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“If you can’t recruit, then you can’t be a manager.” Jack Gifford, the founding CEO of Maxim Integrated Products, said that to his management team over and over again as he built Maxim into one of the most successful companies in its space. The key, as I look back on my experience working at Maxim, was Gifford’s obsession, especially in the early days of the company, on hiring.
So, it’s no surprise that I took Gifford’s message to heart when I started my own company. the highest priority we had was building our team. Here’s my learnings based on my own experience, and the experience I’ve had working with other startup CEOs:
A. Recruiting starts with you, the CEO.
There’s an old saying about the responsibilities of a startup CEO. It goes, “You should recruit, recruit, recruit, and you should sell, sell, sell.” The nice thing about this old saying is it’s true.
Your primary job, especially when you’re just starting up, is recruiting the initial team. In my case I spent more time on recruiting than I did anything else.
I either directly recruited engineers through my network, or I helped close the engineers that my co-founder and VP Engineering, Jeroen, recruited. Plus, I helped recruit and hire the other members of the…
