The hiring tactics of successful millionaire founders: 5 hiring tips and tricks
If you run a company, you’ve probably been told a million times that you need to hire A+ players. And it’s true.
But how on Earth do you find these A+ players?
And even when you do, how do you convince them to join your mission?
Here at Gun, we know a thing or two about hiring. We help companies of all sizes – from Fortune 500s to startups – hire the best tech talent.
But rather than reveal all our secrets in this post, we thought we’d lean on the hiring tactics of two successful millionaire founders.
These founders have shown time and time again how to build successful businesses that A+ players support.
Before we dive into their hiring tactics, let me introduce them to you.
Introducing Sam and Shaan
Sam Parr and Shaan Puri are American entrepreneurs who’ve made millions of dollars from online businesses.
Back in 2019, Shaan sold his startup to Twitch for millions of dollars, while CRM giant Hubspot acquired Sam’s newsletter business for multiple eight figures in 2021.
Now, they’re the hosts of one of the world’s most popular business podcasts – My First Million. Every week, they brainstorm business ideas and interview some of the world’s most inspiring entrepreneurs.
In this recent episode, they share their hiring tactics that have helped them build successful businesses.
Here are those hiring tactics.
Hiring tactic #1: Hire fewer people
Before we jump into the super tactical tips, Sam shares his overarching philosophy when it comes to building a business.
He shares it in the context of building a media company and hiring ad sales people, but it applies to all business:
“You could run your media company a few different ways […]
“You could pay them [ad sales people] $60K/year, give them a quota of only $400K, and they make $105K when they hit their on-target earnings. Or you could go hire someone who you’re going to pay $200K base plus a higher commission and their expectation is they’re going to sell $2M or $3M worth of stuff […]
“Typically, those people who are more competent and capable I find are more enjoyable to be around […] I’m building a business that hires less people who I pay more because I think that setup is more enjoyable.”
– Sam Parr
Takeaway: Hire fewer people but pay them more.
If you’re looking to hire the very best tech talent, we can help you with that. 70% of our currently engaged developers have over 10 years of experience.
Hiring tactic #2: Use recruiters
We promise we’re not just selling our services!
Shaan has this to say about working with recruiters:
“I used to take pride in just recruiting myself – hunting – and I would just be like, ‘I’m going to find people, I’m going to message them, I’m going to cold email them, I’m going to convince them, and I’m going to interview them […]
“Now, I hire recruiters for anything […] It just saves a ton of time […]
“Yeah, you pay the commission when you hire the person, but hiring a great person faster is totally worth it […] You pay a percentage of their first-year salary and pay them 30-days after they join, but if they don’t make it 3 months, you get your credits back.”
At Gun, we offer flexible retainers based on your needs, the project, and the developers’ salary expectations. You’ll see the total price you pay upfront on developers’ profiles.
There are no hidden extras.
Hiring tactic #3: Paid tests instead of interviews
If you’re doing the hiring yourself, this one trick will save you so time:
“I’ll spend 3-4 hours creating a paid test.
“I’ll create a doc that says, ‘Here’s the brief […] I’ll pay you to spend a day on this, because I want to see what you do […] I’d rather just see your work than hear you tell me that you’re good at work […]
“In the end, that saves me a ton of time.”
At Gun, you can hire talent on a full-time, part-time, or contract-to-hire basis.
Of the three, contract-to-hire is the favorite among our clients and developers. Contract-to-hire lets you roll a developer onto your project to see if they’re a good fit before hiring full-time.
Because we do all the vetting for our clients, you don’t have to worry about doing paid tests or interviews. Still, it’s good to know this stuff, right?
Hiring tactic #4: Reference checks
Once again, if you work with Gun, you don’t have to worry about reference checks.
We do this for you.
But if you’re going through the hiring process yourself, here’s how Sam does these checks:
“The biggest thing that’s changed with me with hiring is reference checks […]
“For example, I messaged someone two days ago and I was like, ‘Hey, so I’m thinking about hiring this one person. Do you think they’d be decent at managing a small team?’ He says, ‘I don’t think they could manage anything, let alone themselves.’ That was the reply. My reply to that was, ‘Alright. Thanks.’ I didn’t hire that person […]
“Reference checks are so important and I do two things differently. 1) I always ask for three, and 2) I always call those three and ask them, ‘Who else did this person work with?’ […]
“I’m trying to figure out who I can speak to that they didn’t provide […] The point is, I want to hear about the bad sh*t about that person, and I want to find out if I’m okay with the bad stuff […]
“I ask, ‘On a scale of 1-10, how good are they?’ They typically say 8 or 9. And then I say, ‘Alright, how can they be a perfect 10? What’s missing?’ And that’s typically when they’ll tell me bad stuff […]”
– Sam Parr
Hiring tactic #5: Learn from Chipotle
Early in this career, Shaan was trying to build the “Chipotle of sushi”, and he got the chance to speak with Chipotle’s COO at the time.
Here’s what he learned:
“And he was like, ‘Well, think of it this way. Your entire product is in the hands of somebody who makes $9/hour and doesn’t want to be there. Everything you’re telling me right now about how great the user experience is? That’s true for restaurant one. It might be true for restaurants two and three. By restaurant four, it’s no longer true, as you’re not there any more to do all those amazing things and give that amazing user experience.’
“He said,’The trick in this business is whoever can figure out how to get minimum wage employees to give somebody a good experience. You get to win. That’s the winning condition.
“‘At Chipotle, we ended up doing a bunch of things to try and improve that […] For example, if you’re a manager or Chipotle and anyone you manage becomes a manager of a restaurant, you get $10,000 – whether you work at that company or not […]’ They also changed the titles of managers to restaurateurs, or something like that, and they paid them above market […]”
Meet available, vetted talent today
The hiring process can be grueling and stressful – but it doesn’t have to be.
Hopefully Sam and Shaan’s hiring tactics will make your life easier.
And if you’re looking for the very best tech talent, we can help. Contact us today to see what we can do for you!
