The Ultimate Guide to a Killer Recruitment Process

Hey, Justin here, and welcome to Just Go Grind, a newsletter sharing the lessons, tactics, and stories of world-class founders! Premium subscribers get full access to this newsletter, exclusive events, event discounts, and more.

This year I want to create more products and services for you, my reader.

One idea I had? Merch.

Today, we’re exploring one of the most critical aspects of building a successful business: hiring the right people.

Whether you’re scaling a startup or fine-tuning your recruitment process, this guide—brought to you by our hiring partner Athyna—will help you attract and retain top-tier global talent.

Hiring the right people is everything.

Great founders—from Bezos to Musk—obsess over recruitment, and for good reason. Your team defines your culture, sets the bar for performance, and ultimately determines whether your company thrives or stalls.

At Athyna, they’ve helped businesses build world-class global teams. They know what works (and what doesn’t). If you’re serious about hiring top-tier talent—this guide will walk you through every step of the process.

Let’s dive in.

Before you even think about hiring, get specific. A well-defined role ensures you attract the right candidates and avoid wasted time.

The Jobs To Be Done (JTBD) approach

Instead of just listing qualifications, define the outcomes you expect from a hire. Bezos, for instance, built Amazon’s hiring philosophy around “raising the bar”—each new hire should be better than the last.

• Key Question: What will success in this role look like in 90 days? One year?

• Pro Tip: Highlight the growth opportunities in the role to attract ambitious candidates.

2. BUILD AN EMPLOYER BRAND THAT ATTRACTS TALENT

Your employer brand is a talent magnet. 75% of candidates consider a company’s brand before applying. Make sure yours stands out.

• Showcase Your Values: Candidates want to work for a company with a purpose.

• Be Transparent: Share your compensation structure, perks, and work culture.

• Highlight Flexibility: Remote work and hybrid models are a major draw for top professionals.

Who’s doing it right?

• Salesforce: Consistently ranked as one of the best places to work, Salesforce prioritizes culture, career progression, and employee well-being. Their Ohana Culture ensures that employees feel connected, valued, and motivated.

• Shopify: Known for its remote-first policy and a strong emphasis on autonomy and ownership, Shopify's employer brand attracts ambitious, self-driven professionals who thrive in a decentralized environment.

• Patagonia: By championing environmental sustainability and employee activism, Patagonia attracts purpose-driven talent that aligns with its mission.

3. USE A DATA-DRIVEN HIRING PROCESS

The best companies don’t rely on gut feelings when hiring—they use structured interviews, scorecards, and AI-driven tools.

• AI-Driven Candidate Matching: Save time by leveraging tools that help filter top candidates.

• Skills-Based Hiring: Google and Microsoft focus on problem-solving ability over credentials.

• Structured Interviews: Standardized questions reduce bias and improve decision-making.

Companies doing it right:

• Google is famous for its structured hiring process, using data-driven assessments to remove bias.

• Tesla screens for problem-solving skills using high-pressure technical interviews.

4. MASTER THE INTERVIEW PROCESS

The best founders don’t just interview—they engineer their hiring process to minimize bias and maximize results.

A company doing it right?

• Stripe standardizes hiring interviews to ensure fair evaluation across candidates and has a hybrid process. Their eng team is divided into two orgs: Product and Infrastructure.

Why structured interviews win

Data consistently shows that structured interviews—where all candidates are asked the same set of job-relevant questions—are nearly twice as effective at predicting job performance compared to unstructured interviews.

A study by Google found that structured interviews improve hiring accuracy by up to 50% while reducing bias and increasing fairness in decision-making.

Key approaches from world-class founders

• Musk’s favorite question: “Tell me about a difficult problem you solved and how you did it.” He believes only those who truly solve a problem can recall every detail.

• Amazon’s ‘Bar Raiser’ Approach: A unique process (that was actually borrowed from Microsoft), where every new hire must elevate the overall talent level of the company.

•  Sam Altman’s Hiring Rule: “Hire for values first, aptitude second, and skills third.”

How to apply this in your hiring process

1. Use a competency-based framework: Define the key skills and traits needed for success in the role.

2. Ask behavioral questions: “Tell me about a time when…” questions reveal how candidates solve real-world problems.

3. Standardize your evaluation criteria: Create a scorecard for interviewers to rate candidates objectively.

4. Assess cultural fit: A great hire should align with your mission and work culture.

A well-structured interview process doesn’t just help you make better hires—it ensures that every new addition to your team strengthens your company.

5. EXPAND YOUR TALENT POOL BEYOND BORDERS

Why limit yourself to one city when you can hire the best talent globally?

• Latin America: High-quality engineers and designers at 50-60% lower costs.

• Southeast Asia: Tech and customer support hubs with incredible talent.

6. ONBOARDING: SET NEW HIRES UP FOR SUCCESS

A seamless onboarding experience increases retention by 82%.

• Clear Onboarding Plan: Walk new hires through their first 30-60-90 days.

• Asynchronous Documentation: Use Notion or Confluence to store all critical info.

• Culture Integration: Connect them with mentors early to build engagement.

Who’s doing it right?

• Netflix: Provides an extensive onboarding program that integrates employees into the company’s high-performance culture.

• Zapier: As a fully remote company, Zapier prioritizes asynchronous onboarding processes that ensure new hires hit the ground running.

How Athyna Nails Onboarding

A great recruitment process doesn’t end when a candidate accepts an offer—it extends into onboarding. And for us, this starts when every new hire signs the contract.

Besides a structured introduction to the role—with plenty of documentation and training—plus a full company walkthrough, we have two secret weapons to ease the stress for new hires:

• We announce every new hire internally, so the whole team can reach out via email or LinkedIn before Day 1. This makes them feel welcome right away and helps reduce any first-day nerves.

• We assign an Onboarding Buddy—a go-to person for anything and everything. This is usually a peer who acts as their right-hand person throughout the onboarding journey.

Since we’re fully remote, we use a mix of Notion, Slack, and Loom to create an onboarding experience that’s both flexible and engaging—no information gets lost, and no one feels overwhelmed.

The result? Higher retention rates, faster ramp-up time for new hires, stronger engagement, and long-term performance.

FINAL THOUGHTS

And that’s it from us. Now you know. Hiring is the most important job of any founder.

Whether you’re a scrappy startup or a growing enterprise, building a killer recruitment process is your competitive edge.

So… ready to build a world-class team? Athyna helps you find top global talent to take your business to the next level.

Let’s build your dream team!

• My friend Lindsey just dropped a new landing page for FYPM, check it out!

• I recorded a podcast this week at Podcast Place, this studio in Long Beach (Great spot, highly suggest) with Shawn Sheikh, Managing Partner at Adly

• My other friend, Monique, recently launched her marketing agency and is looking for more companies to work with

• Like the look of this newsletter? It’s all thanks to the team at Pixels which I highly suggest for your newsletter design needs

• Trenton, a founder I’ve gotten to know through Twitter, just added more facilitators for Tribe, his vetted network for top early to mid stage entrepreneurs

In the past nearly two years, I’ve written dozens of deep dives on world-class founders, sharing how they built their companies. These typically take 20-30 hours to research and write. The most recent ones are below:

Best,
Justin

Founder of Just Go Grind

P.S. Hiring? Check out the team at Athyna