This is the first medium blog post I’ll make about some of the interesting talks I attended. I’m posting this one because it was actually relevant for me and more generally for Fishing Cactus and I wanted to share how this talk was meaningful for us as a startup company.

I attended the independent developer bootstrapping camp presented by Max Hoberman. For those who don’t know Certain Affinity, they are behind several map packs for Halo 2, Left 4 Dead, Call of Duty and also Age of Booty (which is, by the way, a very good game). Max Hoberman is a former employee of Bungie and kept quite close relationships with them and this is I guess what gave him the first very first successful steps for his company. The company both provide production services to other studios and also create their own IP when they have some spare time.

During the presentation he covered briefly a wide range of topics ranging from how to run the studio day to day, find partners and contracts to recruiting.

One important aspect he mentioned during the talk is when the company is on the lookout for new employees. Recruiting an employee while the company is in its early startup phase slightly differs from standard recruitment methods in a big development studio.

First of all, even in your company startup phase, you must have a well defined recruitment process and evaluation methods to recruit only the candidates who fit the role and have the necessary skills / assets / talent to match your company profile and expectations. Don’t rush the recruitment phase because you have a tight deadline or a project which requires a position filled urgently. In the end, it is not worth it and a bad candidate will make things worse than if you have just waited a little bit more…

However Max Hoberman noted that it was very easy to get distracted from that route when the guy you’re interviewing is a past colleague with whom you already work before (which happens quite a lot of time). I totally agree with him! So many factors are at work when you’re evaluating someone you already know. Maybe something changed in his life? Maybe he had troubles with his past employer? In fact you never know. So it is crucial to strictly follow the methods and processes in place and not bypassing them because you know that person. At Fishing Cactus when recruiting, we believe in a human approach, very personal. For us the candidate is not a number and this is because we want to create a cohesive team, not cowboys. We rely on both processes, methods but also on our gut feeling to see if a candidate is a perfect match for us. I say perfect because a “good” match isn’t just enough. A job hint for those who want to join Fishing Cactus? You can always bribe the management with some root beer and beef jerky…

The second important factor Max Hoberman talked about was the willingness and experience of the candidate to dive in a startup environment. To be honest a company that is just starting doesn’t have a big cashflow and puts a lot more pressure on everyone’s shoulders than a well established studio (amongst many other differences). I’m talking here with experience.

These are the realities the candidate must be able to face in his everyday job. Pressure, crunch, tight deadlines, late salaries are daily bread in startups. Testing the candidate on these aspects and explaining him on which boat he’ll sail is certainly a must do. If the candidate is risk averse, you shouldn’t hire him as it will simply not work in the end. From the experience of Max Hoberman, most valuable candidate are people who already experienced entrepreneurship with much or less success or candidates with at least a project failure on their back. This isn’t a golden rule but those profiles seem to have a better understanding of what it takes to join a startup and are able to cope with changes.

The last point I want to highlight from the presentation is how to attract talents with all these constraints? Most of the time startup companies are places where you can gather an invaluable experience, where there is an exceptional bond between members of the team and even if there are hard times, there are also a lot of moments where you can take pride from the work you’ve done. In this context giving an honest salary and a good profit / company shares package will attract talents. This will not work for all profiles of course but at least it will work for those who are seeking challenges.

In a nutshell:
- Always apply recruitment processes and methods even for a person you already know or worked with.
- Test candidate’s “risk” profile.
- Be honest with the candidate, a startup company is most of the time more risky and requiring than a big studio (but has significant other advantages).
- To retain / attract talents provide an honest salary and profits share on the project (or company shares) if possible.
- Share a sense of responsibility, trust and team empowerment amongst your members.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 6th, 2009 at 11:06 pm and is filed under COMPANY LIFE. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.