When starting Moment we didn’t have a hiring process. We also didn’t have money to hire anyone, making it a moot point.

But we did need help with specialty skillsets that we didn’t have on the team. So we ended up carving up the work into micro projects and paying what we could. Thankfully friends and friends of friends were willing to help in those early days. I like to call this stage…a collection of bandits.

What we didn’t realize is at the time, was that our use of micro projects would be the basis for how we’d build the company. The process of scoping the project, costing it, and running it showed us everything about how someone works. It also quickly showed us who we should work with again and who we shouldn’t.

Fast forward five years and we’ve built a team of 40 using what we now call Project To Hire. It’s a hiring process that inverts the triangle from lots of interviewing and little work to little interviewing and lots of work. We found that you can interview people all day long, but until they bring their laptop and get to work, you have no idea if they are a fit.

At Moment we’ve had nearly 1K applicants. We’ve run about 100 projects, hired 55, and 40 still remain.

Before outlining how this work, it’s important to note this isn’t just a really long interview process where you use up people for free. This is a paid project to hire process that forces you to refine who you hire and why. When money is on the line you’ll be amazed at fast how teams narrow their focus.

Why Project To Hire

Project To Hire has been transformational in building Moment. Not only has it helped us to hire the right people but it’s enabled the team to see a lot more talent. This means everyone is better calibrated to thee differences between amazing and ok.

Most importantly, project to hire has pushed the team to think about scale from an early company age. In order to project people you have to have a tight brief, clear documentation, and a process to on-board and off-board people.

Getting this right has enabled us to focus all of our energy on the work and the people.

The benefit to your team…

• See More Talent. They get to work with a lot more talent. It helps everyone calibrate fit, while benchmarking themselves against the people they are projecting.
• Learn To Scope. A great project always has a tight brief. It takes a lot of practice to do this well so every project is another chance to learn.
• Process Documentation. The team gets very good at documenting their internal process because they can’t quickly on-board new people without it.
• Faster Starts. Once a new hire joins the company, the process to get them ramped is faster. Day 1 is really like their second week so people get shipping real work faster than a traditional, cold start interview process.

The benefit to employees…

• Self Select. Biggest value is that potential hires decide right away if a project to hire process is right for them. The people who don’t want to help on the side or weekends are the wrong fit anyways so it’s great if they opt out.
• Date The Company. The fear of changing jobs is lowered by doing real work with potential co-workers.
• Stress Free. They are paid for their time so they aren’t stressed about paying their bills. That’s in direct comparison to competing jobs where they don’t get paid to interview and are required to participate in multiple interviews.

Even if a project doesn’t work out I’ve found that our team gets better. It crystalizes the role, who we need, and why we need them.

How It Works (potential employees)

There are two flows you have to worry about.

1. Your Team – from posting the job to projecting to hiring.
2. The Employee – from applying, to projecting, to joining.

We’ll start with #2 as it’s simpler.

To create your process use a customer journey. Map out the potential employee’s experience before, during and after a project. The before starts at reading the job description and after ends with joining (or not joining) the company.

Their process generally looks like this…

• Apply. We post all of our jobs on Angel List and link from our careers page.
• Phone call. They receive back a yes lets chat or no thank you. The team generally uses Calendly.
• Email. Post call they get an email with the project brief and a doc called "Moment Projects (the why, what, and how)." It explains everything they need to make a decision about doing a project and joining the company. It’s important that BEFORE they do a project they have already internalized this doc and made a decision that Moment is the right place for them if the project works out. We include our compensation model so they already know what they will be paid based on what level we assess them at.
• Scope the project. If they are still interested they do the first part of the project by sending back a scope in the project brief that outlines their plan by phase and includes their time and hourly rate.
• Run the project. If the scope is approved they are added to a temp channel in Slack and are asked to lead the project. It’s their project to drive.
• Feedback. Once the project is done they are given feedback and told if we think it’s a fit or not. If it is, they send over three references. While waiting to connect with those references they also receive a personal review which outlines their compensation level and why.
• Paid. Regardless of outcome they are paid for their project as soon as it is over.

What you’ll find is that people either love or hate this process. We look for people who love it and jump in with two feet. We find that the best candidates…

• Reply quickly. They schedule calls as soon as available, complete the scope the first night, and wrap up their project within a week.
• Succinct writer. The scope is tightly outlined and they are direct in their communication.
• Drive. Once the the project they really drive in getting the team to help them, schedule their recaps, and post their work.
• Use Google Docs. You’d be shocked but being given a google doc and then not using it is the fastest sign that someone isn’t a fit. Especially if they send you back a pdf or presentation.
• High energy. Their calls have high energy and are engaging.

What’s amazing is that before they even ship their work you can already tell if they are on the right track or not. And if they aren’t we stop the project before it’s completed. There is no sense wasting their time or ours.

How It Works (your team)

The process you use with your team should start simple and evolve over time. We are on version 3.0 of our process. It’s written so that anyone can successfully run a project.

Our process has four stages.

1. Posting – write the job, write the project brief, and post the job online.
2. Filtering – reviewing, interviewing, and starting projects.
3. Projecting – the actual running of the project from kick off to final review.
4. Closing – process to conclude the project and close the candidate.

I will provide some additional context to each stage.

1. Posting The Job
In this stage the team completes the following.

• Writes the job description.
• Writes the project brief.
• Posts the job and starts the inbound funnel.

What’s important in this stage is that we expect the hiring lead to write the project brief BEFORE they post the job. It’s very important to know the core skill set you are looking for. Therefore by writing the project brief it forces you to dig in and clarify where this candidate has to be amazing.

The way to create the project brief is to ask yourself…what thing/skill do they have to unbelievably amazing at? Is it curating? Is it refining existing products? Is it prototyping? Is it creating from a blank piece of paper?

Once you know the area you then build the project around it.

Basic project rules…

• They need to ship something.
• Scope should be clear and tight.
• Total cost should be under $2K per project (usually under $1K)
• Total time is sub 15 hours of work.
• Ideally they complete the work within a week, maybe two.
• It should include at least one review meeting so you can see them in a group dynamic.

I made a Project Brief template for you.

2. Filter Candidates
In this stage the team completes the following.

• Reviews and filters resumes.
• Phone screen with candidates.
• Send project brief and process doc about doing a project.
• Review their scope and decide if the project should start.

This section looks a lot like a traditional hiring process, except instead of offering them a job you are offering them a project to try.

You can let different functions modify this stage to whatever they need in order to make a project decision. For example our technical teams want to review engineering samples to make that decision, which is fine. All you care about is that they are consistent in deciding who is and isn’t worth running a project.

The biggest benefit to this process is that you can test people you were on the fence about. Traditionally you have to say no as the risk of hiring someone on the fence is too high of a cost. It’s more more expensive to get a hire wrong vs a project wrong.

The most important step in this stage is reviewing their scope. Post phone call you send them the project brief. It’s on the candidate to send back a scope and the best ones do it quickly. This is the first time you’ve seen them work and it will tell you a lot.

• Speed. How fast did they reply to your post call email? How fast did they send back a project scope?
• Communication. Beyond speed do they tell you when they will have the scope back? Are their emails succinct?
• Outline. How detailed is their outline? Is it even in the google doc you sent them or did they try to make a pdf, presentation, or a new doc?
• Time. Are their hours reasonable for the project scope? Were they clear with their time estimates for each section of the project?
• Costs. Was their hourly rate in line with the expected compensation?

Out of everything they send back you really want to look at the hourly rate. If they send back something too high this is your chance to re-address compensation before they start. I’ve often found people taking a pay cut isn’t a good fit and therefore you have to address this upfront and potentially stop the process.

Additional recommendations for this stage…

• Have a clear filtering criteria. Be very clear about either core experiences or passions that every hire has to have. In our case it’s publishing publicly and having a passion for photography. If they don’t have either then we move on. Photography are the problems we’re solving and publishing is the shipping culture we foster.
• Pre-write the followup email. Candidates will show as much interest as you do, which means as soon as your screening call is over send them the post call email.
• Group candidates in the same stage. I recommend you interview everyone the same week and try to run projects at the same time. This ensures candidates are at the same decision process and gives the team the optimal chance to compare multiple candidates.

3. Running The Project
In this stage the team completes the following.

• On-board the candidate.
• Kick off the project internally.
• Run the project.
• Provide feedback post project.
• Decide which candidate you want to hire.

You can run the project any way you want. Ideally it’s run like you would any new project at your company. We run the company in Slack, which makes it easier for spinning up and closing out temporary projects.

What we generally do is…

• On-boarding checklist. Have one and list either what function or who does what column. I made you an on-boarding template.
• Create a channel. The hiring lead makes a temp slack channel, adds the teammates needed, and writes a first post in the channel with everything the employee needs. It includes introductions and links to both the project folder and working brief.
• Candidate leads. We let the candidate lead the project, interacting with the team as they need. The best candidates are actively engaging the group as they see this as their own chance to validate the company is fit for them.
• Reviews. Projects can have multiple review sessions. Each is lead by the candidate so we can see how they do in getting a group to provide the feedback they need to keep going. A project always ends with a final review where work is presented to the team.
• Feedback. Once a project is over we give every candidate direct feedback on the project and why it was or wasn’t a fit.

Overall what matters is in this stage is consistency. That means everyone does the same project so you can compare apples to apples. It’s also important the project is run in a public channel so everyone can see how they work.

This consistency will help you better select who stands out from the group.

4. Closing The Candidate
In this stage the team completes the following.

• If not a fit, close the project and pay them.
• Review references.
• Write a candidate review.
• Verbal agreement.
• Sign the offer.

It’s important to show urgency at this point. The candidate is a few weeks into the process and there is always a risk that they go somewhere else.

The area we see the biggest break down in this stage finalizing their compensation.

At Moment we use a compensation formula. We provide our compensation philosophy before the project starts but it’s important to bring this back up and let the candidate know which level they are starting at and why. We do this through our 1:1 review template. Yes you are limited on data to provide a detailed review, but it’s a start and clarifies for candidates where they stand and why.

What Are The Issues

This process isn’t for everyone. We’ve used it from our inception which makes it easier to improve upon. But a big word of caution is to make sure you don’t half ass it or you won’t get team buy in.

Some things you have to watch out for….

• Talent not projecting. It will bother you that some people who look great on paper choose not to do a project. As painful as this appears, this is a good thing. You want people to love or hate the process so having them not even try a project is okay. You may think you are missing a chance at top talent but in reality you need people who are so stoked on the company they want to work on it in their free time.

• Rushing the process. You can go as fast as the candidate does the project. It’s hard but you have to avoid the…oh this person is amazing so lets skip the project to hire process because they are going to take another job. Don’t do this. If someone is in such a rush that they don’t have time to try out then you don’t want them. It means they will leave your company in the same hurry.

• Not being consistent. Most of our misses have come from not using our own process. We get excited about someone and skip steps or don’t analyze their project thoroughly enough.

• Single candidate projects. You want to avoid single candidate projects. It’s really important to run multiple candidates at the same time to create momentum and urgency. It takes time to get people into a project, therefore you don’t want to be starting over if your one candidate doesn’t work out.

• Candidate details. This project gives you a lot of candidate interactions so look at all of them. It’s easy to just jump to the work and assume you can teach the rest.

The Tools We Use

Here is a short list of the tools we use. I created some templates for you as examples.

• Angel List – where we post our jobs, filter candidates, and manage our pipeline.
• Calendly – candidates schedule a 30min call with the hiring lead.
• Slack – where we run the project.
• Google Docs – we make a project folder and brief for each candidate.
• Project Brief Template – an example outline for each project brief.
• Onboarding Checklist Template – what we use for on-boarding and off-boarding candidates.