This is the first 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 we were in the process of scaling to 100, with plans to double again the year after that. We already had some roots in place around talent acquisition, but we hadn’t built out other parts of the people org, like HR, biz ops, employee experience, and so on. 

I’d never hired a VP of People before, so I found myself having to do something that a lot of founders have to do: finding someone for a role I had zero experience either executing myself or hiring for. The first step, which I learned from the executive recruiters at Andreessen Horowitz, is to put together what's called an MOC, a Mission Outcomes Competency Stock. This document provides a draft of the most important pillars of the role, which you can then use as the basis for discussions with people who have either hired for the role before or done it themselves. Their input and feedback is extremely valuable in shaping the hiring process.

The criteria section helps you zoom in on the most important questions that you need to answer in order to determine different archetypes that you’ll often see in candidates.

In our case, I knew that I definitely wanted someone who had experience working in a people-leadership role at a scaling tech company and had been through this evolution before—but they didn’t necessarily have to have held the title of VP of People before. We ended up talking to a lot of folks who were in senior director roles at larger companies, and who’d seen the company through a bunch of different stages during their time there.

You’ll generally find that people have come up through one of the specific areas of the people function: acquisition, HR, business ops, talent development, etc. That career path plays a key role in determining the kind of archetypes you generally see, and each of them have its own pros and cons. People who have come up through the HR/business ops side of things tend to be the most common, and they’re generally seen as relatively conservative gatekeepers: a lot of policy, a lot of regulations, and so on. In my experience, this has tended to be true of candidates within this archetype, though of course it doesn’t mean you can’t find someone here who thinks about things differently. 

I’d come from HubSpot, and they approach the people org in a very different way. A lot of that comes from their current Chief People Officer, Katie Burke, who actually came up more from the culture side of things. They view the people org in a few different ways. It’s an enabler for the rest of the org, but they also put a heavy emphasis on talent acquisition and employee experience. 

On the talent acquisition side, they invested a ton into marketing HubSpot as a really great place to work, even from the early days. The tactics they used here ranged from GlassDoor reviews to things like positioning the marketing website and parts of their career page to really emphasize how desirable a place to work HubSpot is. They were actually named the best place to work in Boston more times in a row than I can even remember during my time there. 

And since they feed into each other—great people want to work at a great company—they also placed an equal emphasis on employee experience and culture. So they put a ton of effort into defining the culture and implementing that across the company. I really liked that differentiated approach to the people org, so that’s where I was starting from with this process.

So as you can see here, we really preferred a candidate who was more heavily weighted toward the recruiting and employee experience side of things. We wanted someone who’d be comfortable hiring at the director- or team-lead level around things like HR, business ops, and compliance. That felt like the most commoditized piece of the people equation, and I really wanted to find someone who could help us on the differentiated aspects of that equation.

One of the biggest mistakes that a lot of startups make—I've even made it myself in the past—is hiring someone who’s either too narrow or too long-term. If they’re too narrow, they’ll be able to do the things you need in the next six months, but probably not what you need beyond that. On the other hand, if you over-hire based on experience, you might end up with someone who’s too long-term: they’ll be great for what you need in two or three years, but they might not be the right fit for your immediate short-term problems. That 12- to 18-month window is kind of the sweet spot. The real test though is whether the person will be able to accomplish everything in that period while also simultaneously leveling themselves up to be able accomplish what the org needs for the next 12 to 18 months of growth after that. This is one of the reasons why you see so much executive churn with startups at this stage: no matter how well you hire, it’s an open question as to whether they’ll be able to scale their skillset in that time period or not.

When it came to compensation, we wanted to get really crisp upfront before we talked to candidates about expected compensation, so that we could avoid wasting time talking to candidates who weren’t a good fit or have very different needs.

Brian Balfour

As part of my research to hire Reforge’s first VP of People, I created this MOC (Mission Outcomes Competency) to provide a clear picture of the skills, thinking, and experience we wanted in our ideal candidate.

First time VP People (up and comer) vs. prior VP People?

Answer: VP People that has prior experience within a scaling tech company. Might have been Dir or Sr Dir in prior role in larger company.

 How important is it to have prior small company or startup experience?

Answer: We'd prefer someone who has experience in a company that went through a couple inflection points of growth to help us see around corners and into the future.

 Has this person taken a company public or, instead, just worked at a public company?

Answer: This person does not need to have taken a company public or been in a public company. Late stage private company experience is fine.

 Min. company size where they have managed function/org (i.e. rev of $75-$100 mil, headcount of 500+)?

 We prefer a candidate that is more heavily weighted on hiring/recruiting and employee experience and to hire someone around HR compliance needs.

 Critical to have specific domain experience? (i.e. SaaS, Big Data, Storage, Security)

 Required or nice to have? Specific geographies?

Not required however needs to be thoughtful about building a remote culture.

 Leadership style, personality, etc. - what works well in your culture with the team?

Extremely structured writer and communicator.

An extrovert and outward facing personality.

 what do we need this person to do over the next 12-18 months?

Help us build out the recruiting, employee experience, and hr systems to help us scale from 35 to 100 people this year, and to 200+ next year.

 what specific outcomes are we looking for this hire to achieve in their first 12-18 months?   

Establish a compensation strategy that keeps us competitive with the market, fair internally and aligned with our culture and goals.

Define a performance management system for the company.

Facilitate the definition and implementation of our company culture and values

Develop 24 month organizational design to support growth

Develop and implement a robust diversity program to hire and retain talent of all backgrounds

how we expect this person to operate in achieving the goals and what set of experiences/ accomplishments do they have that give them a unique advantage in achieving our outcomes list above   

scaling: can or has lead a company growing from medium to large to extra large

empathy: can understand our culture and preserve the best parts while guiding us through changes

analytics: uses data in conjunction with a wealth of experience to guide decision making

influence: leads by influence rather than control and encourages others to do the same

pace: thrives when there are 100 things to address all the time

flexible: our environment is dynamic; requirements change without much notice; have to be adaptive

talent: exposure to recruiting top talent at scale

The following is for Bay Area. We do location adjust outside of the Bay Area. We start all roles at the 60th percentile of market data. Our bands go up to the 75th percentile. All data is based off a combination of Option Impact and exec survey data provided by other sources.

 $X per year. We do not separate out bonuses but include it when calculating bands.

 $X grant, 4 year vest, 1 year cliff. Represents about X% fully diluted.

Accelerated Vesting upon Change of Control:

 We do not provide accelerated vesting in the offer letter. Typically this is negotiated out or included in price at time of change of control which is why we don't do it.

 We do not write severance into offer letters including exec roles. Our standard historical severance is 3 months.

VP of People Research MOC at Reforge

VP People Research MOC

Criteria

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