The Hiring Process of Mux, a Billion Dollar Startup
Jon Dahl, the CEO of Mux, shares how he's building his team
Oh hey, I’m Justin, and welcome to my aspirationally weekly email experiment where I share the best startup hiring advice, resources, and tools.
In the past 3 years, I’ve been fortunate enough to interview hundreds of founders. One of the things I find most fascinating is how they approach hiring.
Last week, I interviewed Jon Dahl, Co-Founder & CEO of Mux, a company that recently raised $105M to fuel its growth at a time when online video is exploding. After his most recent fundraise, Jon is looking at tripling his team this year and he offered a glimpse into his process.
First, here are a few important notes on Mux’s hiring the past couple of years:
Hired their first in-house recruiter at the beginning of 2020.
Brought in a Head of Recruiting at the beginning of 2021.
They tend to hire outside recruiters for specialty functions.
Every executive they’ve hired over the last two years came through outside recruiters.
Overall, they have a preference for in-house recruiting.
While Jon mentioned that finding the right recruiter can be hit or miss, there is one he’s working with that he suggested - Phil Levine of Golden Gate Recruits.
I can tell you from being in the VC Platform community, there are a number of other recruiters who come highly suggested, but I’m saving that for a future edition of this newsletter 😉
Back to Jon.
Let’s dive into his hiring process at Mux.
1. Write the MOC
The MOC, or the missions, outcomes, and competencies, is the vital first step of the hiring process.
For the mission of each position, you want to keep it to one sentence, making it clear and understandable.
Outcomes are the objectives you want the person in this position to accomplish, not simply the tasks they’ll be doing.
As Jon mentions in the interview:
It’s much easier to hire people if it’s not the tasks they’re doing, but the outcomes they’re going to create.
The competencies are all of those experiences required of this particular position.
2. Sourcing Candidates
After you’ve created your MOC, you’ll look at sourcing candidates. This is the point where recruiters and your network come into play.
At Mux, many of their first 20 hires were people they already knew or who were one connection removed. The downside, as Jon mentions, is that you tend not to build a diverse team this way. I’ve seen this repeatedly with the founders I’ve talked to.
We’ll dive into building a diverse talent pipeline in an upcoming edition of this newsletter, because, as you may have heard, diverse teams outperform homogenous ones, and this needs to be intentional if you’re actually going to make it happen.
To give you a starting point for diversifying your talent pipeline, check these out:
3. The Interview Process
How Mux structures their interview process stems from the scorecard they’ve created for each position when writing the MOC. They take those outcomes from the MOC and see how they can test for those.
They start with two screens.
In the first, they’re asking questions to determine what the candidate wants to do and what they’re good at. The second screen is more of a deep dive.
Finally, they have a full day with the candidate which is normally about 5 interviews where they go even deeper to find out the abilities and fit of the candidate.
4. Closing Candidates
By the time Mux has gotten to the point of getting ready to close a candidate, they’ve devoted significant time and resources, so of course, they put considerable effort into closing candidates.
One of the things Jon mentioned that Mux will do is send personal notes to candidates from everyone who interviewed them, telling them why they’re excited about them.
They’ll also pitch Mux to the candidate, in a role-reversal of sorts.
It makes sense. After all, the war for talent at startups is real.
Thank you 🙏
Thanks for reading this inaugural edition of Startup Hiring! I’ll be experimenting with different formats and topics, with some upcoming newsletters on pipeline creation/sourcing candidates, how to close candidates, evaluating candidates, as well as more interviews and case studies from CEOs, Heads of Talent, recruiters, and more!
If you’d like to contribute and get a shoutout in the newsletter, please get in touch. I’d love to share more diverse perspectives around the topic of hiring.
Much love,
Justin
P.S. If you’re interested in sponsoring this newsletter, send me a message 😊