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In This Market, It’s a Great Time for a Mutual “Try Before You Buy”
Why Some Smart Startups Are Putting (Paid) Projects Ahead of Employment Offers
80–90% of startups shouldn’t follow the advice I’m about to give. Instead these companies are better off just investing resources in improving their hiring via candidate flow/sourcing, interview process, offer communication/negotiation and closing experience. Being at least A- in those areas will put you way ahead of most of your competition.
But for the rest of you I’m going to suggest it’s a great time to put ‘try before you buy’ experiments into place to help potential candidates learn about you, and you about them, not through an interview slate but through actual work together. Yes, I’m talking about short-term paid projects ranging from a few days to a few weeks. Especially at early stage startups I’m convinced that while this is higher risk, it also sharpens the construction of the founding team, especially when you’re hiring people you haven’t worked with before.
Looking back I wrote something in 2012 about generally getting beyond the interview. In similarly titled, Try Before You Buy: Why Smart People & Smart Companies Are Ditching the Interview:
Once is a coincidence, twice is a trend? Increasingly I’m hearing about talented folks and sought after startups ditching the interview process as final arbiter of employment and instead opting for some sort of ‘try before you buy’ arrangement. If structured in a clear and respectful way, it makes perfect sense and can also serve to activate more passive candidates.
Some recent examples:
Startup pursuing executive from larger tech company. Mutual interest but exec just. can’t. make. that final decision to leave comfy environment. Company offers to bring him on as an advisor so they can get to know each other first.
Marketing manager tells startup that instead of discussing fulltime gig, she wants to pick a specific project she can work on for them over next few weeks and if it goes well, start the broader conversation about a job.
Product manager knows founders of a later-stage startup pretty well. He has an idea for a way to expand their product line…
