This document provides guidance on hiring the best employees for Opower. It discusses sourcing candidates, evaluating them, and closing strong hires. For sourcing, managers are told to actively hunt for candidates through their networks rather than just posting jobs. Evaluation involves prioritizing exceptional talent over experience and using scorecards to standardize interviews. Reference checks are more important than interviews. When closing candidates, persistence and compelling visions of impact can turn nos into yeses. The overall message is that hiring the best people is crucial and requires effort from managers throughout the process.

1. OPOWER CONFIDENTIAL: DO NOT DISTRIBUTE
Your role: hiring the
best
July 2013

2. People who inform our approach
» Hadi Partovi
» @Hadip
» World class investor
and team builder
» Advised Opower on
recruiting in 2010
» Ben Horowitz
» @Bhorowitz
» Well known VC and
entrepreneur who
blogs about team
building
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» Geoff Smart
» @Geoff_Smart
» Runs leadership firm
for CEOs, investors
» Authored an
acclaimed book on
hiring leaders

3. Why do I have an opinion on hiring?
Done more than 300 interviews for Opower
Hiring manager for largest group of departments
Helped turn around recruiting at Opower
Regular “topgrading interview” partner (more on
that later) with Dan for executive hiring
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4. Hiring managers must do
» Own your hiring number; sit down with your recruiter and
go through resumes together so they understand what
you want
» Source and recruit by example and expect the same from
your team
» Build scorecards and interview panels that circumvent
your own weaknesses
» Set the standard; say “no” even under pressure to grow
» Insist on closing…do not give up on the great ones
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5. We are all in recruiting
Sourcing: Our best hires come from referrals or
are sourced directly by hiring managers; Dan and I
personally source for roles on LinkedIn every month
Primary focus for today
Evaluating: We have a diverse team of A players at
Opower, and each person has a role in evaluating
different capabilities and holding to a high standard
Closing: Nobody is more effective at selling a
candidate than a passionate Oployee, and anyone
can be closed with the right approach
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6. Sourcing: be a hunter, not a browser
» The easiest methods are usually less effective:
• Post job listings
• “It’s recruiting’s responsibility” – recipe for failure
» Finding and dislodging people beats resume browsing
» People who have looked at your LinkedIn profile
» People you went to grad school with, college with, even high school
with
» Former co-workers who supposedly love their current job
» People you know who you think are highly paid and unlikely to
move
» Remember: When building a team, recruiting is the
manager’s #1 job
5 November 2013
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7. Evaluating: Best people above all else
Hadip
» Quality, not quantity
• Exceptional people, for all roles
• A team of 10 passionate rock-stars will outperform a mediocre
team of 20-30
» Talent > experience
• Naturally, you want both
• Experience can be learned, talent cannot
• This is true esp for mgmt roles: only “A players” hire more As
» Passion is important too
• Passion = fuel, but you need to provide the spark
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8. Evaluating: The million-dollar decision
Hadip
» On the fence = no
» Maybe hire = no
» Yes with caveats = no
» Gut-wrench = no
» But the resume is impressive = no
» Hire but not my team = no
» It’s far better if team growth is painfully slow than to live with
the alternative repercussions
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9. Evaluating: interview etiquette
» Interrupting is key to successful interviewing
• You are in control, not them; rambling answers can waste your entire
evaluation
• Start interview saying you will interrupt them regularly
» When someone avoids an important question, ask it again
• Good interviews have tense moments.
» Know what you’re trying to learn before you go in
• Have a scorecard in advance that spells out the job clearly (more on this
later)
• Have questions written in advance; always study the resume
• Coordinate the topics amongst the interviewers
» Make them perform
• Code for engineers; design for PMs
• How they sell and handle pressure for salespeople
• Project management forOPOWER CONFIDENTIAL: DO NOT DISTRIBUTE
TPMs
5 November 2013
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10. Evaluating: Some questions are shortcuts
(some that I have used, find your own)
» Most analytically complex project you led
» When people break work streams down and assign them to
people, what types do you get and why; examples
» Why are you interested in this job; what motivates you
» Biggest failure on a project and what you learned
» Favorite class in college
» Hardest class in college
» What percentile are you in your job at analysis, team, communication if
I stack rank you against peers; if I print out your current perf review will
it substantiate what you just said
5 November 2013
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11. Evaluating: interviewing sales people
Bhorowitz
Dick Harrison, CEO of Parametric Technologies, home of perhaps the greatest enterprise sales
force ever built, interviewed Mark Cranney, the greatest sales manager I have ever met, as
follows:
Dick: “I’ll bet you got into a lot of fights when you were a youth didn’t you?”
Mark: “Well yes, Dick, I did get into a few.”
Dick: “Well, how’d you do?”
Mark: “Well, I was about 35-1.”
Dick: “Tell me about the 1.”
Mark tells him the story, which Dick enjoys immensely.
Dick: “Do you think you could kick my ass?”
Mark pauses and asks himself: “Is Dick questioning my courage or my intelligence?” Then replies:
“Could or would?”
Dick hires Mark on the spot.
Ask an engineer that same set of questions and at best she’d be confused and at worst she’d be
horrified.
By asking Mark those questions, Dick quickly found out:
•If Mark had the courage to stay in the box and not get flustered
•That Mark came from a rough environment and was plenty hungry
•That Mark was super competitive, but smart enough to calculate his answer
Hiring sales people is different.
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12. Evaluating: interviewing sales people
» Have them sell you on a former (or current) company
• Actually have them stand up with ppt or whatever they need
• Act the role of a buyer (and don’t be a pain in the ass)
» Always, always, always as for relative ranking on commission
• Tell them that you will ask their references for this
• Everyone says that they beat their quota. You want to know where they
ranked
» Pressure them in the moment
• Challenge them on a weak spot: “You don’t know SaaS software sales. I
don’t think this a great fit. Tell me why I should look past this weakness.”
» Get them to share thought leadership they had in the past
• Challenger salespeople are the best sales people
» Get them to list off the highest access they were able to get by
themselves
• Sales people that need their VPs to moveDISTRIBUTE org don’t scale
5 November 2013
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13. Evaluating: Dan on Engineers and
PMs
» Engineering: computer science, not syntax and technologies
• Algorithms and problem decomposition (OOO, etc) is much harder than
memorizing class libraries, formatting, and commenting discipline
• Sample questions:
–
–
–
–
–
Remove duplicates from an array in < O(n2) time
Past project where you personally decomposed the problem and how you did it
Past project where you personally designed interfaces/abstraction layers
Database design for a social network (e.g. Facebook)
Describe memcache in as much detail as possible
» Product management: design, features, market fit and development
process
• Don’t confuse project managers or product marketers with PMs
– Project managers : Gantt charts, no novel thinking on features and product/market fit
– Product marketers: not technical; talk about market trends not features to deliver against
them
• Sample questions:
– Alarm clock for the blind – do the UI and the feature set
– Favorite feature you created in the past and both why it was needed and why it was cool
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– Past example of feature triage to hit a deadline; example of deadline you missed and why

14. Evaluating: How to create a scorecard
Geoff_Smart
1. Mission: Why a role exists.
2. Experience profile: relevant past experience
3. Outcomes: What a person must
accomplish to achieve an A in next two
years.
4. Competencies: Personal behaviors needed
to achieve the outcomes.
5. Ensure alignment and communicate
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15. Evaluating: Sample scorecard
» Mission
•
» Experience profile
The mission for the VP of Engineering is to lead
and grow a high performance engineering
organization that delivers the software platform
Opower needs to grow our business exponentially
and profitably while delivering huge reductions in
energy usage.
» Outcomes
•
Leader: Lead team with a culture of victory and high
performance.
– Reintroduce startup mentality to engineering team and
maintain it as we grow.
– Recognition across rest of org as a great culture
– Recognition within engineering org as a great culture
– Every engineer clearly understands why their work matters
– Every engineer knows which teams are performing best and
why
– The VP should be a member of the senior leadership team at
the company, contributing to company-wide problem solving.
•
»
•
•
•
» Outcomes (cont.)
•
•
•
•
Organized, planner
Efficient
Aggressive
5 November 2013
On-time Delivery: international, thermostats, social
–
–
–
–
•
90% success rate of hitting commitments
50% increase in speed to market
Make and deliver on commitments within an Agile environment
Deliver under a two-coast and off-shore team environment
Quality: Maintain product quality
– No increase in bugs per product area
– Industry reputation for high quality product
•
Design leadership: design platform for the future
– Design platform so that twice in next two years we get a new
feature set "for free" due to wise architecture.
– Architecture: Cut feature cost by 75%; scale to 50M homes
– Operations: reduce cost to launch and maintain clients by
75%.
Hiring: Topgrade team and grow to 200+ within 2
year
– Hire an A Player Director Engineering
– Hire an A Player Director of SEiT
– Hire three A Player Lead engineers
Competencieswho is not an A player
– Fire any engineer
Led team of 50+ people
Have been on a senior management team
Experience with customer-facing software, ideally
SaaS
•
•
•
•
Evangelize: become most popular platform for 3rd party
developers and technologists in energy industry
Strong communicator
• Good judgment
Persistent
• Curious and Creative
Proactive
• Good teammate
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16. Interview day: divide and conquer
» Design the day to empower the hiring manager to make the decision
• Everyone is supporting the hiring manager, but they get to decide
• Hiring manager always does the top grade
• Less is more – ideal day is 4-6 people
» Example of the SVP People interview day (too big):
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Operational HR: Loewer (HR)
Global vision for HR: Kramer (CFO)
Culture and collaborative organization: Sachse (GC)
Performance management: Kirsch (Sales)
Learning and talent management: McPhee (Eng)
Recruiting: Boulanger (Recruiting)
Topgrading: Yates and Morris
5 November 2013
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17. Evaluating: The 2hr topgrading
interview
Geoff_Smart
1. What were you hired to do?
2. What accomplishments are you most proud of?
3. What were some low points during that job?
4. Who were the people you worked with?
i.
ii.
What was your bosses’ name (how do you spell that). What was it like
working with him/her? What will he/she tell me were your biggest
strengths for improvement?
How would you rate the team you inherited on an A, B, C scale? What
changes did you make? Did you hire anybody? Fire anybody? How
would you rate the team when you left it on an A, B, C scale?
5. Why did you leave that job?
5 November 2013
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18. Evaluating: Reference checks are more
important than interviews!
Hadip
» 99% of references are positive
» The right question to ask references: “is Joe a good
candidate, or a great candidate?”
• References won’t say “bad” even if that’s what they’re thinking
• If they say “good” that means “bad”
» The best ref-checks are those you find on your own
• Example: cold-call the head of the division the candidate worked at 2
jobs ago.
• Or ask the name of a boss or employee from a company that wasn’t
in the initial list of references you got
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19. Evaluating: Red flags = “No”
Geoff_Smart
» Candidate does not mention past failures
» Exaggerates his or her answers
» Takes credit for the work of others
» Speaks poorly of past bosses
» Cannot explain job moves
» People most important to candidate are unsupportive of change
» Seems more interested in compensation and benefits versus the job
» Tries too hard to look like an expert
» Candidate is self-absorbed
» For managerial hires, candidate has never had to hire or fire anyone
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20. Closing: Pick the right pitch and
persist
SF: "Do you want to sell
sugar water for the rest
of your life, or do you
want to come with me
and change the world?"
DC: "Don’t be an idiot. Get on a
rocket ship. When companies
are growing quickly and they are
having a lot of impact, careers
take care of themselves.”
» You can compel people to move to DC
» People will leave jobs they have just taken
» People who say “no” at first can be turned around by
having Dan or a management team member call
» You can convince people to make lateral moves
» Nobody is “too good” for your role; your selling needs work
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