Our friends over at Madrona VC firm in Seattle write a great “Hooked on talent” blog, and included some of our CEO’s thinking in their latest post on paying down talent debt. They’re framing “talent debt” around a concept many startup engineering leaders know - technical debt.
John shared:
“So many leaders talk about raising the bar on talent, but they’ve not actually done the hard work upfront to define what good looks like. Yes, they may have general values and behaviors they screen for — good, that’s part of it. But equally important is driving alignment on things like how hands-on an engineering leader needs to be, how to weight things like tech vs. soft skills, how to balance speed with quality and diversity, what’s a dealbreaker, and what’s easy to train on. Defining is hard. Aligning the teams is harder and takes a ton of leadership. But once you get that figured out, you get quality, at scale, because it’s embedded in everything talent related.” - John Vlastelica, CEO of consulting and training firm Recruiting Toolbox and former Amazon Talent Leader.
Read the rest of the article here to hear what the Madrona Talent team recommends founders and engineering leaders do to reduce talent debt.
