Recruiting may be the most important job of any founder.It’s also the skill that, as a founder, you’re least likely to have when you’re starting a company.That’s not your fault—not many people who start companies come from a recruiting background. But ignorance of the importance of recruiting—and the need to get good at it quickly—tends to lead to problems.At Dover, we’ve talked with hundreds of founders who are navigating the job market from the other side of the equation for the first time. And we’ve noticed some trends in terms of the kinds of misconceptions founders tend to make that get in their way:They get over-invested in an ultra-narrow set of criteria that don’t tell you much about how the candidate would perform at a startup.They over-optimize for efficiency by only considering active job searchers—even though their ideal candidate might not be looking for a new job.They go on and on in interviews about their vision and themselves—and completely forget to ask the candidate how they’re looking to level up in their career.Here are the most important yet counterintuitive realities founders need to internalize about startup hiring.
