Wow a similar thing happened to a friend of mine in what he calls the "flying dragon" story.<p>About 5 years ago my friend Bob (not his real name - real name is Andrew) started an entertainment business to do shows like Cirque du Soleil.<p>He advertised on websites looking for acts. A man came in saying he was an agent that represented a flying dragon. Bob was incredulous. He asked to see the dragon. The agent told him the dragon would only come out for performances.<p>Bob paid the agent $1000 up front and spent another $3000 on marketing for the dragon's first performance. On the night of the performance, the agent called Bob and told him the dragon was sick but that he could definitely do a better, bigger show the following week.<p>Bob paid another $1000 but the dragon didn't show up again. Three weeks later the agent told Bob that the dragon died but had already spent the $2000 on his lair.<p>Bob now says, "Make them show you the dragon," as advice for almost any situation.
The hiring process and possibly placing too much trust in a new employee can be dangerous without the proper due diligence. However I think there is something else that has to do with technical people running their businesses that is worth mentioning.<p>Being a technical person in sales can be bloody scary, I run a software company and at the beginning I was scared to death about both sales and marketing. So much so that I would avoid it, and only do it when absolutely necessary. Which lead to basically working on whatever came along. Not ideal, and I was basically working for myself, with no real growth.<p>While working at a co-working space I met a fellow entrepreneur who had a sales and marketing company mainly focused on lead generation and online marketing. I hired his company to help with new messaging for our company. However this engagement quickly turned into sales coaching 101: how to build a sales funnel, effective proposal writing, understanding buying signals, targeting ideal customers, the whole works.<p>The whole time we worked through this process I was learning and understanding, and becoming less and less scared. One of the books that he recommended to me was 'Customer Centric Selling', it's a good read and I think is ideally suited to technical folks finding themselves in sales roles. It talks about sales as a process, and not a "who you know" connections mystical black box. you know.. Like the VP of the 100 million dollar company wanted to do. Connections always help, but the process is there to make sure that the optimism that the sales people will undoubtedly assign to each deal can be measured and verified. I find you don't get into these situations where a sales person feeds you a loaded forecast with nothing to back it up.<p>As the founder you need to know what works for your business, and don't hire a sales person hoping they will have magical powers and be instantly able to sell your product/service. Learn and create the process yourself, then hire a sales person and have them execute and refine your process. You know your business best. Others can help, but at the end of the day it's on you!
There is an art to checking references. Even if a company has a policy of giving bare minimum information, find out a TELEPHONE NUMBER of someone in that company who knows your candidate and start a conversation. I was given a specific script of questions to ask back in the 1990s when I was a community volunteer for my local public school district, doing reference checks on superintendent candidates. A consultant advised the school district (and through the district, me) on how to do this. If you talk to someone directly by voice, and have a good list of specific questions to ask about the candidate, you will be AMAZED at what people say, policy or no policy. Company policies don't keep people from sharing stories with curious listeners. The key is to learn what questions are legal to ask and reveal the most interesting stories about the person you are thinking of hiring. There are consultants who can advise you about checking references, and, as several comments here say, they are a lot less expensive than making a wrong hiring decision, and once you've learned the questions, you know what to ask.<p>I've just asked my consultant Google, and he suggests several sets of useful questions to ask when checking references:<p><a href="http://hiring.monster.com/hr/hr-best-practices/recruiting-hiring-advice/job-screening-techniques/reference-checking-questions.aspx" rel="nofollow">http://hiring.monster.com/hr/hr-best-practices/recruiting-hi...</a><p><a href="http://www.drgnyc.com/list_serve/Jan24_2005.htm" rel="nofollow">http://www.drgnyc.com/list_serve/Jan24_2005.htm</a><p><a href="http://www.acadweb.wwu.edu/hr/Employment/InfoForHiringOfficials/HiringPersonnel/Exempt/TelephoneReferenceChecks.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.acadweb.wwu.edu/hr/Employment/InfoForHiringOffici...</a><p><a href="http://www.best-job-interview.com/reference-check-questions.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.best-job-interview.com/reference-check-questions....</a><p><a href="http://www.k-state.edu/hr/employment/referencecheck.htm" rel="nofollow">http://www.k-state.edu/hr/employment/referencecheck.htm</a><p><a href="http://pbsbo.ucsc.edu/personnel_payroll/staff/recruit/ref_check.html" rel="nofollow">http://pbsbo.ucsc.edu/personnel_payroll/staff/recruit/ref_ch...</a><p><a href="http://www.bridgestar.org/Library/HiringToolkit/ReferenceCheck.aspx" rel="nofollow">http://www.bridgestar.org/Library/HiringToolkit/ReferenceChe...</a><p><a href="http://jobsearch.about.com/od/referencesrecommendations/a/refercheck.htm" rel="nofollow">http://jobsearch.about.com/od/referencesrecommendations/a/re...</a>
Comments from a previous time this was posted (three years ago): <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=263599" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=263599</a><p>"How do you find a good salesperson?": <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=264282" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=264282</a>
The more important lesson to learn is that if you're confident, likable, and remember people's names you can be VP of a $100 million dollar company. Now if you're competent as well, imagine how far you could go...
I think you can still do this:
"-- Hire people smarter than myself, who get things done!
-- Trust them to do their job, let them do their job and give them enough resources to do it!
-- Pay them WELL and offer great benefits! Work at home! Sure, why not?
-- Give people second chances! Don't throw out resumes because of lack of buzzwords! Or disjointed writing! Or lack of education! It's all about Smart People who Get Things Done, not interviews or resumes or formalities! Have an open mind!"<p>You just need a way to check if they can get things done, like looking at past apps they've coded. Nothing like that was done here. Really, if he <i>just</i> did an interview, one thing from that list of things he didn't want to do, this probably wouldn't have happened.
So he was a highschool dropout. How do you not notice something like that on a resume?<p>College degrees are <i>always</i> listed on resumes, and while they aren't that important in most cases, it should at least be brought up as an interview conversation point if it's missing entirely (and from there, launch into a discussion of how a person gained their skills, which would have completely unveiled this guy).
The lesson here is to never rely on someone else's hiring process to do your screening. Big Corps VP can easily become your douchebag if you aren't on the ball.<p>This is a great startup story - I think the original poster got off easy. For the price of some pens, a dinner and a whole bunch of wasted time (and perhaps a small hit on credibility) the truth was found. I've seen situations much, much worse.<p>This is <i>exactly</i> why hiring is described as the most important thing a manager/executive/founder can do.
Everyone pay attention, this seems to be one of those lessons everyone learns the hard way.<p>I'd made a similar mistakes with my first hire. Basically I hired the first guy who said he was awesome at php. Great I said. Do this, this and this. You can do some work from home, set your own hours at the office etc. He stopped coming into the office to work from home instead. I was so over capacity that i didn't check on his work for about 2 months (fool is me). When I finally did I discovered a horrible horrible mess. The app was completely useless and the 'awesome php dude' was completely incompetent. Lessons learned:<p>1. Do your own investigation into a potential hire to see if they are actually capable.<p>2. Watch new hires carefully<p>3. It costs more to fix hiring mistakes than to prevent them from happening.<p>Actually my second hire was pretty shit too. This time I made sure the dude was technically competent but he didn't fit the company culture I wanted. I don't like egos or office politics.<p>After those few bad mistakes my subsequent hires were great.
The author, Bill, answered questions about this on Joel on Software:<p><a href="http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?biz.5.665091.31" rel="nofollow">http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?biz.5.665091.3...</a><p>Key comment:<p><i>"[..] when you're in your spare bedroom alone slaving away for 5-6 years, then someone comes along with deep connections to the industry (proven from asking around), who everybody in the niche knows, and who was 'part of a team' responsible for booking $100 million in sales in a single year... it is easy to not go through all that due dilligence and just accept someone like that at face value."</i>
Titles are bullshit. At some companies almost every salesperson is a VP of Sales, Western Antarctica (or whatever) -- it's a free way to make customers feel important.
The reason you get head nods when you relate this experience, in my opinion, is that versions of this sort of thing are all too common when hiring sales people. Sorry to be biased, but I'll go as far as saying that there's a certain separate species in the sales world. By now I recognize a lot of the signs, but it cost me hundreds of thousands of dollars and a lot of lost business to get there. Just ask fellow entrepreneurs "What's the secret to hiring a sales person?" and watch as the first reaction is eyes rolling.<p>If business where easy everyone would be doing it. Don't give up, you'll figure it out.
Unfortunately I have encountered those "sales" people quite a few time during my long career (in financial industry.) They sell themselves very well, they're very good at with people, they make a lot of jokes, laugh a lot, they use their own families (dinner parties etc.) for getting closer to people and, dresses very very well for all occasions. They play politics in the office very well as well. When it comes to deliver something, you always see delays, they quickly offload responsibility to those who can actually do it (and they are very good with them as well). They suck up, but when it comes down to it, they kick down hard especially those who helped them in the past. They all disliked me, since I was very blunt to them. It is easy to detect them, since if he is really someone to deliver he will do it very soon, otherwise they play endless delay tactics.
A founder should not be delegating sales to a hire, and if you have multiple cofounders, it is moronic to have only one of them aware of sales (with 3 people, you could maybe get away with 2 people knowing about most of the clients, or a different subset of 2 for each client, but even then).
As a hiring manager, I always try to either (a) hire 90 day contract to full-time; or (b) hire under a 90-day trial or probationary period. At the end of the period I ask myself if I would still hire that person. If my instinct is "no", I trust my instinct. It's good for morale when everyone knows that the 90 days is a meaningful evaluation period.<p>As a job-seeker, I always make sure that I contact my references and give them a heads-up that the call is coming in, along with a copy of the resume I submitted for the job and the job posting. It's out of courtesy to the person I'm asking to provide me with a reference.
Excellent post. Mirrors my own experience a lot. How many life-savings and great business ideas have been burnt beyond repair by doofus business losers only god can imagine.
What I'm taking away from this is that it really is important to check up on the background and specific accomplishments of new hires, regardless of prior accolade or title.
I don't think anyone gets it right the first time. My first two "hires" were horrific. I ended up learning from the experience and better shaping what I wanted, what I needed to do differently, etc.<p>Most recent hire has been a much better fit into that mould, but still not perfect. HR isn't at all my specialty, and I know it will be years before I perfect it.<p>Glad to hear that the company recovered - one of mine didn't.
It's a shame OP had to learn the hard way given that he stated he was not going to buy into resume hype and ended up doing so anyways albeit in a less formal fashion.<p>While stories like this would any employer cringe, the very opposite scenario occurs as well. I've personally been part of the receiving and giving end of that type of scenario.
It's funny how the boss actually was the idiot for buying that guy. Even his goals in the beginning were stupid. I can only learn from this article that my goals are probably shit, too. At least as long as I don't have some experience as people manager.
People like this who know a lot of folks and who get along and are likeable can be a huge asset. You may not want them selling for you, but you certainly want them to mingle, talk to potential clients and take them to dinner, etc.<p>They aren't <i>idiots</i>, they are very valuable employees when used appropriately. He would make an excellent client relations manager.
No time for any of them - called out the sales director for being a bullshitter and amazingly kept my job for several years. Sold nothing, was like watching a galaxy imploding into a black hole. Stayed for the entertainment. Was well worth it.
Dude was a psychopath. I've been tricked by them before, cost me at least $20k. They lie. Straight to your face. They are often terrible at spelling, grammar, and just general "this document should look right" skills.
"Every time I relate this experience, I get a lot of head nods."<p>o.O is what you get from me. Is everyone you relate this story to you a half-wit? Quite simply, who hires without adequate research? (apparently many more people than I realized)
The Bozo Explosion, and how to prevent it:
<a href="http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2006/02/how_to_prevent_.html#axzz1bgeuuSk4" rel="nofollow">http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2006/02/how_to_prevent_.html#axz...</a>