Here’s how we structured our seed-stage hiring process — a lightweight yet thorough process for quickly assessing talent.

There are no shortcuts to hiring good people.

That said, if you are thoughtful in crafting your hiring process, you can save yourself time and potentially save yourself from making unnecessary hiring mistakes. At Slang.ai, we agonized over our hiring process at first. We wanted candidates to feel like it was a good experience, we wanted it to be thorough enough to vet candidates properly, and we wanted it to be time-efficient. It’s hard to do all that, especially as an early-stage start-up.

Here’s the process that has worked well for us when going from 2 to ~15 people:

Initial Screen (10–15 minutes)

This can be done by a hiring manager or a recruiter. The point here is to get a quick touch with the candidate and sense if there are signals of a strong mutual fit.

Hiring Manager Interview (1 hour)

The hiring manager digs into the candidate’s background in detail. We tend to focus on pivotal career moments as well as the rationale for making their biggest career decisions.

Values Interview (1 hour)

We take this interview seriously. We go through a list of questions that test for our core values. We typically finish in 45 minutes and leave plenty of room for questions at the end. Aside from core values, we’re generally screening for low ego, conflict resolution, and the ability to give/receive feedback.

Case Study / Technical Screen (1 hour)

This depends on the role and is administered by the hiring manager or a designated & trained proctor (sometimes this is an advisor).

Optional Meet & Greet (15–30 mins)

Sometimes candidates ask to meet other members of the team. We love setting up meet & greets when candidates request. We also tend to do this if the candidate is particularly senior.

As we grow and learn, we’ll continue to iterate on this process. Curious to hear any thoughts or suggestions!

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