If you’ve done any hiring at all in the past few years, this will be a familiar scene: you open up your laptop one morning to find 4.86 x 10^9 responses to your Craigslist ad. As you begin to read through your stuffed-to-the-breaking-point inbox with bloodshot eyes, you notice a few patterns. Maybe twenty percent of your respondents don’t even include a résumé, and the emails say only “I wud love 2 work 4 U, check out my rockin’ blog, bro.” Twelve percent are actually applications for a dog-washing position in Des Moines–these people haven’t even read your ad. A full five percent of the replies were written by escapees from maximum-security mental institutions–and you suspect that they have written these emails with their feet. The remaining 63% have absolutely zero relevant experience.

The problem here is not so much that there’s no talent out there; it’s that you’ve run your ad in the wrong place. If you’re hiring remote support staff, for example, CL might be a good fit. But if you’re recruiting your new CFO? Posting an ad for that position on Craigslist is like trying to buy a wedding ring at Wal-Mart.

Take Your Best Shot

Before you write your ad, take a minute to think about the audience you’re hoping to reach. A big part of the stuffed-inbox problem is that thousands of job seekers are out there applying for jobs almost automatically.

Identify Your Target

The fact of the matter is that Craigslist may not be the best venue for all types of hiring. Because the audience is so general, Craigslist tends to work best if the open position is entry level–or even if it’s a temporary, contracted trial. If you’re hiring for a job in a specific discipline, there are more specific tools out there which will help you target your posts at the right people. If you want to hire a creative professional, like a designer, go to where the designers are. You’re going to find a generally more qualified pool of talent at, say, Creative Circle or Creativeheads.net than at Craigslist. Do your homework here and your inbox won’t regret it.

Take Aim

Once you’ve found your target, aim squarely at the bullseye and fire. If the skill / experience requirements you list in your ad are overly broad, you’re going to get responses from an overly broad segment of the talent pool. Be as specific as possible about what you need, and you’ll get replies from better, more qualified applicants.

Filter From The Get-Go

Previously, we’ve looked at ways in which you can sort through the responses to your ad. But you’ll find that a lot of later headache can be obviated by taking a few steps to ensure that your respondents are both keenly interested and qualified, not just firing off another email.

• Ask for something specific–like a word or phrase–in the subject line of respondents’ emails. This will cut down on “spam” responses significantly, because it ensures that candidates are at least attentive enough to detail that they’re actually reading your ad.
• Require action. Another way to determine an applicant’s level of interest might be to ask that they install a browser extension, or that they read some text on the Web and then answer a question. The specifics can be tailored to your situation, but the idea is to run a quick test of engagement.
• Include a quick cultural test. For example: ask your applicants a silly question like what their favorite color is, and why. Then you can potentially make quick judgments based on how they respond. If it’s immediately apparent that an applicant for a creative position hasn’t responded creatively, you can probably move on to the next email.
• Consider filtering email responses by domain. If you’re hiring an executive, a harvard.edu address is probably going to be one you’ll want to look at first. Likewise, think about looking at emails from stanford.edu first if you’re hiring engineers. We don’t recommend limiting your focus to a single domain, but it’s a good way to get started.

Focus Is Key

Don’t get the wrong idea–Craigslist can lead you to some truly great hires, if you use it the right way. It’s a great place to hire an office manager, a blogger, or a remote Photoshopper, even if it’s not the best way to hire a Javascript wizard.

Just remember that your ad ought to be targeted at the right sets of eyeballs. Tailor your ad to the situation appropriately, and then ensure that your applicants are truly both interested and motivated. Then you can spend your time trying to find the best candidate, rather than simply attempting to organize hundreds of emails you don’t want to read.

TL;DR: Recruiters who let leads go cold turn off the best candidates and do irreversible damage to the corporate brand.

We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again. And again. Recruiting good talent is as much about impressing the applicant as it is about they put their best foot forward to impress you. One of the biggest mistakes companies make during the hiring process is to let leads go cold. Insufficient follow-up creates lag which is frustrating for the applicant, and ultimately damaging to a corporate brand.  

The hiring process is broken.

I learned this first-hand when I applied to a Silicon Valley-based tech giant while in graduate school. Not only was I floored that I never got a confirmation that they received my resume, but they made an even worse impression one year later when they called me for an interview. I had already moved on by then, started my own company and exited the job market. A lot can change in a year and suffice it to say, I wasn’t interested anymore. I know a lot of people in the tech industry and many want to work at this company. I can’t help but tell them about my experience and they almost always think twice about applying once I do.  

Unfortunately, my experience is becoming much too common.

The application process and the first stage of interviews are an applicant’s first taste of what it’s like to work for a company. As a recruiter, you want that experience to be a good one, you want to convince them that your company is the best place to work and you want to turn your prospective employees into brand ambassadors for your organization.

Exactly how to keep the hiring process moving at a steady pace and make it a pleasant experience for both recruiter and applicant is a mystery to most organizations, but we know how to make it happen.

Think of Applicants as Brand Ambassadors: Your customers, partners and current employees aren’t your only brand ambassadors. Whether or not an applicant is ultimately employed by your organization, their experience with the company creates a lasting impression - one they share with friends and colleagues in the industry.

What you can do: Whenever you make contact with an applicant, threat them as you would a fellow employee. Respect their time. Be professional, but be friendly. At every step of the way, give them a taste of what it’s like to work for your company so much so that they have no choice but to accept an offer from you if they get one.  

Be Real: Get to know the applicant as a real person and give them the opportunity to get to know you that way too. At every interaction reassure the applicant that you’re genuine whether you’re on the other end of the phone or sending an email. We recommend approaching interviews that way too.

What you can do: To the extent it’s professional, get to know applicants on a personal level. Ask about their family and how they spend their spare time. Look for ways to connect with them on similar interests. Remember, that you are a representation of the company as a whole and creating this rapport will make them feel like they already have a friend at work on the first day.

Keep Your Leads Warm: If you’re interested, someone else likely is too so make them want you more than the competition. A few ways to do this: keep applicants updated on every step of the interview process, let them know what to expect and when; make every touch point an opportunity to convince the applicant that your organization is the best place to work.

What you can do: Acknowledge their application has been received. Have a teammate who acts as a liaison to communicate with the applicant throughout the interview process. Instead of leaving applicants guessing, send a rejection note to close the loop.  

Set Timelines: Hiring is similar to almost any other business process in that it runs more effectively given a clear set of timelines and deliverables. Create internal deadlines to keep the hiring process moving at a steady clip. Doing so keeps the lines of communication open and helps set expectations with your applicants.  

What you can do: Make it a policy to respond to everyone you’ve interviewed within 24 hours. Examine your hiring process weekly to assess how fast applicants are moving through. One of the best ways we’ve seen this done is also the simplest: draw a funnel on a whiteboard and use sticky notes to place each applicant at their respective stage. At Foundry, we use our own software but we know people who use spreadsheets or Trello too.

Plan Wisely: Juggling schedules is always a challenge but keep in mind that for the applicant, interviewing can be an arduous process especially when trying to juggle a full-time job or class load. Being sensitive to the other commitments in the applicant’s life can lighten the load and make a big impression.

What you can do: Plan “interview days” or schedule multiple interviews back to back on the same day. Be flexible and accommodate phone or video interviews when it makes sense.

Hiring starts with consistent and effective communication to your talent pool. Everything you do from the moment a prospect submits their application to the day they receive an offer gives prospective employees an experience before their first day on the job. You get to decide if that experience is positive or negative.

My experience was negative and it made a lasting mark on me, so much so that I’m writing about it on this blog. It makes no difference whether they’re large or small, most companies, take months to extend an offer to a candidate once a position opens. In my case it was a full year just to get an interview. Minimizing that kind of lag does take more effort, but making the hiring process in your organization as efficient as possible with tools that can help build your brand is time well spent.

If you’re a good company and you’re not doing this, you’re creating a bad name for yourself.

TL;DR  Recipes for a healthy hiring pipeline: know your applicant, train your interviewers, track your data.

Good companies have talented employees.  But how do they get talented employees?  Competitive pay and comprehensive benefits certainly play a role. However, they often aren’t enough. This is where intangibles—an egalitarian hierarchical structure, casual work atmosphere, and a feeling of doing something good in the world—can become tie-breakers when you’re trying to win over the best and the brightest.

These intangibles matter. They’re why we see startups attracting top-tier talent despite their inability to offer long-term security and hefty bonuses.

Forget for a moment the myriad ways they’re supposed to be impressing you. To remain competitive with other companies in the race for stellar employees, your every interaction should also reinforce why you’re the best choice for them. In other words, recruiting is a sales process. As you go about this process, here are some things to keep in mind.

It’s all about your applicant

Sales is all about the customer.  The same is true for recruiting.  Your #1 goal should be to identify what your applicants are looking for in a job. Do they want to exert strong influence over the product? Show up to work at 10am?  Help the world? Whatever it is, frame your company as something that will provide it for them.

Your employees are salespeople

In the end, they’re the ones who represent your brand, whether they’re handling applicants, talking to friends and colleagues, or dealing with customers.  If they’re interfacing with applicants—and it’s a good idea to involve them in this process—you should prime them first.  Not only should they be able to convey the positives of your company, they should be personable, thoughtful, and capable of conducting an interview that doesn’t feel like a hazing. In short, they should be able to convince applicants to want to work for you.

At Breaktime Studios, a Silicon Valley company that creates mobile games, recruiters go so far as to spend 50% of the interviews explaining why Breaktime is a great place to work.  Obviously, for this approach to be effective, the interviewer needs to be well-versed in the high points of your company and its culture.

Your applicants are brand ambassadors

It sounds simple, but many companies still don’t get it: if you treat an applicant poorly, they’re going to tell other people about it. Treat them well every step of the way, and they’ll boast your brand, not belittle it.

Prior to any formal interview, Silicon Valley software innovator Palantir invites its applicants to have lunch with current employees.  There they enjoy a relaxed first meeting, where they get to see Palantir’s best qualities (a laid back atmosphere and passionate employees). The result? They come away feeling pretty good about Palantir, even if they aren’t ultimately hired.

Measure your results

Do you meticulously keep track of your sales?  You’re damn right you do.  Why?  Because it’s vital to your company’s success.  Well, so is your talent base, and you should be doing the same with your recruiting.

You need to keep detailed records of your recruiting efforts, including who comes in, when, how long they’re in the funnel, and the end result.  You should also track and examine any data you have from the process to inform future initiatives.

If you weave these practices into your hiring habits, there’s a good chance you won’t need to rely on luck or extravagant salary offers to attract talented employees—they’ll come to you.

TL;DR: How to find the best freelancers: craft an engaging job post, assign short tests to qualified applicants, video chat to establish rapport, pick the best fit.

Crowdsourced work has long been a dream of tech-savvy employers, but only recently has scalable, high-skill employment made its way to the mainstream. From daily blog write-ups to months-long software projects, hundreds of thousands of jobs are now posted through online work platforms like oDesk, with millions of hours logged each month.

Meet Zabzo, a Palo Alto-based company that makes particularly good use of oDesk. Working out of a startup accelerator at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, Zabzo consolidates college students’ syllabi into a web-based calendar loaded with every assignment for the entire semester. The service saves students time without creating extra work for university professors and administrators.

Zabzo launched in private beta at Harvard, Stanford and the University California, San Diego this past spring to much success, and plans for a full launch this fall at Syracuse University and a few smaller schools in the region.

In preparation, the company needs to hire independent contractors to perform a repeatable data extraction task at scale. “oDesk was the obvious choice to engage people that are highly skilled and had the flexibility and desire to do this kind of data extraction,” says Thomas Hendee, a senior at Stanford University who heads up operations at Zabzo.

The Process

• Post: take five minutes to activate a client account, through which job posts are created. Zabzo’s posts feature three distinct requests: reply with a resume, explain why you are interest in the job, and include “zabzozabzozabzo” in the subject line. The last request weeds out ‘serial freelancers’ who apply for every job without reading posts.

• Filter: send a follow-up email to the best applicants linking them to a short test mimicking the job they’ll need to do. Successful applicants move on to an interview, which is usually done through a video chat service like Skype. Video interviews allow Hendee to gauge each worker’s English skills, level of comfort and current workload.

• Track: oDesk takes screenshots of each remote contractor’s progress every hour so clients know who is working quickly (or not at all). Hours are logged in a work diary that managers can review before making payments through a secure credit card system. Clients can also use PayPal, or wire transfer in some cases.

As online workspaces evolve, the process of hiring, managing and paying remote labor will evolve too. Paul Miller, CEO of the Digital Workplace Forum, recently told GigaOM, “If you think about this as a landscape, you look at where unified communications [like] audio and video are going to go. We are going to get much more visceral, real, tangible experiences of being together when we are not physically together.”

“I think that whole area of live collaboration in the digital workplace is going to get much richer,” Miller says.

Startups and mega-corps alike use online work platforms to discover highly specialized workers, and as the digital environment improves, these workplaces will continue offering new and effective methods for finding labor.

For businesses in need of workers on an hourly or project basis, services like oDesk offer unprecedented access to the tools and talent required to successfully build and manage teams online. They are disruptive business models at the forefront of globalization, which is forever altering how the world outsources temporary work.

TL;DR: How to find a good designer: scour portfolios, email 20 designers, give a 2-hour challenge to the ones who respond (pay them), pick the winner.  Hire. 

Design matters: it’s why millions of people fell in love with companies like Apple, Virgin, and mint.com. If you have competitors—and we’re guessing that you do—good design can help your product stand out by making it easier to use, and can also create the kind of crazed passion that makes someone, for example, wait in line for 10 days for a new iPhone. It’s not just about making things look pretty. Design is at the core of any product.

The only problem? Over the last few years, almost everyone has realized the value of design, so hiring a good designer has started to feel impossible. As we launched Foundry, we went through our own agonizing search for a web designer. After some experimenting, we figured out a way to simplify the process. Here’s our quick guide to finding a designer for your startup.

Step 1: Figure out what you like & pick 20 designers

This is the fun part, where we justify browsing the internets for eye candy. Check out some design portfolio sites like Dribbble, Forrst, and Behance (more below), find examples of styles that feel like a fit for your company, and bookmark 20 designers you like. Email all of them with a brief writeup on your project.

Step 2: The 2-hour challenge.

When the designers respond—you’ll probably hear from 8-10 people, depending on how busy they are—send them a short challenge. Pick a project that takes no more than a couple of hours (pay them).

Step 3: Judge them.

Who was fast? Responsive? Best at responding to feedback? Who gave you the best design? Running the same challenge in parallel with all of the designers will make it easier to choose between them.

Step 4: Rinse and repeat as necessary.

We were lucky enough that the process worked on the first try, but if you don’t find a designer immediately, we’d recommend repeating the steps.

Our story

We needed a visual designer—ideally one with front-end skills—and we started by looking for someone who could work in-house, as it’s much easier to iterate with someone in the same room. But we had no luck. Not only is the larger business world enamored with design (witness the huge interest in the Stanford d.school, MIT media lab, and “design thinking” in general), the fight for designers is especially fierce in the startup world. The supply of good designers is limited, and some are even starting companies of their own, with support from places like the Designer Fund.

When finding a staff designer looked impossible, we started looking for a remote designer. We looked through portfolios on Dribbble and Forrst. (Other good resources: Behance, Coroflot, Krop, Zerply, and Folyo; site galleries like Awwwards, Best Web Gallery, and Make Better Websites are also useful for finding examples of styles that you like). Most of the sites allow you to sort by location, so you can find someone local if necessary. For a lot of projects, though, working remotely can get you by (especially for something self-contained like a logo), and it’s a great way to have a larger group of designers to choose from. We ended up contacting around 30 people with a detailed outline of the full project.

We heard back from eight designers, and put together a short challenge for them. To keep it simple, we asked them each to design one screen in Photoshop. We showed them examples of the style that we wanted. The short assignment gave us a chance to get a better sense of each designer’s work and how they’d approach something specifically for us.

We also saw how they worked. Did they respond quickly to emails? How long did it take to deliver the project? The work doesn’t have to be perfect; it’s more important to find someone who responds to feedback and can iterate quickly in the right direction. It’s also important to find someone opinionated. You’ll want a designer who can work on their own, without being held by the hand. If something needs to be fixed, you can course correct, but you don’t want to waste time dictating every step. A good designer will be confident and self-directed.

In the end, one designer stood out: he was fast, responsive, and great at his job. And he’s been working with us ever since. It takes time, but the process works.

TL;DR: Why hunt for unicorns when you can grow them?

Startups often kick off their hiring search by looking for the perfect employee. It seems logical – you’ve got your list of requirements, you need to keep your team lean and nimble, so you try to score someone who’s capable of performing virtually any task perfectly on day one. Although it has become standard practice, this method of hiring is hurting your company.

Why? After all, Silicon Valley is brimming with talented designers and engineers who should be able to do do exactly what you want right off the bat. Why not hunt for that unicorn?

Hunting for unicorns doesn’t work

If you want a unicorn, you’ll have to pry them away from a company where they’re already happily working. No one emerges from college a unicorn, and if they are as talented as they seem, their employer recognizes it and rewards them accordingly. The last thing you want is a bidding war with a more established company.

If you can manage to find a talented, ready-to-work employee, you’ll also have to out-recruit mid-size companies who are looking for the same talent. These companies may have dedicated recruiters and will be able to offer more job security for a trained and polished employee.

Finally, most unicorns know they have pretty, shimmery horns. While not always a bad thing, it does mean they’re unlikely to come at a bargain.

If you use this method of hiring, you’re rolling the dice and trusting that, against all odds, you will find the perfect person before anyone else does.

Hire someone who can learn

You want employees who are capable of adapting to and learning a wide range of skills, not just a specialty. Ten years ago, jobs like “social media manager” and “search engine optimization specialist” didn’t exist. Now, nearly every corporation employs a social media manager, and any programmer worth their salt can optimize a website for Google’s algorithm. In an industry as volatile as the tech world, adaptability is key.

The successful companies are ones that adapt to new roles and train talented employees how to use the latest tools to do their jobs. Establishing a culture of inquiry and learning in your workplace will help ensure you can adapt to the unpredictable changes of the next ten years.

Yes, creating this type of environment will take time and effort on your part. The upshot? You can select from a much wider and more diverse applicant pool. The employees you cultivate will be nimble, well-rounded, and able to evolve along with their job requirements. Best of all, it establishes your company as a rewarding, forward-thinking place to work—a reputation that will only support your ongoing recruitment efforts.

TL;DR: Hiring is hard.  Here’s how you can get by with some help from your hiring tools.

You’ve got the innovative idea, the hip valley office space, and the ambition to make it all happen. Now you just need to find the right talent to see your vision through.  But—as you’ve no doubt noticed—hiring has become too complex a process to be managed with color-coded inbox labels and Excel docs alone. You’re probably going to need something more.

For centuries, people have successfully hired other people to fill positions. However, in the past two decades, hiring for skilled positions has transformed from an orderly affair into a nearly herculean undertaking: The reason is simply that humans have gotten really good at applying for jobs.

You see, job seekers have rightfully taken advantage of technology to aid in their search. Today, one post on a skill-specific job board will be viewed by thousands, shared on LinkedIn, posted on Facebook, tweeted on Twitter, and emailed to friends and family. Before you know it, a small armada of resumes and portfolios are rapping at your chamber door.

How can any one person manage the deluge? To be honest: they probably can’t. At least, not very efficiently. First step is to take advantage of technology. There are a bevy of Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) that can help organize this potentially chaotic process. For today’s modern enterprise, the ATS is less a convenient aide than a vital tool. This is where Human Resources meets the Singularity.

Let’s roll through all the ways an ATS can help you tackle that inbox full of applicants, because as you already know…

You’re busy

While you may harbor fantasies of the perfect candidate showing up at your doorstep, the truth of the matter is that the hiring process is just that: a process. One that demands your time and energy. Don’t just hope that someone on your back-end team has a talented cousin who knows front-end. It’s incumbent upon you to research the cloistered corners of the Internet for relevant job boards, sort through the applicants, coordinate with your staff to make sure everyone is on the same page, and do it all in as timely and efficient a manner as possible.

Any modern ATS worth its weight in seed money will give you the ability to automatically post and promote positions to relevant job boards, schedule interviews, and help you coordinate the hiring process across your entire team.

You can make mistakes

You will always be competing for in-demand candidates who you don’t want to lose through avoidable errors like taking too long to move the process forward or sending out a form letter to the wrong applicant—as a general rule, if you can’t offer someone a job within a few weeks, they will find employment elsewhere. That’s an embarrassing mistake, and in today’s digital gossip column, it’s not one which will stay between you and the frustrated applicant.

On the other hand, you may have looked over a talented candidate for one particular position, but it’s good form to send out a thoughtful letter to those who were at least considered. Keep in mind that you forfeit control over any of your  company’s communications after you hit send—handle them with care. An automated system will help minimize avoidable errors by segregating applicants and transmitting only appropriate communications.

You only have two eye balls

As the applicant spigot turns from trickle to monsoon, a quality ATS will aid you in the grueling task of separating the gold from the goons.

A good ATS will take on the role of a whole HR team by digitally sorting through applicant materials (cover letters, resumes, portfolio pieces) and converting them into searchable databases. Now you will be able to filter for candidates associated with certain keywords, e.g. “Java,” “HTML5,” or “Graduated.”

Once you’ve separated your potentials, the ATS will help you schedule interviews and organize team members’ remarks (initial thoughts, portfolio evaluations, interview notes). And for the candidates who didn’t quite make the cut, the system will organize and store them in your applicant cupboard for future openings.

Recent pushes in technology have made it easier than ever to collect a ton of applicants. An ATS can help mediate the flood, so it’s easier to get the best candidates in the shortest amount of time.