Episode Description:
What traits do you look for when hiring engineers for your team? What does fundraising look like in a startup. In today’s episode we talk about what it takes to build great teams and fundraising specifically in the startup world and much more.
Our guest, Randy Sears, brings more than 20 years of experience designing and implementing scalable distributed systems in domains as diverse as education and scientific computing, and has held technical leadership roles for more than a decade. Previous to his current role at DemandStar as the Head of Engineering, he worked at many seed and pre-IPO startups, participating in IPOs, acquisitions, and fundraising with Zulily, Loudeye, IBM, Isilon (now part of EMC) and Stackline. Our guest has studied computer science and music at Boston University, and loves sailing and scuba diving. In building teams, Randy favors empowerment and collegiality combined with an eagerness to learn.
Connect with Randy
Show notes:
- The top skill Randy looks for when hiring is the ability to work well with others
- Pay attention when interviewing not to introduce affinity bias - where you identify with the candidate because they are like you
- Your interview process can and should adapt based on the size of your team and company
- Take home tests as an interview method Randy has learned is generally not preferred.
- Randy strives to build collegiality amongst his team
- Check out Roblok
- Best advice he has received is: “犬も歩けば棒に当たる” which translate roughly to “when a dog walks he hits a stick.” If you keep moving, mentally or physically, you will find interesting, often useful, things. So keep exploring.
- DemandStar is hiring so make sure to checkout their careers page for the most recent listings (and much more to come)
- “Authenticity and imperfections can communicate a lot” -Randy Sears
Building something cool or solving interesting problems? Want to be on this show? Send me an email at jointhepodcast@unfilteredbuild.com
Podcast produced by Unfiltered Build - dream.design.develop.