How did Holly Liu decide to leave Google and start Lever?

Leaving Google was not a sudden decision to found a company, but rather a desire to grow and experience more. She spent time on personal projects and worked with early-stage teams, essentially testing potential co-founder relationships before officially starting Lever.

What was the core insight behind founding Lever?

The founders observed that in 2012, talent was increasingly the driver of competitive differentiation and innovation across all industries, including those transforming into knowledge work. They saw a shift from long-term employment to shorter job tenures, highlighting the critical need for effective talent management.

How does Lever approach hiring and differentiate itself from large tech companies?

Lever emphasizes proactive recruiting and using its unique culture as an offensive strategy. They focus on creating a compelling candidate experience by highlighting what it's like to work at the company.

What is 'motivation fit' in the context of startup hiring?

Motivation fit assesses whether a candidate's career goals align with the company's stage and trajectory. It involves understanding what currently motivates them, what they wish to do more of, and what they are seeking in their next role and team.

What is the best way for startups to handle remote work hiring?

While hiring remotely opens up a global talent pool, startups must intentionally build a culture that supports remote work as a first-class citizen, focusing on communication, information flow, and overcoming the loss of informal 'tribal knowledge'.

How should startups write job postings to attract talent?

Instead of traditional job descriptions, startups should use 'impact descriptions' that focus on the results and outcomes candidates are expected to achieve. This approach attracts top talent and encourages applications from non-traditional backgrounds.

What is the biggest roadblock to making hiring more inclusive?

A significant roadblock is the expectation that software alone can solve inclusivity issues without addressing the need for people to change their own behaviors and confronting underlying assumptions and biases.

How can a startup effectively build an inclusive culture from the beginning?

Prioritize making the culture inclusive first. This involves being conscious of cultural 'surface areas' like holiday schedules or office chores, fostering dialogue, and empowering the team to take action on issues as they arise.

Key Moments

Startup Hiring Advice from Lever CEO Sarah Nahm with Holly Liu

Y Combinator

Science & Technology5 min read59 min video

Jul 10, 2019|12,387 views|197|7

YC Y Combinator Sarah Nahm Lever Hiring Recruiting Inclusion Culture Podcast Interview Diversity Diversity and Inclusion

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Key Moments

TL;DR

Startup founder Sarah Nahm shares insights on hiring, culture, and diversity from her experience at Lever.

Key Insights

A founder's primary job is recruiting and building a strong team.

Proactive and relationship-based recruiting is crucial for startups.

Focus on 'impact descriptions' over traditional job descriptions for more inclusive hiring.

Cultivating an inclusive culture is essential before scaling diverse hiring.

Developing a shared language and framework for discussing differences aids inclusion.

Founder's own journey and mindset significantly shape company culture and hiring practices.

THE NONLINEAR PATH TO FOUNDING

Sarah Nahm's journey to becoming a founder and CEO of Lever was not a direct one. Growing up in Birmingham, Alabama, her early interests leaned towards social justice, and upon attending Stanford, she was unfocused, initially considering design consulting. The rise of accessible technology and seeing peers take entrepreneurial leaps influenced her, but her path still meandered through a unique role as a speechwriter for Marissa Mayer at Google, which she describes as a crash course in creating something from nothing and learning about leadership.

DESIGN THINKING AS A FOUNDATIONAL SKILL

Nahm emphasizes the applicability of design thinking to entrepreneurship. She views her company, Lever, as a product that requires user research, with employees and customers serving as users. The process of understanding user needs and translating them into a clear strategy is fundamental to her leadership. This design-centric approach, she believes, equips individuals with a unique skill set highly relevant to building and leading organizations, suggesting more designers should pursue founding roles.

THE FOUNDING OF LEVER AND EARLY CHALLENGES

Leaving Google was a decision driven by a desire for broader experience rather than an immediate plan to start a company. The path to founding Lever involved a period of exploring different ideas and, critically, "trying out" potential co-founders to ensure team cohesion. The initial two and a half years were spent defining the problem and achieving product-market fit, with a significant pivot involving discarding an initial product based on user feedback and returning to core fundamentals, guided by a commitment to customer accountability.

STRATEGIC HIRING IN A COMPETITIVE MARKET

In today's talent market, startups must be highly strategic to compete with larger companies. Nahm advocates for proactive recruiting, treating hiring as a core business strategy rather than a passive process. This involves actively reaching out to potential candidates through networks, LinkedIn, and other platforms, and nurturing those relationships over time. She highlights that proactively sourced candidates are hired significantly faster and encourages founders to empower their teams to share authentic stories about why they are passionate about the company.

MOTIVATION FIT AND BEHAVIORAL INTERVIEWING

Assessing motivation fit is presented as a critical early stage in Lever's hiring process. This involves asking targeted questions about career aspirations, meaningful past decisions, and desired future experiences. Nahm stresses the importance of listening for an individual's comfort with ambiguity and their genuine understanding of 'impact.' Furthermore, she champions behavioral interviewing, specifically mentioning the "career trajectory" method (inspired by Topgrading), which involves methodically reviewing a candidate's past career to identify patterns of success and failure relevant to the company's needs.

NAVIGATING REMOTE WORK AND CULTURE

The shift towards remote work presents both opportunities and challenges. While it expands the talent pool and can offer competitive advantages, companies must intentionally build a culture that supports distributed teams. This includes refining communication, knowledge sharing, and meeting structures. Nahm notes Lever's relatively late adoption of remote work, emphasizing the importance of first building a strong, co-located culture. Founders must consider the cultural trade-offs and prepare for how remote work will impact team dynamics and information flow.

CRAFTING IMPACT DESCRIPTIONS FOR INCLUSIVITY

Lever has transitioned from traditional job descriptions to "impact descriptions." These focus on the achievements and outcomes a role is expected to deliver, rather than just required skills. This approach not only attracts top talent but remarkably increases diversity by welcoming candidates from non-traditional backgrounds. By articulating what needs to be achieved, Lever invites individuals to envision how their unique skills can contribute, fostering a more inclusive and effective hiring process that values diverse perspectives.

BUILDING AN INCLUSIVE CULTURE FROM DAY ONE

Addressing diversity and inclusion, Nahm identifies a key roadblock: the misconception that software alone can solve the problem without human behavioral change. She stresses that fostering an inclusive culture should precede scaling diverse hiring. This involves creating structural elements like diverse employee resource groups (ERGs) that inform policy, and developing a shared language for discussing differences. For a five-person company, simple actions like rotating chores can be a starting point, while larger companies might re-evaluate cultural facets like holiday schedules.

THE CHALLENGE OF TECHNICAL-NONTECHNICAL STEREOTYPES

Nahm discusses the prevalent stereotype in Silicon Valley that devalues 'non-technical' roles. Lever actively works to dismantle this by running training programs, such as 'I'm Technical and So Are You,' to empower all employees. The company believes that both technical and non-technical team members need to understand customer needs, value propositions, and go-to-market strategies. This shared understanding, fostered through open dialogue and accessible training, breaks down artificial barriers and enhances overall company performance.

FACILITATING OPEN CONVERSATIONS ABOUT DIFFERENCE

Creating a culture where open conversations about differences can occur is vital. Lever employs strategies like new hire onboarding sessions on diversity and inclusion, and utilizing personality assessments (like color-coded systems) to provide a neutral language for discussing varied working styles. This shared framework allows employees to express their perspectives without resorting to stereotypes, fostering a sense of empowerment and shared ownership culture that is crucial for long-term success and scalability. These initiatives encourage collective responsibility for the company's cultural evolution.

THE FOUNDER'S ROLE IN SHAPING CULTURE

Ultimately, founders have a unique advantage in early-stage companies to intentionally shape culture and inclusion. Nahm emphasizes that while founders won't have all the answers, enabling dialogue and empowering teams to take action is paramount. A "bottom-up" approach, where cultural initiatives are driven by the team, fosters collective ownership. By planting the seed of inclusion early, founders can create a self-reinforcing system that pays dividends as the company scales, ensuring that diversity and inclusion are integral to the company's identity.

Mentioned in This Episode

●Software & Apps

●Companies

●Organizations

●Concepts

●People Referenced

Startup Hiring and Culture Best Practices

Practical takeaways from this episode

Do This

Prioritize and invest heavily in hiring; it's a core strategy for startups.

Proactively recruit by going outbound, leveraging networks and platforms like LinkedIn, GitHub, and meetups.

Nurture relationships with potential candidates over the long term.

Help your team find their authentic voice to share passion for the company's mission.

Use impact descriptions in job postings to attract top talent and welcome diverse backgrounds.

Ensure your company culture is inclusive *before* focusing heavily on diverse demographics.

Create shared language and tools (like personality assessments) to facilitate open conversations about differences.

Build a culture that encourages questioning, dialogue, and action on important issues.

Understand that founders' number one job is recruiting.

Avoid This

Don't rely solely on job postings and waiting for applicants to apply.

Don't rush to solutions; focus on defining the problem and listening to customers.

Don't buy into the stereotype of 'technical' vs. 'non-technical' people; foster cross-disciplinary understanding.

Don't expect software alone to solve diversity and inclusion issues; people need to change.

Don't assume a majority demographic in leadership means you can't champion D&I.

Don't neglect the importance of office chores or holiday schedules as cultural surface areas.

Common Questions

Holly Liu grew up in Birmingham, Alabama, and studied design at Stanford. She initially thought she would go into design consulting, but ended up having a diverse early career at Google, including working as a speechwriter and on the Chrome team.

Topics

Leadership Mindset & Self-Improvement Business & Entrepreneurship Company Culture Talent Acquisition Startup Hiring Early Stage Startups Diversity And Inclusion Founder Journey Career & Skills Recruiting Strategies

Mentioned in this video

People

Holly Liu

Co-founder of Lever, discussing her journey from design consulting to founding a company, and her insights on startup hiring, culture, and diversity.

Marissa Mayer

Holly Liu's first job at Google was as a speechwriter specifically for her.

Sundar Pichai

Led the Chrome initiative at Google during Holly Liu's time there.

Nate Smith

Co-founder of Lever, who built up the engineering organization, with a high percentage of his team being proactively sourced.

Jennifer Kim

An early employee at Lever who runs the blog 'Inclusion at Work' and helped develop diversity and inclusion training.

Locations

Birmingham, Alabama

Holly Liu's hometown, from which she felt far removed from Silicon Valley.

Bay Area

The location where Lever faced a tight talent market, necessitating strong hiring practices.

Tahoe

A location where the Lever team went for an off-site to design their hiring process.

Organizations

Civil Rights Institute

A place where Holly Liu volunteered growing up, influencing her views on social justice.

Lever's Parents ERG

An employee resource group that informed the revision of Lever's parental leave policy.

Companies

Instagram

Holly Liu's direct boss at Google later became the head of marketing at Instagram.

Mentioned as a platform for proactively reaching out to potential hires.

Facebook

Its launch during Holly Liu's freshman year at Stanford is noted as a change in how young people were viewed as potential innovators.

IDEO

Holly Liu initially thought she would work for this design consulting firm.

Google

Holly Liu worked at Google, initially as a speechwriter for Marissa Mayer and later on the Chrome team. She discusses leaving Google to start Lever.

Lever

The company founded by Holly Liu, which focuses on recruiting software. Discussed extensively regarding its founding, culture, and hiring practices.

GitHub

Highlighted as a great place to find people with technical skills.

Y Combinator

Mentioned in relation to a hiring event and their application process, highlighting advice for early-stage companies.

Software & Apps

Chrome

Holly Liu spent significant time on the Chrome team at Google.

Eventbrite

Suggested as a source for finding potential candidates.

Concepts

Top Grading

A methodology for behavioral interviewing that Lever has modified for its hiring process.

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