3 Documents Every Startup Needs for Talent
Startups have major goldilocks syndrome when it comes to documentation - too much, too out of date, or too little. So where is the “just right” middle ground and what are the most critical documents when it comes to talent?
Not the 30 part philosophy on running a world class talent organization - that’s a whole different list. But actually being able to do the basics of talent management: attraction, evaluation, development, and retention.
To do this you’ll need: leveling guides, values, and a headcount plan.
Leveling Guides
The least flashy document here - but arguably the most critical when it comes to building your company. At every growth stage or inflection point these guides will shift and change. They set up titling, required competencies, promotion paths, tie into compensation, support performance management, serve as job description outlines, and…
…if you’re wondering how you’re going to build a talent bar at your organization, this is where you’re going to start.
Also known as: job leveling, job family, skills matrix, etc.
They’re generally formatted as spreadsheets and incorporate a combination of competencies and descriptors of each “level” within a function and what’s required to be considered for promotion to the next level. (Think: Engineering Intern, Junior Developer, Engineer, Sr. Engineer, Lead Engineer, Staff Engineer, etc.)
Here are a few general types of information included with each level:
Role or level description - what type of expertise or knowledge does this position require?
{Custom competencies} - what’s most important in your organization or function and how do you see that scale through each level? (These are unique in each company).
Autonomy and Scope - how much oversight does this position need? Do they coordinate internally or externally? Do they oversee or manage others directly or indirectly?*
Leadership - what leadership qualities does this position demonstrate? Does this role coach, mentor, or contribute to a specific team environment?
*You may include a mix of individual contributor (IC) and manager roles or develop separate defined paths for each
If you need help getting started, use the rope model! This is 6 levels, and they’re all cumulative (so a Level 3 knows and has mastered everything in Level 1 and 2 and is operating at Level 3).
Entry: Learns about rope
Developing: Can tie basic knots, shown complex knots
Career: Calculates rope strength, knows a lot about knots
Advanced: Understands rope making
Expert: Knows more about rope than you ever will
Principal: Invented Nylon
First iterations may feel clunky as you may only have employees in a couple of the levels in each function - but revisit monthly, solicit feedback from your own team, and keep refining as you grow. Even if you don’t have a level or role in your company today, drafting what that would look like is helpful as you scope future hires. As the organization matures you’ll be able to use these leveling guides to benchmark against more detailed compensation surveys, integrate acquired talent, perform audits, and more.
A note on talent bar programs - every leader will tell you they want/have/need to maintain a high talent bar; meaning don’t let the quality of our hires degrade or warp over time as we add new decision makers. The first thing you need to do is establish what a quality hire “looks like” (how they perform in interviews, how they perform in the role, what competencies do they possess) and the first place to start is to examine your leveling guides. If you’ve developed and iterated on these often you’ll have the foundation for your talent bar - and a critical artifact for training new decision makers (hiring managers, interviewers, recruiters) on how you evaluate talent.
Values
Less of a document, more of an artifact. They’re defined on your company careers page and your internal wiki - but I’d argue building out an internal values interviewing guide is the “real” artifact in this example. Your values establish expected behavioral norms within your company (a popular misconception is that your values = your culture). Company culture is the experience of working within your organization = accepted behaviors, not necessarily the expected ones.
When you hear leaders concerned about “maintaining” the culture or being “culture driven” they’re referencing the work that it takes to consistently align expected (values) and accepted (culture) behaviors. So how you do you continuously align to your values when each new hire will bring their own interpretation to your organization?
Start breaking them down into interview questions.
Ok - a bit of a leap - but with every hire you are influencing the culture, even more so with each new manager as you build your team. Figuring out how you’re going to evaluate (interview for) values alignment and communicate (sell) your culture to candidates is critical. The exercise of drafting the questions and building training also helps put a finer point on the translation of values -> behaviors.
These interview questions help you align on behaviors - because you’re going to be using behavioral interview questions. (Not hypothetical scenarios, not trick questions, but digging into a candidate’s past performance and experiences).
As you evaluate candidates and test these values internally as you grow - reinforcing behaviors that work, those that don’t, and being open about both - you’ll be able to shape your culture as you see fit.
But it’s not just for establishing your “culture bar” vs. the talent bar we set up in leveling - it’s also the beginnings of your talent brand - communicating what the employee experience is like and the qualities of individuals that will succeed or flounder in your organization. (Remember branding should both attract and repel talent.)
Your values may also become a key ingredient in your employee value proposition - does your culture set you apart? Is it a bonus to working at your company?
A note: avoid long form founder manifestos when communicating company values and ideal candidate profiles as they’re ripe for misinterpretation. Clear, concise values (ideally 5 or less) with examples of employee and company behavior aligning to each one is best. Remember values are not just for individuals to live by - but also for the organization as a whole.
(a good) Headcount Plan
The headcount plan itself should be a cherry on top of a well designed planning exercise. What you really need is a financially and strategically aligned business - a good headcount plan happens to be the byproduct of this work.
A strong headcount plan has a number of qualities - high clarity on the next 90 days of hiring, rolling updated forecasts beyond that, a way to collaborate between talent, finance, and business leaders…but the #1 thing you need is logic. Otherwise, it’s just a pretty spreadsheet.
So having the headcount plan itself is important - but the reason why this is a critical document is that it’s the culmination of each part of your business justifying their growth not based on political games at headcount approval tribunals - but against key performance metrics unique to their part of the business.
Some examples:
Capacity planning: we need to accomplish X tasks, it will take us Y people, based on Z past performance
Revenue targets: we need to close $X in new sales, $Y in renewals, and it will take Z number of reps performing at quota
Geo-based: we need X reps covering Y timezones against Z closed deals
Finance metrics: we can release X funding to hire Y teams once we hit Z revenue target, or we have X headcount budget against growth and runway over the next Y months
Each functional leader must understand the underlying mechanics of how many bodies they need to accomplish a goal, and for every function this will use different kinds of logic. (Hint: as you hire, develop, and promote functional leaders this is a must have competency in the leveling guide).
So you can have a beautiful headcount plan, but if it’s not based in reality (just vibes) you can execute against something that will bankrupt the business, hire too little or too many heads, result in high customer churn, and eventually layoffs.
Final thoughts
For folks in startup land these 3 things may seem like background noise or obvious things every business should have - but I share this to point out the intricate relationships between these artifacts and attraction, acquisition, and development of talent. So it’s how they’re used, iterated, and built that makes them indispensable.
I write about all things talent strategy and my experiences building tech startups. For monthly recaps of my content, subscribe below or follow me on LinkedIn for regular updates.
