a bad thing for the person, this is definitely not a good thing for the startup.
2. Debates contract minutiae: When a candidate wants to get into detail about contractual stipulations around things like office hours, leave, overtime (seriously?) and performance management policy (etc), I see red flags going up all over the place. Startup attorneys often write up employment contracts to favor that favor the company in the event of a labour dispute. If the candidate is truly ready to join the company, they will probably realize that (a) none of those things are likely to be managed and tracked to the letter of the contract anyway, (b) they will work as hard as they need to be a valuable member of the team and pursue the vision, and (c) a startup is not a big corporation.
3. No private projects to speak of: A candidate who has no side “pet” projects (past or present) to discuss is a concern, because that may show a certain lack of curiosity and personal passion in the candidate’s work. This mentality is needed for team members to think of innovative ideas to contribute to their area of the business, as opposed to just doing the work set out before them.
4. Believes age equals entitlement: I am all about experience, capability, and delivery- and this is completely independent of a person’s age. Age can of course naturally lead to or correlate with these things (for most people maturity and experience takes time to develop), but when age alone is seen to be guarantee of seniority or entitlement, it’s cause for instant disqualification in my book.
5. Existing staff feel uneasy: The social IQ of a team far exceeds that of the CEO or manager in charge. When a team member (or members) feels a little uneasy about bringing a new candidate on board, it’s best to take their concerns very seriously and reconsider the decision to hire. More often than not, the team will be right. This can very hard to do in situations where the hiring manager likes the candidate, and the person really wants to join the company. Hiring isn’t always easy.

I hope that this list of markers helps you to hire better. And remember, even with the best of checklists, there’s just no substitute for trusting your gut.

Good luck and good team building!

Companies should settle for “B” talent. After all, the mismatched labor market that we’ve been working with for some time is extremely tight. They can’t realistically expect to fill their company with “A” talent. Companies should bring on the “B” talent and get to work.

That’s what I recently overheard a colleague of mine saying. I was shocked.

We work with startups. Startups that are trying to build repeatable, scalable businesses. They’ve taken on a huge challenge and their team is absolutely key to the effort. A single bad hire out of a staff of five, ten, or twenty people can be a major setback for the organization, taking months to fully unwind. Startups know this. They’re looking for rock stars. See for yourself, search StartUpHire.com for “rock star” and you’ll see dozens of job posts.

Of course I confronted my misguided colleague, giving her a long speech on how only “A” talent will do. I went on and on about how a sharp team with a passion to create is the most critical factor to a startup’s success. After all, when you hire “B” talent, that “B” talent hires “C” talent — everybody knows that. Then she gently corrected me.

I had misheard my esteemed colleague. She wasn’t advocating that startups should lower their standards. She wasn’t saying they should only be satisfied with “B” talent. No, her point was that fixating on so-called “A” talent leads one to miss out on great hires. Focus on what a candidate can “be.”

Entrepreneurs are forward thinkers by nature. This is evident by how they see the potential for their product in the marketplace, and maybe that is how they should see the potential in their hires. They should become attuned to discovering future rock stars.

How much deeper could the talent pool be if we looked at candidates — on and off the resume page — a little differently? It could be vast, and that could make all the difference in the world to young companies.

That kind of hiring approach would require these four considerations:

1.) Skills matter, but eagerness to learn matters more.

Having proven experience in the technology or industry of interest is powerful, but it’s not enough. Chances are that your startup is doing something different from their previous experience. You’re approaching the market from a different angle, or aspiring to disrupt a whole industry. And when it comes to technology, things are almost guaranteed to be different. Not only does technology continuously change, the rate of change is accelerating. Web and mobile applications aren’t built the same way they were five years ago.

You want to look for people who are pushing the boundaries of their abilities. They are interested in new technologies or approaches in business and they actively experiment with them. Their minds thirst for more knowledge. In other words, your need the explorer eager to map a new landscape not the tour guide with the bored look in their eyes who thinks they’ve seen it all before.

2.) Would they put the team first?

You want to look for people that make the rest of the team better, and understand they come in all sorts of packages. Maybe it’s the Customer Support person that not only helps the user base, but then on their own initiative also digests and summarizes the issues for the development team. Or it’s the engineer who volunteers to go on sales calls, then sits down with marketing to help put together simple, accurate product explanations. Or it’s a sales person who suggests ways the company can empirically test the desirability of proposed features.

It’s people like these that encourage and inspire the rest of the team. Get a few of these types of folks together and you can get a virtuous cycle whereby the mutual support and success that is generated raises the abilities and expectations of the whole organization.

3.) Are they comfortable saying “I don’t know?”

The best programmers I know are comfortable with saying “I don’t know.” They are confident enough in their knowledge and experience to be direct and transparent. They don’t have the need to put on airs. What they do need is an answer! They’re not satisfied in not knowing and will usually be the first to point out how they can find out the answer.

4.) Do they have passion?

Last and probably most important is the evidence of passion. When you talk to a candidate with a drive and passion for your area of focus, keep talking to them. Talk to them until you either find a place for them on your team or you know definitively that they aren’t a good fit. In other words when you meet a candidate who has a drive, focus and determination similar to your own, the question switches from “should you hire them” to “is there any reason you shouldn’t hire them.”

Now that I think about it, the first time I talked to the colleague I mentioned earlier, she too was overflowing with insightful questions and thoughtful ideas.

In a future post I’ll propose we dispense with the rock star analogy altogether, but until then, StartUpHire will keep up our mission of connecting talented individual with innovative companies!

For instance, while we may not have jobs in social media that score you free room and board at the Four Seasons (and room service for your dog), we do have some great opportunities in social media at some very real and exciting companies. Check them out here .

If social media is not your forte, because hey- we all can’t command “$10,000 a tweet”, then be sure to check out tens of thousands of other challenging jobs at high-growth companies.

Do you have any stories about your own startup experience or thoughts about the show?  Share them here!

As a recruiter specializing in early stage companies (aka startups), candidates give me a lot of reasons they don’t want to work at one. Some of their reasons are valid – most are not. I’d like to dispel some of the misconceptions (and confirm some truths) about early stage companies. Here are the big ones.

It’s too risky

Well, maybe. But then, is it more risky than any other company? A few years ago, I was interviewing a candidate for a startup that provided an innovative analytics service for the community banking market. They had signed up quite a few clients and were growing very rapidly. The candidate was concerned about the risk and the stability of the company. Interviewing him, I discovered he had been laid off 4 times (!), each time from a major financial institution that had been acquired. He couldn’t understand that this startup was actually less risky than his former employers – all huge organizations. Like anything else, take a good look at the company and evaluate the risk like you would any investment you would make.

The hours are unreasonable and the pace is frantic

In case you haven’t noticed, it’s a good time to be a software developer. For this reason, companies (yes, even startups) are treating their employees pretty good these days. You will rarely see people sleeping on the floor or on a cot in the office. When you do, it’s generally because they are really excited about what they are doing. The pace does tend to be faster in a startup – it’s like working on a project with a tight deadline. That’s because almost every day is a milestone: prototype, beta, first user, first paying client, cash flow positive, profitable, etc. Seeing all these milestones accomplished gives such an intrinsic reward that most people think it’s worth it.

I’ll have to do a lot of things not in my job description

True. As a matter of fact, if this is your attitude don’t even consider a startup. Most people I talk with who are working at startups actually enjoy this aspect of the job. They tell me about the diversity of activities and how they discovered talents they never knew they had.

Here are some things many candidates don’t know about working in a startup.

The peer group is outstanding

Many of the people who will be your co-workers at a startup are some of the best in their field. Working with very sharp people will bring out the best in a person. I used to play competitive tennis – playing against a better player always elevated my game.

The people are passionate

Working closely with a large number of startups, I have seen firsthand the passion among the troops. Just walking around most of the offices is electric. The excitement of a team working together on the next new thing is contagious. Or, you can choose to work someplace boring.

The rewards are great

Sometimes the monetary rewards are very good – the company has an “event” and everyone participates in the success. However, even the companies that don’t hit the jackpot are great learning experiences that will help you in your next job, whether or not it’s a startup.

So, is a startup right for you? Maybe yes, maybe no. Hopefully, this will have provided you with more information to help you evaluate the next opportunity you see at a startup.

If working at a startup sounds like the perfect fit, then check out the jobs at StartUpHire and find yours today!

jpayne@integrasearch.com

www.integrasearch.com

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