How to get hired at small companies without standardized hiring processes
- Figure out who the decision maker is
- Figure out the key levers of value
- Identify how you can use your skills to assist the key levers of value
- Demonstrate value before joining
This advice is less relevant at companies with standardized hiring processes.
e.g. for a venture firm
- the decision maker for hiring someone is likely going to be the partner that you’ll work most closely with
- the key levers of value are 1) do the best deals come to us 2) do we find and chase great deals that we’d otherwise miss 3) do we pick well 4) do we help companies we partner with
- picking 2) is immediately actionable. study the deals that the partner you’d want to work with has done, all of them! try and figure out how they sourced them if possible, and what their investment thesis was if they talk about it. now go and find 1–3 stage appropriate companies that you *honestly* believe are worth looking into and would put yourself on the line as being worth consideration. how can you find these? the best would be through proprietary network. another option would be to spend time trawling yclist.com, mattermark, etc looking for companies that might be gearing up to raise / running out of cash
- send them a note, perhaps noting that you looked into their past deals, and found a company or two that they might be interested. either send the companies in the first email or ask them if you can send them over email (of course you can send them over, but it can sometimes be helpful to give them an easy way to engage over email before you send the companies)
