Patrick, Hacker News legend, blogger and CEO of Starfighter shares so many great ideas about hiring the best technical talent to your team you would never need to buy his services.

1. HIRING AT SCALE
Patrick McKenzie (@patio11), Starfighter

2. Missed BoS 2014 Due To A Release
Date

3. Difficulty Level: Matasano

4. Oh Wait This Spy Story Is Real

6. $125,487

8. a) What you pay a recruiter for one engineer
b) Buys a lot of things from non-loathsome
people
$25,000

9. Hiring As A Funnel
Outreach
Attract
Assess
Close

10. 100 Geeks
100
10
6
1

11. General Principles
 Track it, track it, track it.
 Sustained effort from founders / engineering
management.
 Incorporate hiring into day-to-day life of
company.
 Play long ball.

12. Goal: increase number of qualified
candidates who know your firm is an option
Outreach

13. Basecamp: Strong Hiring Funnel

14. Use the events which already exist in your
community. If they don’t exist, create them.
Events

15. MakeLeaps Runs “Hacker News
Tokyo”

16. How Every Dev Ends Their Talks
 So that was fun.
 Here are my slides: http://example.com/linky-
linky
 By the way we’re hiring.

17. How Your Devs Should End Their
Talks
 Thanks! We’d love to talk to you more.
 If you’d like to learn more about this, we have
a lesson here: http://example.com/linky-linky or
send bob@example.com an email.
 The thing I like most about working here is…
 We’re hiring and I can jump you to the top of
the queue, see me later.

18. Or, how to create the best candidates in the
world for exactly your job.
Cryptopals

19. Cryptopals Overview
 Seven problem sets which teach cryptography,
soup to nuts.
 ~2 weeks of development time upfront.
 Graded manually. Administered over email.
 Grading/correspondence was 50% of one
junior FTE… for hundreds of participants.
 Problem set eight is “Want to work here? Let’s
talk.”

20. Chapter 1 of 7

21. Holy Difficulty Curve Batman

22. Clone Cryptopals. It Will Work!
 Pick an interesting part of your problem domain.
 Teach it to interested folks. Start accessible, work
upwards.
 Don’t build any software.
 Make it maximally easy to get started.
 Don’t make it public. (Cannibalizes perceived value.)
 Feed interesting folks into hiring funnel.
 Don’t use this for assessment!

23. … But don’t do one. Seriously, that’s our job.
CTFs: Very Valuable!

24. The Product As Friendcatcher

25. “Want To Pair With Us?”

26. In which developers guaranteed to be
interested in your company line up and ask
to be counted.
OSS / API

27. Goal: Increase number of qualified
candidates who apply for a job
Attract

28. Send Them A Book: $25 + S&H

29. Reducing Cost Of Interaction With
You
 “Apply for a job” is a huge mental commitment.
 “Come have lunch with the team on Thursday.” is not.
 “Let’s grab coffee and talk shop.” is less of one.
 You can upgrade any conversation into a job
application.
 Just say “Are you interested in working together?”
 Always, always, always offer “If you X / since you
Xed, we dispense with a bit of the formalities.”

30. Improve Copywriting For Job Ads
 The job ads has one purpose. Is it:
 To keep HR happy
 To exhaustively list what requirements apply to
the job
 To detail in exquisite detail your 401k matching

31. Job Ad: Get Them To Talk To
You

32. Dozens of Great Candidates, For
Free
This ad has voice, intrigue, and sells the desirability of asking for more details.

33. Goal: Increase number of desirable
applicants you successfully identify from
applicant pool
Assess

34. How To Read a Resume

35. Work Sample Tests

36. How Effective Are They?

37. Developing One For Your
Company
 Create an in-house application which roughly
represents day to day challenges
 Knock out a representative feature which takes
~2 hours to implement
 Package in a Vagrant VM
 Give it to the candidate

38. Evaluating The Tests
 Written rubric followed slavishly
 “Did the candidate unit test the $FOO case?”
 “Did the candidate unit test the $FOO case (failing) ?”
 Capture as much granular signal as possible
 Test grader != hiring manager for the candidate
 Forces your “internal test API” to be better
 Refine the test over time as you find what
outcomes predict your best actual employees.

39. Sell The Job, Even If You Don’t Give
Offer

40. Goal: Increase rate at which offers convert
to employees
Close

41. Quick Tips To Raise Your Hit Rate
 Communicate status with the spirit of Steli.
 Ridiculous leverage in a designed offer letter
and/or customized presentation to candidate.
 Have rational expectations about market rate.
 Can’t afford market? Train more or expand risk profile.
 Ask candidates who took other jobs what attracted
them to the other position.

42. Treat All Candidates Like Peers

43. Thanks! I Like Hearing From
People
 patrick@starfighters.io  I love hearing from
people in software, at any time, for any reason.
You cannot waste my time.
 Talk to me about hiring.
 I’ll probably have beta invites in ~3 weeks –
feel free to email me for them.