"Closing" a candidate refers to convincing someone to join your company after you've decided that you want to hire them. For Kapwing and many other startups, the closing efforts refer to things we do after a candidate gets through our interview process. Since our interview process includes a week-long project and multiple interviews, candidates likely already have an interest in joining before getting to the offer stage.

What is "Closing"

Kapwing is a Series A company with 16 engineers all based in San Francisco. Overall, we've closed 56% of the engineering candidates who made it all the way through our interview funnel.Most of the reasons why candidates told us they decided not to take an offer fell in one of these three categories: Compensation, Stage of Company, and Domain.<ul><li>Compensation : 4 engineers (25%) </li><li>Stage : 4 engineers (25%). one engineer needed an H1B visa, 1 decided to cofound a company instead.</li><li>Domain : 5 engineers (31%) </li></ul>

Closing Candidates at Kapwing

Most of the time, engineers who turned us down decided to join other startups instead. Of the 16 people who turned down offers, 10 engineers went to a different startup, 4 stayed in their current role, and 2 took jobs at big companies.

Startups competing with other startups for talent, not big companies

Our close rate has gone down after the pandemic (50%) compared to before the pandemic (64%). Since we've been working and <a href="https://www.kapwing.com/blog/what-it-takes-to-hire-10-employees-in-san-francisco/">recruiting </a>remotely, we've had 11 engineers join, but we made 21 engineering offers.<ul><li>Faster and less high-touch interview process means that more candidates who are not fully sold get through to the end</li><li> less personalized</li><li>now, we do two virtual interviews and no lunch.</li><li> changes in the market</li></ul>

Pre vs post pandemic

I notice in the data that engineers sourced from in-house referrals (mostly friends of the cofounders) have a lower close rate - 36% - than inbound applicants, sourced, or externally referred candidates. It’s possible that our friends are more likely to go through the interview process before they’re ready to commit to a new role, or possible that people in our network tend to have more options.

For us, it was harder to hire our friends

After three years of recruiting for Kapwing, I've learned that creating a positive impression of your company through content marketing, publicity, and thought leadership is the highest ROI with hiring.At Kapwing, nearly every candidates who joins mentions the company blog, <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/24/kapwing/">TechCrunch articles </a>, Instagram account, or YouTube channel before they accept a job offer. We set OKRs around publishing <a href="https://www.kapwing.com/blog/how-we-built-it-scaling-to-100k-projects-a-day/">engineering </a><a href="https://www.kapwing.com/blog/how-we-built-it-audiogram/">blog </a><a href="https://www.kapwing.com/blog/green-screen-in-browser/">posts </a>and have full-time resources dedicated to our social media channels.

Content Marketing

Now, we make offers that expire within one week. That is, we set a deadline for a decision seven days after sending the candidate an offer letter.If I can sense that a candidate will have multiple competing offers, we sometimes add in a signing bonus to encourage people to decide quickly. The signing bonuses expire 3-4 days after I make the offer. Setting a financial incentive for a quick decision has helped a lot with closing.

Expiring offers and starting bonuses

After you make an offer to a candidate, they are in "Consideration" phase of the job search, and like a customer making a big purchase they will do thorough research to decide if they should make the leap. They will Google your company and read what others have to say about it. product reviews, press articles, and mentions from industry leaders help candidates build conviction.Investors can provide another source of external validation for recruits.

Publicity and 3P Reviews

Dramatically ramp up communication after a hiring manager gives the green light. Once we have conviction, we move forward quickly to make candidates feel valued and communicate with the candidate to check in before they make a decision.<ul><li>Offer letter with details : it includes two options for compensation, one that is higher in equity and one that is higher in salary, as it gives the candidate some autonomy over their comp package. </li><li>Access to founders </li><li>Emails from other teammates and interviewers </li><li>Ask the reference to email them</li></ul>

Increase communication at the end of the funnel

<ul><li>Set comp brackets, and break them when you want to. Compensation brackets give you confidence that you're offering a highly competitive package and enable you to pay engineers fairly. </li><li>Individual connections make a difference.</li><li>Going the extra mile shows candidates that you care and that they're special. </li><li>Talking with founders is a valuable and rare connection. </li></ul>

My Best Advice on Closing Candidates

In reality, no one has a 100% close rate. Underneath the bravado of Silicon Valley, there are many entrepreneurs who either struggle to close, and it's a topic that's not talked about enough.Josh, our first engineer, told me "No," but changed his mind a week later. We sensed Josh's hesitancy and stayed in touch with him after he turned us down, and his work has changed the course of our company.My final words of encouragement for entrepreneurs is not to get emotionally attached to individual candidates.

It Is Possible to Close Candidates Who Are on the Fence

HowTo

What I've Learned from the 16 Engineers who Turned Down Job Offers at Our Startup

The first turnoff is the sheer amount of information stuffed into a typical job description. Paragraph after paragraph give the history of the company, the markets it serves, the job profile, the competencies and experience required, and an endless stream of responsibilities that the winning candidate will have to fulfill.
Scale back the prose. Think of how much better you’ll look if you communicate clearly and concisely. Include information about the company and the job, but don’t include anything superfluous.

Too Much Information

It seems like it should go without saying, but job descriptions should make companies sound likeable. Too often ads have no “sell” in them. They read like a shareholder’s report. Rewrite your job description to make your company appeal to the hearts and minds of candidates.

Sounding Unappealing

Companies can also up their game in describing their culture.
A typical line from a job description: “We have a culture in which each employee is respected and valued. Every employee brings unique skills, background, and experiences.”
What companies need to do is talk about culture in terms that elicit enthusiasm.

No Information On Company Culture

Poorly written job ads often read like wish lists, rather than actual requirements. One might say you need five years’ experience, but actually, you don’t. You probably only need 6-8 months. By putting a laundry list of skills that a candidate supposedly needs, companies end up missing out on amazing candidates. Instead, companies should list only the requirements of that role, and add “nice to have” qualifications to that list.

Inflating Job Requirements

Ever seen a job ad like this? “We need a seasoned, strategic storyteller who can help effectively message, plan and execute media strategies that capitalize on our industry-leading momentum.”
Instead, why doesn’t the writer just say, “we need a candidate who can deliver effective stories about our company to the media.” The more words that are used, the less clear a passage is. Is this company looking for a candidate who comes into the interview and says, “Hello, I am a seasoned, strategic storyteller.” Not likely.

Too Many Adjectives

A related problem in job ads is their failure to use real language. This can be a huge turnoff to job seekers. 
Expressions like “strong, deliverable focus” and “execute projects” in job ads read as overly formal and lack clarity. For example, what does it mean to have a “strong, deliverable focus?”
Or what does the following passage mean? “You will define key multi-channel communications strategies to support our company’s priorities.” It’s nonsense!
A good exercise for the folks writing these ads is to read the lines out loud. If they don’t sound real, get rid of them.

Jargon

Hiring companies should include a salary or salary range in their descriptions. 
Holding back this information puts the prospective employee at a huge disadvantage, as it means that they have no idea whether the job is a good fit. This also wastes a company’s time and resources, as you may have candidates who go through the application process, only to drop out near the end.
By posting a salary range, you can set yourself apart from competitors, and qualified candidates will likely appreciate your commitment to transparency and to correcting pay inequity.

No Salary Range

Too many companies are making these common (and costly) mistakes when looking for qualified candidates.


Stashed ideas

7 things companies get wrong when writing job descriptions

Job simulation tests are exercises designed to replicate a real-life working environment. It assesses a candidate’s ability to do a particular role, such as answering calls, completing a skills test, or presenting a report.
In turn, candidates gain insight into the exact type of work the role will entail, helping them understand if it’s the right fit for them.

Job simulations are becoming more popular

A candidate is placed into a high-pressure work-related scenario and asked to use their judgment to overcome it. These tests determine how well your candidate makes decisions. They are great for customer-facing roles or managers. Use this test as part of your early screening process to know what makes your candidates tick early on.

Situation Judgment Tests

A candidate is given a series of day-to-day tasks to complete within a set time. For example, answering calls, responding to emails, light admin tasks, or managing a customer complaint. These exercises help understand how efficiently your candidate completes day-to-day administrative or managerial tasks. They are used in the middle stages of the recruitment process to check that the candidate can perform effectively. They typically take an hour.

In-Basket/In-Tray Exercises

The skills assessment tests show a candidate's ability in a particular skill, competency, or knowledge area required for the role. They can be used for any role that lends themselves to specialised positions such as software developers. Because they are designed to be quick and easy to complete, they're a fantastic modern screening tool, helping you modernise early-stage tasks such as resume submission or filter interviews.

Skills Assessments

These exercises are designed to simulate real-life team interactions required for the role. They cover writing a report, delivering a presentation, or partaking in a workshop. The exercises are used for creative, customer-facing, or team leader roles to understand if a candidate can work collaboratively, present ideas, and lead others. Ensure to use these exercises in the final selection stage as they are time-intensive.

Live Exercises

This is the ultimate job simulation, with candidates thrust into a real-life situation alongside actors. They are designed to place candidates into agitating scenarios to see how they work with those around them. They give insight into how well candidates can adapt to new and high-stress situations and are ideal for managers, leaders, and customer-facing staff.

Role-Play

Job simulation tests add real value to recruiters and hiring managers across the globe.  Key benefits include:<ul><li>Evaluate job-specific skills. Job simulations help to evaluate specific skills, knowledge, or competencies that a candidate will need to excel in the role.</li><li>Well-rounded candidate insights. It showcases various aspects of a candidate's personality, giving insight into how well they'll fit into your wider team.</li><li>Eliminate unconscious bias and helps to make the right decision.</li><li>Enable self-selection. Job simulations are the ultimate ‘try before you buy’ for candidates.</li></ul>

Job simulation tests benefits

Job simulations are super popular within modern hiring teams. Find out what they are, how to use them, and the benefits you can gain.

Job Simulations are Gaining Momentum – Here’s Why!

<ul><li>Rather than sending a withdrawal or rejection email, workers and employers are simply cutting off contact during the hiring process.</li><li>Ghosting is considered a bad practice for both companies and workers; no one likes being on the receiving end of it.</li><li>Yet its rise seems inexorable: digital hiring processes deluge companies with candidates, making replying to everyone hard.</li></ul>

Stuck In A Ghosting Spiral

One recent study of 1,500 global workers found that <a href="https://www.greenhouse.io/blog/key-learnings-from-the-2022-greenhouse-candidate-experience-report">75% of jobseekers</a> have been ghosted by a company after a job interview. Employers openly acknowledge that they do it; only <a href="https://www.indeed.com/lead/impact-of-covid-19-on-job-seeker-employer-ghosting">27% of US employers</a> surveyed by job listings site Indeed said they hadn’t ghosted a candidate in the past year.

The Findings

<ul><li>The rise in ghosting is coming from both workers and employers.</li><li>Much of the ghosting we’re seeing today may simply be the fact that someone just can’t get back to everyone.</li><li>The loss of in-person interviews may also be a factor in ghosting by both parties.</li><li>Job-search algorithms place the open positions right in front of workers, making impulse applications easier, resulting in a spike for recruiters.</li></ul>

Digital Hiring And The Spike In Applications

<ul><li>An explosion of candidates due to new digital recruiting may mean applicants find themselves waiting for emails that never come.</li><li>Market conditions may well mean that not replying to every lead or candidate is becoming more normalised.</li><li>But ghosting comes with downsides to both employers and candidates: it leaves a bad impression - likely ending a professional relationship before it's even begun.</li></ul>

The Consequences Of Increased Digital Hiring

Rather than sending a withdrawal or rejection email, workers and employers are simply cutting off contact during the hiring process. Are we stuck in a ‘ghosting’ spiral?

Why workers and employers are ghosting each other

Silicon Valley and big tech firms are increasingly having trouble keeping talented and high-profile individuals from leaving their organizations. It’s now evident that Web3 and the wider crypto- and blockchains space is becoming increasingly interesting for talents to join. It wasn’t long ago that landing employment at one of the big tech companies was a dream come true for many, and it may still be, but now there’s an attractive alternative career path in the crypto space.

There are numerous examples to support the case: Novi, Meta’s (Facebook) wallet project lost their CMO to the payment tech company Circle in January; Amazon’s GM of AWS Edge Service jumped to the role of CTO at the exchange Gemini; and both the former CFO of Lyft and Uber’s ex-director of corporate development headed over to NFT marketplace <a href="https://cryptoslate.com/products/opensea/">OpenSea </a>. Also, former head of Gaming at YouTube, <a href="https://twitter.com/Fwiz">Ryan Wyatt </a>, left the tech giant to become CEO of <a href="https://cryptoslate.com/news/polygon/">Polygon </a>Studios.

The list of transfers is becoming long

Given that big tech companies aren’t exactly poor – on the contrary, these are one of the wealthiest enterprises in the world – there surely must be more than mere money that lures talents into crypto.

Sriram Krishnan used to work for Twitter leading core consumer product teams, now at tech venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, a16z for short. In a <a href="https://twitter.com/sriramk/status/1488590116016693251">tweet </a>from the beginning of February, Krishnan points to protocol design, tokenomics, wallet sign-in, governance mechanisms, and nuances of building on-chain as “fresh” aspects of the technology that makes crypto an attractive space. “This freshness [Krishnan’s emphasis] and frontier-feeling energize builders. It follows that smart and ambitious people want to go where growth/the zeitgeist is headed,”

The freshness and frontier-feeling energizes builders

Another example of a high-profile person leaving big tech for crypto is John deVadoss, former Managing Director (MD) at Microsoft, where he spent about 16 years of his career in a variety of roles, for example General Manager (GM) overseeing the developer platform Microsoft.NET, and most recently building Microsoft Digital from zero to half a billion dollars of business worldwide.

16 years at Microsoft to the first polyglot blockchain platform in the industry

One of the recruitments that raised some eyebrows recently was Evan Cheng, who left a top job as Director of R&D at Novi, the Diem/Libra wallet app, to found <a href="https://mystenlabs.com/">Mysten Labs </a>. Cheng has a long history in big tech, including ten years as Senior Manager, Low-Level Tools at Apple, and almost three years as Director of Engineering, Programming Languages & Runtimes at Facebook, now Meta. “If we solve these kinds of problems we can get more and more builders into this space. We want to build applications that don’t need to make sacrifices to the limitations of the blockchain infrastructure.”

From Apple and Facebook to Mysten Labs

“The economic incentive model here is very different. We are building infrastructure that will immediately have value, which is very different from any other space. That’s one of the magic that makes people come here. The technology aspect of building this is crazy, it’s a great environment for experiments.”

“The economic incentive model here is very different”

“We’re looking for people with transferable skills; they don’t have to be crypto natives, or understand the whole picture, because crypto is highly multidisciplinary. Building applications in crypto is about a combination of distributed system design, algorithm design, data structure design, and it’s also cryptography and security practices. There are few people who can know the full spectrum of these things,” Cheng says.

“It really, really changes how you can build products, and if you think about that the asset is in the hand of the keyholder, which could be the person himself, or a trusted third party, then you change the concept of ownership itself, of who owns the product and eliminating the middleman, changing the cost of everything in our daily lives,”

“I’ve built a lot of technologies, but there’s nothing quite like this”

Big Tech companies, in Silicon Valley and elsewhere, are seeing an increasing number of their best talents and high profile employees moving into crypto, blockchains and web3.

What I've Learned from the 16 Engineers who Turned Down Job Offers at Our Startup

7 things companies get wrong when writing job descriptions

Job Simulations are Gaining Momentum – Here’s Why!

Why workers and employers are ghosting each other

Why Big Tech is losing talent to crypto, web3 projects

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