Build Your SaaS

Adam Wathan: how small startups hire employees (Tailwind CSS)

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How do founders of small bootstrapped companies hire new employees?

Adam Wathan got over 1600 people who applied for two new roles at Tailwind Labs (a small team of six people). They ended up hiring two people, but neither of them actually applied. This wasn't how Adam expected (or hoped) this process would go. There were lots of surprising takeaways and lessons learned from the whole experience.

"If you figure we spend 5 minutes on every single application, that was like 133 hours straight reading applications. Processing these job applications was basically my full time job for 2 months." – Adam Wathan

Links:

  • Hackers Inc podcast
  • Tailwind job opening announcement
  • Design Engineer job posting
  • Staff Software Engineer job posting
  • Reddit: 11 months of job searching visualized

Have feedback on this episode?

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Timestamps:

  • (03:40) - What's the size of Transistor and when did you last hire?
  • (05:24) - How did you meet or find your employees?
  • (07:12) - Adam's process for hiring
  • (12:44) - The energy required to process applications
  • (17:32) - What got people in to the 100 list?
  • (21:03) - Did Adam get any videos in applications?
  • (24:49) - Previous employment was a good indicator
  • (30:16) - Painting a picture of what the position looks like
  • (32:02) - The kinds of people who applied
  • (34:52) - How did the application process work out?
  • (38:52) - The kinds of questions we asked applicants
  • (42:25) - Does a great conversation impact a hiring decision or not?
  • (49:24) - Does having the position open in public help?
  • (51:36) - How Adam was connected to the people they hired
  • (59:31) - The importance of conference conversations
  • (01:02:20) - Finding ways to share your work in public
  • (01:06:11) - The process does work... just not this time
  • (01:12:30) - Could I ever get comfortable with a 70% success rate?
  • (01:20:53) - Bringing in someone you knew vs a fan
  • (01:26:45) - Keeping a tab in different areas to pull from

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