This is the second in a series of artifacts around hiring a VP of People at a fast-growing startup. When we first created this here at Reforge, we had around 50 employees and some minimal structure in place in terms of the People team.

We give this document to every candidate at the beginning of their interview process so that they have a clear picture of our philosophy and approach to hiring right from the start. At the end of the day, what’s really important is being able to sit down and decide if someone is going to be able to do great work if they’re in this role. We want to mimic the work environment as clearly as possible, so that means not just throwing information at people and seeing how they respond in the moment. If they know what to expect—who they’re going to talk to, what the questions will be like, etc.—they’ll be able to prepare and deliver their best work; and as you can see in point 3 here, getting insight into how someone prepares is a really important part of this process itself. If their process is sound, we can feel confident that they’ll excel once they’re given the opportunity to work with a fuller outstanding of our org.

All of the questions and discussions that we give candidates are based around a real problem that we’ve either faced or are facing. These are relevant situations to our business, so we can get a clear idea of how someone will respond to our specific needs.

Once a candidate had gone through screening, we had two different members of the exec team talk with them, just to get two different takes. My conversation was mainly focused on pulling out what I thought was the most important thing here, which was finding a candidate who I felt confident could go beyond the table stakes of the function. So, for example, beyond basic foundational tasks like setting up solid payroll and HR systems, I was looking for someone who would be able to think about what the people function could bring to the table in a differentiated way. For example, how can we create a really unique employee experience? A great hiring funnel to compete for top talent?

To drill down on this kind of differentiation, I knew I needed to create a scenario that would get me clear signal on whether this person would be able to come up with a vision for the people org that was aligned with the mission and culture of the company. Given that our external mission is to enable professionals to do the best work of their career, we knew it was critical that we also mirror this internally. I was pretty surprised by the answers that I got to these questions. Probably 80% of candidates didn’t pass this specific scenario, they just gave me the kind of standard responses you could read in a blog post. While that table stakes work is obviously important, if that’s all I was looking for, then why go through all the effort of a robust interview process? It just wouldn’t make sense. Placing those questions early in the interview process let us screen people out and saved a ton of time and effort.

Once you’re getting into more fine-grained questions, it can be extremely valuable to test these scenarios first with a VP of People or Chief People Officer who you know is doing amazing work, but who, for whatever reason, you’re not in a position to recruit. You can help make it worth their time by offering advising shares or a consulting contract. If you’re in a place like I was where you’re hiring a role for the first time, this will give you examples of what great looks like.

There are certain topics relevant to the People function that can be a bit polarizing, and DEI is one of them. While I don’t think there’s any one-size-fits-all answer here—the best approach is different for every single company—it was super important for us to have alignment between the candidate and myself, as well as the broader leadership team. If a VP of People isn’t aligned with the founder and exec team, they’re not going to build an organization that fits your org’s perspective and philosophy. And that can easily become a really massive problem. So you have to be willing to have a direct, honest conversation here, even if it might feel a little sensitive or awkward.

We actually do back-channel references a little earlier: typically we start to check them for any candidates who are going into the second round. If you're working with an exec recruiter, they've often vetted these folks, but I wouldn’t suggest trusting the exec recruiter's references as a baseline. They’re a small input into your overall equation here, but you still have to do your own homework. Remember, exec recruiters are incentivized to close a candidate: they get paid when the role is filled, so it’s better for them to get it filled as quickly as possible and be on to the next thing. It’s important to be able to see their input as just one among many others in the process, since you need to have a balanced approach to your decision-making.

Brian Balfour

As Reforge was scaling 2x, finding the right VP of People was critical. A rigorous interview process let us drill down on all the areas where we needed greatness, while also screening out candidates early on to save time and effort.

We are excited to continue the conversation! 

We wanted to take a moment to explain some core pieces to our hiring philosophy and describe the process in detail ahead of time.

 We give you the majority of interview questions ahead of time. This gives you the opportunity to more accurately display how you think/work when you have time to think through something vs “on the spot” questions.

 All of the discussions are based off problems/situations/projects that you might face in the role. This gives you a more tangible taste of what the role will be like to make sure it fits with your career interests.

 to the scenarios, not your exact answer or outcome. We are trying to understand how you think through problems, and if your approach has the right chemistry with the rest of the team.

 For all roles and level of seniority, a step in the process is a Portfolio Review and/or a Simulation (defined below). This helps us get a view into your actual work output. It helps reduce bias in the process such as rewarding those who are primarily good at interviewing.

The format is noted and described for each conversation below. There are typically three formats:

 We give you a scenario and ask how you might approach it. Pre-work is 

 We ask you to go deep into how you solve a past problem in a prior role. Please share any supporting assets ahead of time.

 We give you a scenario with some inputs and assumptions and ask you to prepare some thinking ahead of time

The discussions for this role cover a wide range of topics. They are designed to understand where you "spike." We do not expect you to be an expert in everything. If you have questions about any of the scenarios, do not hesitate to email us.

We work to your schedule, however, we run a rolling hiring process. Once we find someone that we think is a fit, we'll make an offer. We'll keep you updated on any major changes to where we are at with other candidates.

If you have logistical questions or needs at any time, please email Brian Balfour (redacted).

 Brian is the Founder and CEO of Reforge. Prior to Reforge he was VP Growth at HubSpot. In your role, you would report directly to Brian.

 Discussion - We do not expect pre-work for this conversation.

Our external mission is to enable professionals to do the best work of their career. We want to pursue this mission internally as well by making it the center of our culture and helping our team members do they best work of their career.

Walk me through step-by-step how you would think through implementing this cultural mission within the org (recruiting, employee engagement initiatives, etc)?

What do you think are the important elements? How do you think you can support this mission in your role?

What would you do differently in Reforge, that other orgs with a different mission might not do?

 90 Minutes. 60 minutes on the above questions. 30 minutes your time.

 Joanna is CMO at Reforge. Prior to Reforge she was CMO at Skyscanner and Class Pass. In your role as VP People, Joanna would be a peer on the executive team and a strategic partner around employer brand and employee experience.

 60 minutes total. 40 minutes on the above questions. 20 minutes your time.

 Matt is the CTO of Reforge. Prior to Reforge, Matt was VP Engineering at Credit Karma. Matt leads our product, eng, and design teams. In your role, Matt would be a peer on the executive team. He is currently managing the Talent team that would transition to you.

 Simulation - Please prepare and share some thinking ahead of time.

 When recruiting within a fast growing organization it is complicated to manage recruiting pipelines and candidate experience across many recruiters, many roles, many interviewers and many hiring managers. When doing this, you often get lots of qualitative and quantitative feedback throughout the system of recruiting and HR, hiring managers, leadership, and candidates. Please use stories and examples from your history to think about each of these in practice.

What are the main quantitative metrics you look at for the health of our overall recruiting? What are good heuristics for those metrics that things are going well? How does it change with stage of company, role, and org?

Do you think that recruiting metrics should be a part of company yearly goals? If yes, how and what metrics? If no, why not and what should we be doing instead?

What sort of qualitative feedback are you looking for? Let's think about this for the different audiences in the system and context. What does actionable feedback look like? What's some examples of good vs bad?

How do you communicate the health of recruiting to leadership peers? To hiring managers? To the rest of the company?

What are some examples from your career where you've actioned on information to adjust a recruiting ecosystem? Please give the context, action, and result.

 75 Minutes. 45 minutes on the above questions, 30 minutes your time.

 Fareed is the VP Programs and Partners at Reforge. He runs new content development, program operations, and executive community. Prior to joining Reforge, Fareed was Dir of Product Growth at Slack. Fun story, he use to work at Pixar. Ask him about it :). In your role, Fareed would be a peer on the executive team.

DEI is a stated objective of most progressive companies in the industry, however most fall short of their goals

. We have the opportunity to start early in DEI and establish a strong foundation that we can build on as we scale our team. What would the core components of your DEI strategy be, how and why would we differentiate our strategy from other businesses, (how) would you engage the rest of the business on this strategy, how would you goal and measure yourself on this, and iterate as we grow?

 Elise is the Talent Lead at Reforge. Prior to Reforge she was the Recruiting Lead and Talent Brand Manager at Collective Health. Elise leads all things recruiting and HR for us currently. In your role, Elise would report directly to you.

 Optimization for a remote-first workforce: Reforge has been remote-first since its inception and will continue to be in a post-Covid world. We believe in enabling people to do their best work in a way that not only works for us but works best for them. There are many benefits to remote-first, and also some challenges.

What elements of our People practices impact this the most? How would you factor in the rapidly changing industry trends and create strategies around benefits, compensation, tooling, time-zone best practices, employee experience, and whatever else you believe is important to make a remote-first workforce as strong, engaged, and retained, as possible? What does success look like here, and how would you measure it?

 Andrew is a Board Member of Reforge. He is currently a General Partner at Andreesen Horowitz. Prior to A16Z he spent 3 years at Uber leading various areas of growth. Brian and Andrew did the V1 of Reforge together.

 60 Minutes. 30 minutes on the above questions. 30 minutes your time.

 We will leave a couple of open slots to fill with others based on who you are interested in meeting or exploring more.

After round three, we will make an offer decision. For most roles we typically do this within 48 hours. If it will be much longer, we will communicate that to you.

It is important to us that you have as much information as you need about the role, team, or strategy to make a decision you feel confident and excited about. So in addition to the offer, we will set up time with others at your request based on what you'd like to go deeper on.

We will also send you reference information on Brian and other key members of the team to make it easy to do reference checks.

VP of People Interview Process at Reforge

VP of People - Interview Process

Overview

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