[GCA10]

Hire people on the way up.

Hire people who are going to do their best work ever, for you, after having partially but not fully mastered everything you want, via their previous jobs. It's easy to evaluate a resume. It's harder -- but not impossible -- to assess potential. Working inside a big tech company for six years, I saw that PM hires were done almost entirely on pedigree: find me another Stanford grad. These tended to produce a lot of fast exits as well as some comically bad and totally predictable fails.

Engineering hires were done on hunger, drive, scrappiness (and networks). They fared better.

[jcheng]

Do you have any advice for how to suss out someone's hunger, drive, and scrappiness during the hiring process?

[VirusNewbie]

I suspect part of the reason big tech has an arduous interview process is it approximates both intelligence and hunger/drive.

Even very smart people aren't going to waltz in and be able to code fast enough to solve harder interview problems without practicing.

So, people who can pass algorithmic interviews are smart people who also had the hunger/drive to study up/practice some.

[rachofsunshine]

Those things are fakeable, but there are plenty of people who will aggressively signal a LACK of hunger. It's more of a negative predictor than a positive one.

[GCA10]

Verifiable evidence of them learning key new skills on their own, building passion projects (ideally somewhat comparable to what your startup needs), taking work to the finish line, etc.

Press (politely) for extra details via follow-up questions. Make it easy for the legitimate doers to share specifics of what they've done and learned, while the posers get vague in a hurry and change the subject.