04- Who should you hire?
Last updated
Last updated
Foreword by Eoghan McCabe, Co-Founder and CEO
The first hire we made was Ben McRedmond, who now runs our Growth team. He was an engineer we’d known for a long time, so it made perfect sense. We were a software company so we hired engineers. If we were a plumbing company, we would have hired a plumber. 我们制作的第一个雇用人是本·麦克雷德蒙德，他现在是我们的成长团队。他是一位很长时间才知道的工程师，所以这是完美的。我们是一家软件公司，所以我们聘请了工程师。如果我们是一家管道公司，我们会雇用一个水管工。
But he was also a generalist, exactly the type of person we needed at that stage. e fewer people you have, the more general each person’s role ends up being; everyone has to wear many hats. As the company grows, you hire a lot of diffenent specialists. But in the early days, generalists are best because you need people who are ready to pitch in wherever needed. 但他也是一个通才，正是那个阶段我们需要的那种人。你拥有的人越少，每个人的角色就越普遍;每个人都要穿很多帽子。随着公司的发展，你聘请了很多不同的专家。但在初期，通才是最好的，因为你需要准备在任何需要的地方准备的人。
Ben was also unique because he was at the very start of his career. I truly believe in matching growing companies with growing people. Building a company requires learning about the world, guring out who you are and improving. It’s the same process you follow as an individual. If you can match a company that wants to grow with a set of people that want to grow, and their interests and ideals are aligned, your company will be set for success. 本也是独一无二的，因为他在职业生涯的开始。我真的相信与不断增长的人匹配成长型公司。建立公司需要了解世界，了解你是谁，并改进。这是与个人相同的过程。如果您能够与想要成长的人一起成长的公司和他们的兴趣和理想相一致，您的公司将会取得成功。
Finding your first few hires is incredibly diffcult. You’re no good at hiring yet. You don’t have a clear idea of what your company is, so you don’t know what you need. is means you’re going to hire the wrong people. ere’s almost certainly going to be mismatches from the get-go. So early on it’s important to have open, honest conversations among your founders about what a great candidate looks like for your company. 找到你的前几个雇员是非常邪恶的。你还没有好好招聘。你不清楚你的公司是什么，所以你不知道你需要什么。这意味着你要雇用错误的人。这几乎肯定会不一致。因此，在您的创始人之间进行公开，诚实的对话之前，您的公司将会是一个很棒的候选人。
It should go without saying, but you really have to like your first few hires. In the best situation, they will become your lifelong friends. You’ll grow up together, get old together and share in success and failure together. at doesn’t necessarily mean you should hire your friends, but hire people who share your fundamental values, who you feel very comfortable with and enjoy the company of.
应该不用说，但你真的要喜欢你的第一个雇用的人。在最好的情况下，他们将成为你终身的朋友。你会一起长大，共同成长，共同分享成功与失败。不一定意味着你应该雇用你的朋友，而是雇用分享你的基本价值观的人，你感到非常舒适和享受公司。
In the early days, you’ve got to work very hard, in close quarters and in some incredibly stressful situations. Everyone is going to be some degree of pretty shit at what they do. It helps if the people involved want to be in the trenches with each other. I know Intercom wouldn’t have worked if the founders hadn’t liked each other.
在早期的时候，你必须非常努力，在近距离的地方和一些令人非常紧张的情况下。每个人都会在某种程度上对他们所做的事情有很大的帮助。如果有关人士想要相互沟通，这有帮助。如果创始人不喜欢对话，我知道Intercom不会奏效。
Most people think the way a startup works is that you have a smart idea and then you hire a team to implement it. But that’s actually much harder than it sounds. ere are many reasons your startup might fail, but one of the biggest dangers is hiring the wrong people.
大多数人认为创业公司的工作方式是，您有一个聪明的想法，然后雇用一个团队来实施。但这实际上比听起来困难得多。原因很多，你的创业公司可能会失败，但最大的危险之一是招聘错误的人。
When you’re such a small team, each hire has a disproportionately large impact. If your startup is still at an early stage, a bad hire has the potential to set you back several quarters and possibly even ruin the whole company. Faced with such high stakes, it’s no surprise some people struggle to make a decision about who to hire.
当你是一个如此小的团队时，每个雇员的影响都不成比例。如果你的初创公司还处于初期阶段，那么一个糟糕的雇主有可能让你回到几个季度，甚至可能毁掉整个公司。面对这样的高额利益，一些人难以决定要雇用谁决定是不值得的。
One of the best ways to make sure your first hires are successful is to build a great founding team. Great people have a magnetic quality and attract other great people who want to work with them. Of course, you can o er them a huge salary, motivate people around an ambitious mission and give them interesting problems to solve. But in the software industry, there are many companies o ering these things.
确保您的第一名雇员成功的最佳方式之一是建立一个伟大的创始团队。伟大的人有磁性，并吸引其他想要与他们合作的伟大人物。当然，你可以给他们一个巨大的薪水，激励人们围绕一个雄心勃勃的使命，并给他们解决有趣的问题。但是在软件行业，有很多公司都在考虑这些事情。
On the other hand, the people that you hire are proprietary.They're the one thing your competitors can’t copy. So by hiring great people, you will motivate even more people to join, and the people who’ve already joined will know you’re serious about making your company successful.
另一方面，你雇用的人是专有的。你是竞争对手无法复制的一件事。所以通过聘请伟大的人，你会激励更多的人加入，已经加入的人会知道你认真地让你的公司成功。
The type of people you hire will depend on your own unique culture and the needs of your business. But no matter what, making your team great requires that you recruit some truly special individuals. Here are some of the traits that we think separate the great from the good.
您雇用的人的类型将取决于您自己独特的文化和您的业务需求。但无论如何，让你的团队很棒，都需要你招募一些真正特别的人物。这里有一些我们认为将伟大与善良分开的特质。
“It’s very easy to let yourself panic when hiring. You need to take a step back and think about the long-term impact of hiring the wrong person. Hiring desperately for your immediate circumstances can cause long-term damage.” 招聘时，很容易让自己恐慌。你需要退后一步，考虑雇用错误的人的长期影响。为您的直接情况拼命招惹会造成长期的损害。 – MAGGIE (INTERCOM RECRUITING LEADER)
A company’s hiring process is usually a pretty good indicator of the quality of people at the company. e higher the bar, the betterthe talent, the more interesting the company.
公司的招聘流程通常是公司质量的一个很好的指标。标准越高，公司越好，越有趣。
Our VP of Engineering, Darragh, has been instrumental in teaching us what a good engineer looks like. He knew the di erence between good and not-good-enough and has an innate sense of what makes an exceptional hire – the people who everyone ghts to work with. As it turns out, these traits are just as applicable for non-engineers.
我们的工程副总裁Darragh一直在教我们一个好工程师的样子。他知道良好和不够好的差距，并且有一种固有的感觉，什么是一个特殊的雇用 - 每个人都要合作的人。事实证明，这些特征同样适用于非工程师。
They dream big and push themselves, you and your team, towards bigger achievements than you initially thought possible.
They have a growth mindset. ey crave feedback and new challenges that will push them to grow. ey persist in the face of setbacks, they see e ort as the path to mastery, and they’re inspired by and learn from the success of others.
Ambition is a ceiling to success. Great companies have huge ambition, which initially comes from the founders, but is sustained and thrives with the addition of ambitious people they hire. Ambitious and determined people ght for impact and push for greatness. ey outperform and grow faster than people who may be more talented but lack an inner drive. Bet on them, and spend your time helping ambitious people grow.
雄心是成功的上限。伟大的企业有着巨大的野心，最初来自于创始人，但是随着他们聘用的雄心勃勃的人才能够持续而蓬勃发展。雄心勃勃，坚定不移的人为影响而推动伟大。优于领先优势，成长速度更快，可能更有天赋，但缺乏内在动力。打赌他们，花时间帮助雄心勃勃的人成长。
They don’t assume anything and strip big ideas back to their first principles. ey know that greatness is achieved in 1,000 small steps. ey also have a long term vision of where the technology they own should evolve to.
他们不承担任何事情，把重大的想法摆脱第一原则。知道伟大在1000个小步骤中实现。ey也有长远的愿景，他们拥有的技术应该在哪里发展。
Thee default path for growing and evolving software is that it becomes more complex over time. Every single change will probably make your system more complex, unless the people you hire are deliberate about simplifying.
增长和发展软件的默认路径是随着时间的推移变得越来越复杂。每一次更改都可能会使您的系统更加复杂，除非您雇用的人员有意简化。
Exceptional people...help others be great 特别的人...帮助别人伟大
Great people are those that everyone wants to work with. 伟大的人是每个人都愿意合作的人
They understand that they can have more impact by helping those around them to learn, improve and thrive. 他们明白，他们可以通过帮助他们周围的人学习，改进和发展，来获得更多的影响。
They take care of the unglamorous or mundane quickly, effectively and without fuss. 他们快速，有效地照顾无烟或平凡，没有大惊小怪。
They aren’t selfish with the hard problems. They know that others need challenges to grow and they support them well, but at the same time they regularly demonstrate their ability to solve hard problems e ciently. 他们不是自私的，有困难的问题。他们知道其他人需要增长的挑战，并且他们能够很好地支持他们，但同时他们也经常表现出有能力解决困难问题的能力。
They’re good teachers. They’re patient and they adapt to support the diffenent learning styles of those around them. 他们是好老师他们有耐心，他们适应支持周围人的不同学习风格。
Companies that don’t grow, die. Companies that grow, thrive. e same is true of people and teams. Hire people that fight for growth in those around them.
不增长的公司死亡。成长壮大的公司。人和团队也是如此。雇用那些在周围的人争取成长的人。
They’re customer focused, not just technology focused. 他们以客户为中心，不仅仅是技术重点。
They’re ambitious and make sure they’re solving big valuable problems. 他们是雄心勃勃的，并确保他们解决了巨大的有价值的问题。
They weed out ine ciencies in process and communication and act like they’re spending their own money. 他们排除了流程和沟通中的缺陷，并表现为自己花钱。
A company can only scale if teams are trusted and empowered to be autonomous over their area of ownership and objectives. At any point, there are multiple ideas to explore and things to x or iterate on, but you’ve only got a small bucket of time and resources. Trust comes when you know your people will ll that bucket with the right things.
如果团队被信任并有权在自己的所有权和目标范围内自治，那么公司才能扩大规模。在任何时候，有很多想法可以探索，甚至是x或者迭代，但是你只有一小段时间和资源。信任来了，当你知道你的人将会有正确的事情。
Exceptional people...are creative and positive 卓越的人...有创造力和积极性
When things are diffcult they give everyone hope and courage. 当事情艰难的时候，他们给大家带来希望和勇气。
They encourage possibilities. Instead of saying “that will never work”, they understand the problem and what’s valuable, and give those around them options. 他们鼓励可能。他们不是说“永远不会工作”，而是理解问题，什么是有价值的，并给予他们周围的选择。
They are leaders who try to solve complex problems, not victims who blame others when they can’t. 他们是企图解决复杂问题的领导者，而不是不能责备他人的受害者。
They push for and encourage innovation both in the product they’re building and in how they’re building it. 他们推动和鼓励他们正在建立的产品以及他们的建设方式的创新。
Their positivity is balanced with healthy skepticism. They’re more focused on whether what they create works properly, than celebrating victory once it appears to work. 他们的积极性与健康的怀疑相平衡。他们更侧重于他们创造的工作是否正常，而不是庆祝胜利，一旦它似乎工作。
The default path for startups is toward failure. A team that thinks it’s going to lose, will lose. Positivity is infectious and brings out the best in people. A team that has belief that they will succeed and is constantly creative in its e orts to succeed has a chance.
启动的默认路径是失败。一个认为会失去的球队会输了。积极性是传染性的，带来最好的人。一个相信他们会成功并且不断创造性地成功的团队有机会。
How do you know someone will have an exceptional impact after you hire them? The simple answer is that you don’t. But you can look for signs during the interview process that will help you make an educated guess. 你如何知道在雇用他人后会有什么特别的影响？简单的答案就是你不知道。但您可以在采访过程中寻找特征，帮助您做出有根据的猜测。
“In the early days, it’s impossible for you to understand how much of a game changer it can be to hire truly brilliant people. It creates a momentum that attracts even more brilliant people. Great people beget great people.” 在早期，你是不可能的了解一个游戏改变者可以雇佣真正辉煌的人多少钱。它创造了一个吸引更多辉煌人的动力。伟大的人们会很好的人。 – EOGHAN (CO-FOUNDER)
Many companies try to interview for “culture fit” and the term has earned a justi ably poor reputation. Without proper training and careful execution this can easily become, “How similar is this person to me?”
许多公司试图采访“文化适应”，而且这个名词已经获得了良好的声誉。没有适当的训练和仔细的执行，这可以很容易地变成“这个人对我有多相似？
单独招聘与您当前团队相似的人员会限制您公司的能力，并导致您错过了不同的想法。你有没有人知道的文化盲点。你可能会以意想不到的方式发现自己有偏见：“候选人可能不喜欢和年轻的球队一起工作”，或者“这个工作对于这样的人来说太苛刻了”，或者“我们移动得太快了，不要以为他们在情绪上足以与我们合作。“
Hearing anything like this from your team is a clear, unambiguous signal that your process is broken. Your culture may not be very healthy either. Facebook’s excellent Managing Unconscious Bias series of videos should be a required part of training for your team, and not just for those involved in hiring.
从你的团队听到这样的一个明确的，明确的信号，你的过程是破碎的。你的文化可能不是很健康。Facebook的优秀的无意识偏倚系列视频应该是您团队培训的必要部分，而不仅仅是参与招聘的人员。
A lot of interviews – technical screeners, design mockups – are designed to be binary in their outcome. But determining how a candidate will improve your culture or identifying when they won’t is incredibly di cult, with results necessarily spread across a spectrum.
很多访谈 - 技术筛选器，设计模型 - 被设计为二进制的结果。但是确定候选人将如何改善您的文化或确定何时不会令人难以置信的邪教，结果必然会在一个频谱范围内扩散。
In the early days, you’re looking for people who can cope with uncomfortable situations. You’re moving fast in unexplored territory, so there will be upsets, setbacks and mistakes. e right people respond positively in these situations. ey identify the problem and correct it, learning from the mistake and ensuring nobody else has to learn it the hard way.
在早期，您正在寻找能够应付不舒服情况的人。你在未开发的地区快速移动，所以会有烦恼，挫折和错误。在这些情况下，正确的人应该积极响应。确定问题并进行纠正，从错误中学习，确保没有其他人难以学习。
It’s essential to tell every candidate the values that are important to your company. is isn’t a quiz show. Candidates shouldn’t have to guess what matters to you. It’s a poor interview if you’re left wondering: “Did they misunderstand my question or just answer poorly?” Explaining your values gives a candidate more information about your culture too. It should be a completely acceptable outcome for them to say: “You value that? I’m out of here!”.
告诉每个候选人对贵公司重要的价值观至关重要。是不是一个测验节目。候选人不应该猜到对你有什么重要。如果你不明白这是一个糟糕的采访，他们是否误会我的问题或只是回答不好？“解释你的价值观给候选人更多关于你的文化的信息。他们应该是一个完全可以接受的结果：“你值得吗？我离开了！“
A good approach is to ask for precise examples from their experience to help you understand how they’ll behave if they join your company. Details are important.
一个好的方法是从他们的经验中提供准确的例子，以帮助您了解他们加入公司时的表现。细节很重要。
For example, one of Intercom’s strongest values is, “Every day counts”. Our competitors are constantly improving. e market continues to expect more. We hire smart people and remove obstacles in their path, so we won’t hire people who introduce their own obstacles e.g “I knew the code was broken but it wasn’t my job to x it.” If they didn’t jump in and x it, did they tell someone it was broken? Did they suggest a way to x it? What did they do to make sure it didn’t break again?
例如，Intercom最强的一个值是“每天都在计数”。我们的竞争对手不断改进。e市场继续期待更多。我们雇用聪明的人，消除障碍，所以我们不会雇用引入自己的障碍的人，例如“我知道代码被打破了，但这不是我的工作。”如果他们没有跳进和x，它们是否告诉某人它被打破？他们建议一个办法吗？他们做了什么来确保它不会再破裂？
When your company is comprised of a handful of people in one room, everyone has to do everything by necessity. is means the first few hires you make have to run the full gamut, from product strategy, to bug xes, to marketing and more.
当您的公司由一个房间的少数人组成时，每个人都必须做好一切事情。这意味着，您必须从产品策略到bug xes，营销等方面全面运行。
A lot of startups might refer to this person as a “unicorn”. is is a misnomer. Unicorns don’t actually exist; generalists do. It is entirely reasonable to expect smart people to possess the knowledge and skills needed to think holistically across all levels of a product. In your early days, having these naturally curious and passionate people who soak up everything around them is essential.
很多初创公司可能会把这个人称为“独角兽”。是不正当的独角兽并不存在;通才做期望聪明人拥有在产品的各个层面上全面思考所需的知识和技能是完全合理的。在早期的时候，拥有这些天生好奇和热情的人吸收周围的一切是至关重要的。
In fact, curiosity is the single most important attribute for an early stage team. Without it, you’re limited by the existing skills new hires bring with them. No matter how pro cient an engineer, designer or product manager, they’ll need to learn diffenent skills on demand.
事实上，好奇心是早期队伍中最重要的一个属性。没有它，你受到新员工与他们现有技能的限制。无论工程师，设计师或产品经理如何有效，他们都需要根据需要学习不同的技能。
People who possess an insatiable curiosity will learn and adapt while pushing your team forward in ways you could never predict. When something new is required of them, they immediately research the subject, not because it’s their job, but because they’re so invested in the company’s success.
拥有不懈好奇心的人会学习和适应，同时推动您的团队前进，无法预料。当他们需要新的东西时，他们会马上研究这个问题，而不是因为这是他们的工作，而是因为他们对公司的成功进行了投资。
These generalists are the glue that holds your startup together. They know enough about a broad range of disciplines, can import ideas and influences from a variety of sources and can collaborate with everyone on their team.
这些通才是把你的创业组合在一起的胶水。他们了解广泛的学科，可以从各种来源导入想法和影响力，并可以与团队中的每个人合作。
当你成长，开始思考专家 For most companies, you eventually reach the point where having someone who knows enough really isn’t enough. As teams scale, it becomes necessary to add people who are true masters of their craft. These people devote themselves to expertise in their chosen area. They are the engineers who live and breathe infrastructure and availability and the visual designers who are obsessed with grids and color theory.
对于大多数公司，你最终达到了一个真正了解足够的人还不够的地步。随着团队规模的扩大，有必要添加真正的主人手中的人物。这些人专注于他们所选择的领域的专业知识。他们是生活和呼吸基础设施和可用性的工程师，以及痴迷于网格和颜色理论的视觉设计师。
Specialists magnify advantages. ey bring a degree of experience and domain knowledge that a generalist never could. ey dig deep into the entire range of local solutions. ey apply a level of polish and professionalism to their niche of the product that their generalist colleagues could never achieve. ey coach and advise others in their area of expertise. It’s like adding rocket fuel to your team; they make all output along one speci c dimension immeasurably better.
专家放大优势。你会带来一个通才永远不可能的一定程度的经验和领域知识。深入整个范围的本地解决方案。将他们的普通同事永远不能实现的产品的利基应用到一定程度的抛光和专业精神。并在其专业领域为其他人提供建议。这就像为你的团队添加火箭燃料;它们使得所有输出沿着一个特定的维度变得更好。
So who you hire depends the stage your company is at. At an early stage startup, you should hire generalists. As your team matures and you encounter the murkier corners of your domain, start bringing in specialists. At Intercom we currently aim for a ratio of 5:1 for generalists to specialists. That means we have people with skills broad enough to ship quality product, but narrow enough to raise the bar in the places that really matter.
那么你雇用的人取决于你们公司所在的阶段。在初期阶段，你应该聘请通才。随着你的团队的成熟，你遇到你的领域的恶棍角色，开始引进专家。在Intercom上，我们目前的目标是通用人员与专家的比例为5：1。这意味着我们拥有足够的技能，拥有足够的技能来运送优质的产品，但足够狭窄的地方可以提供真正重要的地方。