The Biggest Mistake We Made Building Mergify: Navigating the Hiring Minefield

Possibly the hardest part of the job.

Building a successful startup is a journey filled with unexpected challenges, and hiring the right people is undoubtedly one of the most daunting tasks. As a tech engineer with no HR background, I’ve faced numerous hiring pitfalls that have taught me invaluable lessons. Reflecting on our journey at Mergify, it's clear that navigating the complexities of hiring has been one of the biggest challenges we've encountered. Here’s what we’ve learned.

Who to Hire: The Temptation of Cheap Labor

When you’re a startup with limited resources, it’s tempting to hire interns or apprentices, especially when they come at a low or even zero cost, thanks to government sponsorships. In France, this is an attractive option many startups pursue, and we were no different. Initially, we hired interns and apprentices, believing that this would provide us with much-needed help without straining our budget.

However, we quickly realized that while interns can be a valuable addition, they often lack the expertise we needed to tackle complex tasks. As founders, we required skilled assistance, not just extra hands for minor tasks. The overhead of breaking down projects into manageable tasks and guiding interns through them often resulted in a net loss of productivity. While we did encounter some exceptional interns who became valuable team members, the general rule is that relying on almost-free resources like interns is unlikely to provide the expertise needed in the early days of your startup.

How to Hire: The Challenge of Assessing Candidates

Hiring is more than just finding someone with the right skills; it’s about finding the right fit for your team and company culture. Despite the plethora of online resources on evaluating candidates, the reality of assessing someone over a Zoom call in just a few hours is incredibly challenging.

We've had both terrific and terrible hires, and in each case, we believed they were a perfect fit at the time.

After conducting hundreds of interviews and hiring more than a dozen people, we’ve learned one golden rule: if you have any doubts about a candidate, don’t hire them. It’s better to wait for the right person than to rush and hire someone who might not fit well with your team.

Finding Candidates: The Perils of Recruitment

The search for talent is a constant struggle. In France, we experimented with various solutions, from Welcome to the Jungle (a nightmare) to talent.io (effective). We also engaged a few headhunting firms, which unfortunately turned out to be a costly mistake. These firms often sent us unsuitable candidates and still kept their fees. The legal obligations in France favor the headhunters, not the employers, making it a risky and expensive endeavor.

For example, we had a candidate that we hired and then paid the fees to the headhunting firm. The employee would stop their trial period and leave. That meant the headhunting firm should send new candidates our way to replace the one that left during the trial period. However, there was no incentive for them to do so as they’d been paid already. Therefore, they didn’t care. We found our candidate in a different manner, meaning the fee was then lost for us. Considering that fees can be 10–20% of the employee's yearly salary, that’s a large amount of money to throw out the window.

Networking and recommendations remain some of the best ways to find talent, but they don’t scale well and often have timing issues; you’d find the right candidate, but they’re not available, or a friend would knock at the door, and you’d not have any budget to hire them.

Additionally, we realized that marketing our company effectively during hiring talks is crucial. Initially, our pitch didn’t resonate, and most candidates would ignore us. By improving our presentation and emphasizing our company culture and values, we started attracting genuinely interested candidates.

After years, we discovered that you want to polarize your candidate early in the process and during their employment to ensure they get 100 % onboard with your venture. Depending on your founder profile, that might be something you do naturally. As tech founders, we were not particularly good at that, but we learned our way through.

The Remote Work Dilemma

Building a remote team has advantages, like accessing a broader talent pool, but it also comes with significant challenges. At Mergify, we embraced remote work and wrote extensively about our experience. Remote work works well with senior staff, but junior employees often struggle without in-person guidance. Sharing the company vision and brainstorming ideas are also more effective in person, which is why we regularly organize in-person meetings.

Regular team-building events, video calls, and asynchronous communication help bridge the gap, but they can’t completely replace the spontaneous interactions that foster innovation. Remote work is great for finding talent, but in-person connections remain essential for a cohesive and innovative team environment.

I would not consider remote work a mistake, but we underestimated its impact on the company.

Lessons Learned and Rules Established

From our hiring mistakes, we’ve developed a few key rules:

• Avoid hiring remote junior staff if you are working remotely. They need more guidance and in-person interaction.

• Leverage in-person connections for innovation. Remote work makes this challenging, especially for junior staff.

• Share a lot of context to drive innovation and execution. Overcommunicate.

• Be cautious of headhunters and their fees. Consider delaying payment until the trial period ends.

• Avoid working with multiple headhunting firms to avoid finding your candidate with one when you have already paid the other.

• Learn to pitch your company effectively. Highlight your values and culture to attract the right candidates.

• If you have any doubts about a candidate, don’t hire them.

• Don’t hire interns and trainees until you have enough senior staff to mentor them. Consider them a small cost, not a huge win.

Navigating the hiring process is complex and fraught with potential pitfalls, but by learning from our mistakes and establishing clear rules, we've been able to build a stronger, more effective team.

If you’re building a startup, remember that the right hires can make all the difference, and taking the time to find them is well worth the effort.