21 Hire slowly—and correctly
This chapter covers
One of my top management philosophies is to hire slowly, fire quickly. In this anecdote, we will be talking about hiring. This is a critical function that takes time, and even a startup cannot rush it without paying a very high price. Even though we believe in firing quickly when it’s merited, that does not make a bad hire cost less.
Resource If you want to dig into this topic more deeply, a good resource is the book Hire the Best: Find, Interview, and Select Top Talent by Laura Butcher and Don Lang. This anecdote covers things I consider essential to know and do in hiring, but the topic deserves a book—and Butcher and Lang created such a book. I knew them when I was first a senior leader at Borland in 1995 and their book was just a pamphlet given out as part of their training course. I studied and dog-eared that pamphlet to death as I incorporated their principles into every one of my eight startups since those days.