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Interviewing Non-Technical Hires

3 points by greatquestion ↗ HN
I'm the founder of a small ten person startup. Right now everyone here is a programmer and as the CEO I handle 100% of our company's non technical duties. We're now growing to the point where it is too much work for me to handle all of that work myself, so we are in the process of hiring our first non technical employee. This person will (due to our size) be very much so a generalist, but will mainly be doing marketing and customer service.

We have a very good process for interviewing technical people, but I have no experience with hiring non technical people, and I'm not quite sure the best way to do it, especially since it seems a lot harder to quantify ability. For technical hires we can learn a lot by looking at their code or watching them code and I'm not really sure what the equivalent is for non technical hires.

So in short: Does anyone have any good suggestions or resources for vetting marketing hires?

4 comments

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ankitgarg43
Give them a situation where they have to deal with the problem and compare how well they handle it. Like if you are a product company, ask them to act as marketing and to sell the product to a potential buyer but the customer is orthodox but wealthy. See if they can crack the deal!!!

You can email me, I am good at such scenarios. I would love to help!

ankitgarg43@gmail.com

[dead] razorwolf
Side note: When in this position, be sure that you have clearly established what the job duties are for this person and don't start changing them on a whim; discuss, negotiate, but don't do command-and-control here. Frustration tends to result when things change constantly or that person is answering to multiple people/founders who fail to communicate and coordinate with one another. In other words, treat this person, their time and abilities as valuable. I'm currently watching another startup that had the same dilemma recently completely alienate yet another non-technical staff person who contributes a lot to the company. Don't be That Startup. Everyone matters. Clarity and reasonable expectations (as opposed to the complete charlie foxtrot I've observed) will go a long way. You've already demonstrated that you don't exactly know what you need this person to do, so put some serious thought into that before proceeding to frustrate the hell out of someone who wants to work hard for you and contribute to your success.

And pay them well for the hassle that will inevitably ensue even if you do feel like you know what you're doing and have created a position that has clear duties and the authority to execute them. Chances are you don't yet. Don't make your new hire pay that price all by themselves. It's easy to do this by just not taking seriously the company's obligation to value an employee's time as much as they value their own. I've watched that first non-tech hire (repeatedly, several people at this point) become a garbage can for every dysfunctional, disorganized decision (or lack thereof) the startup couldn't dump on the tech people, and that will burn your new person out.

soham
I am an engineer. But have done a lot of hiring, both technical and non-technical. I now run http://InterviewKickstart.com.

The core thing you have to realize, is that there is NO reason for a non-technical person to not be as smart/driven as an engineer. I am not saying you believe that, but what I'm saying, is that while the questions may be different, your grading standards should not change. Especially not when you're a young company growing fast. The hire you make now, will likely be with you for a long time.

Having said that, the following have worked well for me in the past:

1. Ask them simple logical brain-teasers. The kind that don't need programming knowledge. You are looking for excitement and a drive to solve them, instead of backing down.

2. Ask them to present something to a small group of people. It could be their favorite project, or their hobby or whatever. You are looking for clarity of thought, the ability to explain something to a few people, the depth of interest, empathy for the audience and confidence in themselves.

3. Ask them for a writing sample. This is very much akin to a code sample. Is it clear to understand? Is it engaging? Have they taken care of details and punctuation? Very important.

4. Put a few different personalities in the interviewing panel. Are they able to hold a conversation with everyone? Are they able to treat them with respect, regardless of the personality type?

5. Ask them what they want to do in short and long term. Is there clarity? Is there ambition? Is there reason and grounding?

Good luck!

notahacker
>The core thing you have to realize, is that there is NO reason for a non-technical person to not be as smart/driven as an engineer.

I'm going to push back on that and say there is if you're paying them less than half what you pay engineers, which might be a perfectly reasonable market rate if most of what they're expected to do involves relatively basic admin tasks. That doesn't mean you want to be hiring people that come across as lazy or inept, but it does mean that someone can do an efficient job at managing your office despite being stumped by that very simple conditional probability puzzle. (although if that probability puzzle was based on conversion rates you should perhaps be hoping for a prospective VP Marketing to nail it...)

The flip side is there's no reason why an engineer shouldn't be able to ask a non-technical questions on interviewees' approach to tasks they'll be performing and understand enough of the answers to be reasonably confident of which interviewees are thoughtful about their approach to marketing or operations or customer service. Instead of brain teasers, ask them about problems you actually anticipate them solving.