Talent Principles

The talent team is uniquely placed at PostHog to have an outsized influence on the people that join the company in comparison to the rest of the business. This is why we ask our talent partners to think like owners.

PostHog's business model requires us to build and automate more products, to do that we need more engineers. Once we have more products, we require commercial team members to market those products and to look after the customers that sign up. We also need to support those customers and support the growth of the business. This means that the people that join PostHog directly impact our growth, hence why we invest so heavily in finding and retaining great people.

At some companies the Talent team are seen as a support function, at PostHog we view them as a growth function, so we need our talent partners to be thinking about the growth of the business as a whole, not just as a headcount.

This means taking ownership of understanding what products we need to build, the types of people we need to build those products, understanding how our commercial team make our customers successful and what types of people fit into those commercial roles. Talent partners should also understand how our funnels are working and what is needed to solve any problems within them.

Talent partners at PostHog do not just interview candidates and put them through, they own the process from beginning to end and should use all their skills to make that process successful.

Removing distractions from the rest of the team

As a talent partner, part of the role is to ensure we are removing distractions from the rest of the business where we can. Practically, what this looks like in talent is that other team members really only need to concentrate on assessment and shouldn't need to concern themselves with other areas of the process.

Throughout the recruitment process there are different ways that talent partners can remove distractions.

Sourcing Talent

Our default recruitment strategy is 100% inbound. We are not an outbound-first recruiting style organization and don't want to become one. That said, there are times when sourcing is the right tool for acquiring new candidates. This section explains when to reach for it, how to do it well, and how to know if it's working.

When To Source

We should source when inbound alone isn't generating enough qualified candidates at the top of the funnel for a specific role. This can happen for many reasons, including:

• The role requires a niche skill set, and the addressable talent pool is small.
• When headcount for a particular role is very high.
• A role has been open for 4+ weeks and we're not seeing enough quality applications.

How We Source

Be targeted, not generic. We don't do high-volume spray-and-pray outreach. We'd rather send 15 highly personalized messages than 150 templated auto-messages. Sourcing at PostHog should feel like a curated referral from someone who's done their homework, not a LinkedIn InMail blast.

Practically, this looks like:

• Research before you reach out. Look at what they've built, shipped, written, or contributed to. If you can't find a specific reason to reach out to them beyond "their title matches", don't reach out.
• Lead with what they'd work on, not who we are. Most sourced messages open with "we are an amazing company..."; this comes across generically and doesn’t always grab attention. Make sure they know it’s a personalized message. Open with the problem they'd solve, or the product they'd help build. Link to the specific small team page they’d work with, a recent GitHub issue, or a shipped feature that's relevant to their background.
• Be transparent about who we are and how we work. Link to the handbook. Link to the compensation calculator. Link to relevant blog posts. PostHog's transparency is one of our biggest differentiators in recruiting: use it!
• Use the right channel. LinkedIn is usually our default, but for engineers, consider reaching out via GitHub (if they're active contributors), Twitter/X (if they post about relevant topics), or relevant community forums (HN, specific open source communities). Match the channel to where the person actually is. This can also occasionally be via email.

What A Good Sourcing Message Looks Like

Here's the kind of thing that usually works:

Hey (name), I was taking a look at your work on (specific project/contribution). We're building (specific thing) at PostHog and it really seems like the kind of problem that needs someone with your background in (specific skill). If you haven’t heard of us at PostHog, we're fully remote, pay transparently, and our entire company handbook is public; you can read exactly how the team you'd join operates before you even start day 1: (link to small team page). If this seems even 1% interesting to you, let me know, and I can set up a call for you with one of our talent partners handling the role!

And here's what doesn't usually work:

Hi (name), I came across your profile and was impressed! PostHog is a fast-growing product analytics company backed by Y Combinator. We're looking for world-class talent to join our world-class team. Would you be open to a conversation?

The first message is specific and gives the candidate real information. The second is generic and could be about any company hiring any role.

Sourced Candidates In the Process

Sourced candidates follow a slightly different path at the start of the process. See Managing sourced candidates for the exact mechanics.

The key difference to keep in mind: sourced candidates didn't come to us; we went to them.

Some context related to this, to end this sourcing section:

• You'll need to invest more in educating sourced candidates about PostHog. Inbound candidates have usually read the handbook and tried the product on their own. Sourced candidates haven't always done this (but ideally should before their call). This can look like sending more content-heavy emails (linking to the handbook, blog posts, team pages, etc.) and generally doing more "educating" throughout the early stages of the process, to bring sourced candidates up to the same level of context that inbound candidates arrive with naturally.
• Expect lower conversion at later stages. Sourced candidates haven't self-selected the same way inbound candidates have, so their drop-off rates will naturally be higher.
• Track it separately. We should always know what percentage of our hires came from sourcing vs. inbound vs. referrals.

Top of the funnel

Talent partners should be speaking to hiring managers before a job goes live to understand the types of candidate that they should be looking for at the top of the funnel, this part should continue to be honed as you learn more from feedback at the various stages of the process. We want to avoid passing through inappropriate candidates, that waste time. It is a talent partner's responsibility to screen applications at the top of the funnel, here we are looking for signal that people can be effective at PostHog. We look for things like:-

• have they worked at companies that have scaled like PostHog wants to
• have they been a founder before
• have they led on projects
• have they written a personalized cover letter explaining how they fit the role
• have they displayed high levels of ownership
• are they weird?

Once you’ve screened the application and moved them forward you will have a culture screening call. We also want to ensure that we are putting relevant and motivated candidates through to the next round. At the screening stage it is important to make sure your notes are well organised and clear, not just for the next stage. These notes will be reviewed at SuperDay and will be taken into consideration if we are going to hire this person so make sure to have these in good order.

Post-screen, pre-SuperDay

Talent partners are responsible for moving candidates through the next two stages, we rely on automation from Ashby to allow candidates to book directly in calendars. Talent partners are responsible for the candidate experience so if a candidate or an interviewer can't make that time, then you need to step in and resolve the issue. It is important that interviewers know that they need to maintain an up to date calendar, however sometimes last minute changes do occur.

SuperDay

Talent partners are responsible for scheduling these, you can read more in the hiring process SuperDay section. The people involved should be focused on assessing the candidate so talent partners need to be alert for helping with any logistics to make sure the SuperDay runs smoothly.

Speed v quality

At PostHog, we have two major forces playing against each other when it comes to hiring. We want to move quickly, when we want to hire somebody, usually they should have started last week. The reason for that is we always want to hire for quality, and this takes time. This makes life as a talent partner a constant balance between these two things. The way we try and balance these things is try and move as quickly as possible with the things in our control. We aim to review applications ASAP, usually within 48 hours of application. Then we want to make sure that candidates can book their first round call with us within 2 business days. This keeps the momentum going from a candidate deciding to apply, to speaking to somebody. Our aim is to get back to every candidate by the end of the day after their interview, this is difficult, so whilst it's an aim we don't always hit it. We should be pushing interviewers to get feedback to us ASAP. The longer we leave canddiates without a decision the slower we will move.

Speed is a team effort, we should always keep things moving for each other. This means that if we see something that needs arranged and you can do it now, do it. No need to wait for the person who was last in contact to come online, just give them a heads up that it's done. This shared ownership mentality of speed is what will help us succeed.

When it comes to quality, we are always looking to be impressed. We use a rating system out of 4 and it is rare that we would hire somebody without receiving a 4 from somebody in the process. We know that exceptional people are usually spiky, they don't have an evenly distributed skill set so people can have reservations about a certain area and they can still be exceptional. Talent partners need to be aware of when to push and pull when it comes to hiring decisions. There will be circumstances when there are hard decisions over whether we should hire somebody or not and talent partners should be prepared to offer opinions. This could be vouching for a candidate that is similar to other successful team members who we might be hesitating on and conversely stepping in when it looks like we might be making a hiring that isn't appropriate.

When a hiring process is moving slowly, or we seem to be rejecting lots of candidates at SuperDay, it is up to the talent partner to realize and own this. They should review what is going on, understand the problem and aim to fix this. They should get in front of this as soon as possible.

Maintaining quality is also about ensuring that our interviewers are assessing candidates in a consistent way, so spotting when there are inconsistencies are coming up in feedback and doing something about that is important.

Evaluating success

A talent partner will be judged on how many excellent candidates they can get into the business and how those candidates manage to impact the business' performance. We would much rather we had consistently great people coming in and moving the business forward, than if we had lots of people joining but it's not helping us grow. We want talent partners to be able to just assess a candidate on a screening call but be able to figure out how we continue to scale the growth of PostHog, with great people at the heart of it.