If you’re hiring for a new type of role for the first time (i.e. you’ve never hired or managed that function before), my biggest recommendation is to do “calibration calls” before you write a JD, hire a recruiting firm, or anything else.
Maybe you’re a first time founder… it’s highly unlikely you’ve hired a VP Finance or VP People before. So how are you supposed to know what good looks like or how to hire for the position? And beyond that, you need to also figure out the scope you’re looking for. As a simple example, there are VP Finance candidates who are more strategic, and some who are more executional. There are VP People who are more recruiting focused, and others who are more culture/HRBP focused. And the list goes on.
And even once you do figure out the scope of the role you need, you likely don’t know what great looks like. Again, calibration calls come to the rescue for this.
So… what is a “Calibration Call” and how do you do them to optimize for learning what ‘great’ looks like?
First, find 2-3 people you can talk to who are exceptional at the role you're hiring for. Of course - this begs the question… how do you know who is exceptional?
That’s where investors or founder friends can help.
Ask them “Who is the best <role> you’ve worked with or seen?”, and see if they can make an introduction for you… you likely will want to make it clear you’re not trying to poach your friends’ employee, but rather, just want to learn from him or her.
Then try to set up quick, 30-minute calls with at least 2-3 of these people to see how they operate. Start by giving context on your company. For example:“We’re a 1-year-old company growing quickly. Our business is operationally heavy, with meaningful revenue in, and significant payouts out. We just raised a Series A and are now at ~$2M net ARR. I’m hiring our first finance leader, and want to understand how great people approach this role.”
Then ask questions that help you understand what they do all day, and what you think will or won’t be pertinent to your company. Here are some example questions:How they actually spend their time
- Walk me through a typical day and week in your role.
- How do you split your time across [X, Y, Z] areas?
- What do you own vs outsource?
What the role really requires
- What prior experiences or qualifications actually matter in this seat?
- What skills are overrated?
- I’m trying to understand the different types of <role> that are out there. What have you seen that is different between your focus areas or skillsets vs your colleagues’ at other companies?
- After they answer, you can follow up with a question like: When do you think a company is a better fit for someone like you vs a different profile of candidate who focuses on one of the other areas you mentioned?
How the function evolves
- What have you seen matter most at our stage when hiring for this role?
- Do you usually see <role> feel a need to hire a bunch of folks under them at our stage? If not, when does that start happening?
- What starts to matter more as the company scales, as it pertains to this role? For example, if it turns out I need to layer the person I hire in 1-2 years as we scale, what do you usually see are the reasons, assuming they’re performing well?
- What stops mattering or gets outsourced over time, if anything?
Judgment and edge cases
- What are the top 2-3 things you would look for in a candidate if you were hiring this role yourself?
- When you’ve seen <role> hires fail in the past, why does it usually happen? What are early warning signs that somebody might not work out?
- What special projects do you take on outside standard processes?
Don’t be overly formulaic and treat this as a “checklist” interview; let the conversation move organically. When the person you’re speaking with says something interesting (or, conversely, generic), dig deeper. Don’t let side comments go, ask for clarity.
If they mention, “You need someone comfortable with ambiguity,” you can ask follow up questions like: “What’s an example of what that looks like in practice, maybe from your background?”
If they give you a laundry list of success traits, try asking: “If you think of the top 1% person you’ve worked with in this function, what did they do differently?”
If they casually say, “I’d never hire someone from CPG for this role”, ask them why that is, or when they’ve seen that profile fail, and what happened.
After 2-3 calibrating conversations, patterns should start to emerge around:
- The different shapes of candidates you can hire for this role
- How they talk about tradeoffs
- Where they focus disproportionate attention
- The vocabulary they use
- What they consider “table stakes” vs strategic
All of the work above should give you a much better understanding of the type of role you’re hiring for, the JD scope, what to emphasize in your interviews, and what to look for.
Calibration reduces “luck” in hiring. And when you’re building a function for the first time, it’s critical to try and understand beforehand what excellence looks like in the seat.
If you invest 60-90 minutes doing this early on, it changes how you source candidates, how you run the interviews, and how you think about success for someone in the role.
Bonus – your calibration references may have great networks in their functional space, and could be helpful sourcing candidates later on!