It wasn’t until I read Patty McCord’s book Powerful that I realized how meaningful a strong people ops partnership could be. Compensation plans that reflect your business goals? Cultural practices that reflect the behaviors you want to hire and fire for? Benefits that give your team what they want, but don’t cost you $$$? A great people ops hire can bring you all of this.
Plus, it’s January, which means you’re likely hand-wringing about tracking to those Q1 OKRs you spent all that time on in December. Nothing like hearing from a seasoned people ops pro to set us straight.
Mary Strebinger has twice been the first talent & people ops hire, with over 12+ years experience inside Seed through Series C startups. You’re likely a customer of a team she’s supported: Who Gives a Crap, Patch, and Vow, not to mention Glossier, Casper, and Dollar Shave Club. Today, she works part-time with a variety of early stage teams.
Mary had me cracking up, as she’s a true delight to talk to, and I know you’ll enjoy learning from her too.
Drop 1. Skills based hiring is the ticket in our newly capital constrained environment
We’re coming out of a really strange time in the VC world. It was easy to get capital. But now, boards and leadership are looking at teams to be efficient and effective with their human plans and the capital they’ve been given… If you couldn’t get an FTE tomorrow, could you get a consultant? Is this actually a project? A tool? Is it a capacity problem or capability problem?
Take it back to your team:
-
As an early stage startup, you likely don’t need (or have the budget for) 3 hires in one function. What skills already need to be in place on someone’s first day? What skills are you open to teaching?
-
Considering drawing a pie chart: what percent of what you need is recruiting support vs what percent is onboarding vs performance reviews? Can you hire full-time for some skills and part-time or contract for others?
-
Do your job descriptions read as background requirements (ie, Ivy League, 10+ years experience), or do they read as skills (ie, Recruited ML engineers in India, Owned a high volume B2B sales pipeline where you closed 10+ deals a month, Built data science foundations from scratch)
Drop 2. Gen Z wants to hear about your mission
Millennials and Gen Z are already the majority of the workforce, and they’re looking for mission driven companies… So you don’t need to throw a flashy title or robust equity package or really high comp at top talent right now. The intangibles are just as important, if not more important.
Take it back to your team:
-
You have a big mission to accomplish. You likely have values, cultural practices, and big reasons behind why you started your company in the first place. Are they written? Are they published online?
-
How might you train your hiring panel to tell the story of your mission with the same fervor that you do?
Drop 3. Post-Covid engagement is… not great
68% of employees right now are disengaged, and a little over 20% of them are loud quitting! That’s a really small percentage of people who are ra-ra… Start measuring engagement, and then create a feedback loop for your team: show and tell them what you’re doing to fix things.
Take it back to your team:
-
Do you measure employee engagement? Mary advocates for surveys every 6 months, and more informal pulse checks with managers every week.
-
What do you do with your engagement surveys or pulse checks? Is there a feedback loop? Do you showcase the data, and then showcase what you’re doing to address those things?
-
How might you coach your leaders to address their team’s survey results with more heart-ful and human conversations?