Bursts of Color - Entry Level Hiring
After two slow years of tech hiring, it’s great to see a recent jump in job postings across our portfolio and network.
However, I’ve been surprised that a lot of the new roles are for candidates with 10+ years of specific experience. These senior roles are tough, as they usually require long periods for hiring and onboarding, and often still don't work out (see the 3 Rules of Exec Hiring). And given the “productivity” surge of the last two years, many of the largest employers have cut way back on their entry level programs. So we’re left with a funny situation in which tech hiring for mid-to-senior roles is extremely competitive again, but fewer companies want to hire or train the next generation.
This, as a longtime colleague likes to say, is a “problem-tunity” for the rest of us.
Org Design: Pyramid vs Tower
Large organizations have typically resembled a pyramid, with lots of junior people at the base led by a smaller group of experienced mid-level folks, and relatively few senior executives at the top. By contrast, I’ve recently seen a number of growing "towers,” in which the numbers of junior, mid-level and exec positions are relatively similar.
The tower can be a natural accident in a startup’s early days, as the first 10-15 teammates wear many hats and often play a mix of junior/mid/senior roles all within the same day. But it doesn’t scale well, and the I-formation org designs typically result in lousy communication and culture.
Entry Level Hiring Can Be a Huge Competitive Advantage
I generally love hiring entry-level folks at startups for a bunch of reasons including:
Giant Talent Pool - Millions of fresh grads hit the workforce every year.
Speed - These roles can often be filled in weeks rather than months.
Ready-Made Pipelines - A single guest lecture at your local school can yield 2-3 warm candidates every semester.
Skill Flexibility - Bright recent grads can learn most functional roles within 2-3 months — and then learn a new one next year when needed.
Geographic Flexibility - Recent grads are a lot more likely to move cross country, or even just across town.
Expense/Risk - Lower starting salaries mean 2 or 3 hires for the price of one.
Bench Building - Today’s junior staff are the farm team from which the future leaders will emerge.
Culture and Camaraderie - You know, that whole “bright eyed and bushy tailed” thing.
This Does Require a Different Kind of Leadership
Of course, it’s different to manage recent grads versus experienced professionals. Here are a few recommendations for making the most of it:
Batch start-dates of 2+ new hires to create mini “cohorts” for training and onboarding (everyone is used to this from school).
Break down goals and objectives to the level of daily tasks, especially in the beginning.
Work together in-office 3+ days per week - or at least communicate constantly - to observe, coach and redirect work in real time.
Accept that you may need to teach some adulting, and to be patient on this front. This starts with setting (and resetting) clear expectations about specifics like working hours, attire, office snacks, scheduling vacations, etc.
Hopefully-obvious caveat: There will always be some portion of roles that *do* require professional expertise and commensurate years of experience.