The paradoxical power of a formidable filter
We're like Match.com for Hiring! Narrowly!
If you’ve ever even sniffed at the idea of starting a software company, you’ve run smack dab into Lean Canvas.
Lean Canvas is a business-plan-on-a-page framework that helps startups map out key facets of a business model to test hypotheses quickly. It’s the antidote to the more prevalent “if you build it, they will come” framework. One of the facets of Lean Canvas is developing a simple phrase called the “High-level Concept.”
So, a few months back, on a far-too-cool Montreal morn, inside a far-too-cool coffee shop, my co-founders and I were staring at the Lean Canvas and this specific Truffle1 quandary:
What is your high-level concept? Use an ‘X to Y’ analogy.
Even with the recent caffeine infusion, “TikTok for Hiring” felt a little too frenetic. And absent a binge-hiring angle, “Netflix for Recruiting” was out. How ‘bout dating apps? Grindr for Sourcing?
On the face of it, dating apps do seem like an interesting analogy. You’ve got a marketplace of seekers and finders just like a job board. You’ve got criteria matching that resembles the collision of job description and resume. And you’ve got a workflow that takes you from application to… marriage?
But, in my opinion, the chilling power dynamic within recruiting causes the analogy to break down. Unlike dating apps with semi-mutual rejection dynamics, job candidates more often get the short-end of the stick—as if a polyamorous partner casually discards their paramour with the flick of an auto-generated “We wish you the best” email2. Also, paramour, please check your spam folder.
Undeterred, our team continued to brainstorm X to Y options until we were distracted by a lovely lunch of smoked meat. And I happily moved on with my anti-dating-app-for-lean-canvas-high-level-concept-analogy life.
That is, until last week.
…
For those of you who listen to The New York Times The Daily podcast, you’ll know that—in between “Hmms”—they sneak in cross-promotion each week with the “Sunday Read”. And that particular morning’s Sunday Read was the Maggie Jones article “Online Dating After 50 Can Be Miserable. But It’s Also Liberating.”
It’s a genuine, careful, charming article so worth a read if up your alley (or even if not!). But, around the 15 minute mark, the cold-hearted slug in me latched onto a specific tactical strategy somewhat as an aside to the main content: Filters. Fearless filters. Confident filters. Counterintuitive filters.
To the transcript (emphasis mine)!
For Young, trying to figure out how to date better and more efficiently started one night three years ago… She did a Google search for “How do you find a needle in a haystack?” The answer: Burn the haystack to the ground. Only the metal needle will remain.
She decided to try it as a dating method. Instead of widening her filters and her tastes, which some dating advisers suggest, she became choosier about men and their styles of communication… She also revised her profile to “repel” some men while, she hoped, drawing those who were better matches. To that end, she wrote a Top 10 list of her dating rules, which included no hookups and no messages of “Hey,” “You up?” or “What’s up?” And no 55-year-old man who says he “wants kids someday.” She also posted what she likes to do — bike, hike, write humor (emphasizing that, while it’s common to say a version of “I’m funny” in profiles, she has actually published satire). She ended with: “I can’t be attracted to anyone who doesn’t know their homonyms. I’m sorry.”
She conceded the last line might sound elitist, but it was accurate. In the next five days, while fewer men “liked” her, the ones who did suited her more… As she wrote in one article about the strategy, “Dating is a numbers game, but the typical goal — to be widely appealing and meet as many men as possible — is wasting women’s time and leaving us frustrated and demoralized.” She advises women to be businesslike in their approach. Check apps no more than twice a day. Make sure your language is specific. No “I love to laugh” — who doesn’t love to laugh? If you want to get married again, she says, don’t be afraid to say so….
If this is how we’re gonna do dating apps, then sign me up for “like Match.com for hiring.” Let’s analogize:
Essentially, hiring—good hiring—is matchmaking. For skill and behavior and culture and fit.
I’d suggest that better than burning, the best solution to our predicament is to simply not bring sewing needles to a hayride. Prevention is better than the cure.
How to eliminate all that hay? Have a strong point of view—both repel and attract simultaneously. If you’re going to write a love letter as job description,—and you should3—be hyper-specific. After all, you’re trying to find “The One.”
Like avoiding “loving to laugh,” skip wordy, meaningless tropes: “We’re looking for a passionate, self-starting team player with a strong work ethic, who thrives in a fast-paced environment and can think outside the box while wearing many hats.”
Speaking of homonyms: dating, amirite?4
So, you’re saying you want me to build narrow, hardened filters meant to reduce applications and repel candidates? Yikes! Much like the ol’ saying, “No one was fired for buying IBM”, no recruiter was fired for receiving too many job applications.
But narrow filter you should!5
In a recent
podcast, Spotify COO, Kaz Nejatian talks to on a somewhat extreme filter he proposed early in his tenure and why, regardless of tactic, this kind of things matters so much to company culture and trajectory and employee experience (emphasis mine):Kaz Nejatian: In my first year, I tried to convince our recruiting team to put Shopify's career page behind API. Like I would not have a UX, like you could not go to Shopify.com/careers. You just have to literally use the API. My argument back then was if you can't figure out how to do that, you probably shouldn't work in software. It's actually a thing I actually still do a great deal of.
Harry Stebbings: Do you think that's an arrogant stance?
Kaz Nejatian: Sure, man, of course. I like it personally, but I'm like, you know, in a labor market, it's incredibly competitive. I'm glad we didn't do it in hindsight. But to be clear, our goal is not to make it easier for people to work at Shopify. That's not the goal. The goal is to find people who are incredibly mission aligned and care about the thing we do and the way we do it and make sure they have the career of their lives here. It's different. Like this is a professional sports team. It's not PV soccer. My goal isn't for everyone to play. That's not the goal. Like I don't want it to make it easy to register and show up and play. I want exceptionally good people who care about this thing to spend their time here.
Target the person you really want—the one who aligns with your company’s culture, the one who will be a perfect fit for their specific team. Dictate requirements—strict, unfudgeable requirements—not preferences dressed up in requirement’s clothing. Seek to repel candidates who aren’t going to be a fit—not because we don’t like them—but simply because they’re not a fit for this particular position at this particular time.
The good eggs out there—the ones you want hire, the ones who come into an interview having done their research, the ones who also have a point of view—will love you for this.
Measure twice, cut once. Quality over quantity. Less is more.
And love to laugh.
P.S. Where did we actually end up on that Montreal morn? For our first iteration, we kinda liked “Hello Fresh for Hiring”. Select the ingredients custom skills & traits & culture you prefer. Truffle will pre-portion and deliver your meal candidates to you. You cook interview the recipe 10 best people. Truffle remembers your preferences for your next order job post. Stop all that menial, time-consuming prep work; live your best life.
Retcon alert! We didn’t know it would be called Truffle at the time of this exercise; this would actually happen later in the day.
Not suggesting ghosting and its ilk doesn’t happen with dating apps of course, just more par-for-the-course candidate experience for hiring.
I’m really doubling down on this analogy now!
Also ‘app’, with the meaning entrée in France, but not entrée in the US.
We can help. :)