So much ink is contributed to the topic of finding good co-founders and hiring great employees, but very few offering advice steer you in the direction of needing to focus on your extended team. While the people with whom you are working day to day will have a great deal of impact on the success or failure of your project or business, the people with whom you interact less often might actually save your ass.

The line item on your income statement of “professional services” can be a pretty broad one, and mostly encompasses service providers which are considered non-core to your business. Until you are a large company, you will most likely be outsourcing a good deal of services to these providers, and finding the right partner can mean the difference between good work and wasted money. There may be service providers whose services are specific to your industry, but more generally, every business needs a lawyer, a banker, and an accountant. You may also need a professional recruiter and a commercial real estate broker.

Regardless of the type of service which is being rendered to you from these providers, it’s of utmost important that you find a provider that is right for you. This is going to depend on a few variables, but when in my past I have sought out these providers for my businesses, I learned (through mistakes) to ask the following questions:

Do they believe in what you are trying to do?

Your extended team doesn’t necessarily need to believe that you are going to be changing the world, or even having a significant impact on it, but they do have to believe in what you are doing, whatever that may be. The reason for this is you need to know that they are going to bring that little something extra to the table when you need it. You may find yourself in desperate need of a solution from one of these service providers, and if you are “just another name” to them, it’s more than likely that you aren’t going to get what you need. It’s too easy for them to do what’s passable, versus what’s extra-ordinary.

Do they understand what it is you are trying to do?

I can remember my first meeting with an accountant in Texas when we were starting IMSafer. I had found this particular individual through the local chamber of commerce, after spending time asking around my anemic professional network in the area. We spoke on the phone and he seemed like a decent guy, so we agreed to meet. The most important question I should have asked on the phone, which I didn’t, was “have you ever had any software startups as clients?” His answer would have been “no” and that would have been the end of the conversation.

When we first sat down to go over the company’s current financial situation, you should have seen the look on this man’s face when we told him we had not revenues and that there wasn’t a concrete plan to start generating revenues in the coming months. This was clearly anathema to him, and in fact, he grew increasingly uncomfortable as the conversation went on. During our meeting, I had to explain too many things to him, with him repeatedly asking questions about business models, funding, the security which the angels had invested, etc.

Ultimately we decided that we would give it a go, but only after taking him on a probationary period. I wasted two months with that particular accountant, who not only didn’t understand what we were trying to do, but he really didn’t ever help beyond the basic checking of my double entry accounting. When it came time to get creative with how we were going to manage payables to our search engine marketing company, he didn’t understand their business either, and could offer nothing up. Perhaps I just drew a dud of an accountant, and it wouldn’t have mattered if he understood our business or not. However, my experience with our intellectual property attorneys led me to come up with the third qualifier.

Do they have other clients who look and smell like your company?

Above and beyond simply understanding your business, what experience does the service provider have servicing clients like yourself? You would never dream of hiring a programmer specifically to scale your service if they have never done it before. Doubly so if you have the opportunity to hire a similarly competent programmer who had. Why then would you consider hiring a member of your extended team if they have never had experience working with a company like yours? Since most of these service providers are providing that service on a per hour cost basis, it helps to know that they will be working efficiently and not learning on the job as you go.

If you locate yourself in a hub that is a natural gathering point for companies/businesses like yourself, you will most likely be in luck when it comes time to build your extended team. Things become slightly harder if you are the only company like yourself around. As I pointed out earlier, finding an accountant in the area where I lived north of Houston who understood software startups was very challenging. Finding one that understood the oil and gas industry was obviously much easier. Similarly, you won’t have any challenges finding lawyers in Silicon Valley who can help you structure your funding documents for an Internet startup.

The Moral? You need to put just as time and effort into building your extended team as you would your co-founders and employees. Having an extended team that supports you, understands what your company does and has other clients like you is hugely important when you get yourself into some really sticky situations.

Interviewing is one of those things that very few people know how to do really well. There are a small handful of things that you really need to get accomplished during an interview loop, and if people in the loop don’t know what part they are playing, it’s probable that you are going to end up with some bad hires. Bad hires come in two forms: the people who are just bad people, and the people who you aren’t sure whether or not they can do the job. Bad hires are like bad apples, and they can quickly bring down a company.

I was once told by a mentor that I should always look to hire “A” players. Initially, I thought that this seemed incredibly elitist, and somewhat difficult to attain. If we assume that “A” means top 10%, it stands to reason that there is a very limited supply of such players. While that’s true, it turns out there is a very different reason for wanting to hire “A” players. “A” players attract and hire other “A” players. They aren’t afraid of “A” players. They want to work with other “A” players. They believe that having a team of “A” players (not to be confused with “rock stars”) is creating a whole greater than the sum of its parts. “B” players don’t like to hire “A” players, especially for peer hires, because the “B” players might be outshone. “B” players hire “C” players. With this, the death spiral begins.

When considering your interview loop, there are some base principles that you should consider. These may seem obvious, but it’s been surprising to me how many of the companies for whom I have worked, interviewed with, or invested in don’t succeed in their hiring practices. Over the years, I have compiled the following general recipe for interview loop success:

1. Everyone on the loop has an equal say in the hire decision
2. There should be at least 3 interviewers (up to 5) with a last “as appropriate” interview
3. The interview questions should test fit with the company
4. The interview questions should address ability to do the job
5. Feedback should be immediately entered into a form following the interview, with a required, binary “hire” or “no hire”
6. Measure the accuracy of the hiring decisions
7. Always be selling

In giving everyone equal say in the hiring decision, you are letting all employees, at all levels, know that they are just as important to the company as anyone else when it comes to determining who is going to come aboard. This includes having a junior member of the team who has been out of college for 6 months being able to say “no hire” to a senior level candidate.

Some might think that this is an absurd idea. What could that young person possibly know about what it takes to hire a senior level person? They know enough about being able to detect bullshit. They know enough to detect whether or not they can get along with that person. Lastly, and this is a point I consider very important, it teaches them that sometimes they are going to have to make tough decisions without full information. That goes for the other members of the team. Sometimes someone on your team is going to have to make a tough decision, without full information, but you are going to have to commit to supporting that decision if it is theirs to make. Obviously, the larger the company, the more relaxed this requirement, but the spirit should remain.

The number of interviewers on a loop is important to ensure that there is no bias in the hiring, and that there is enough diversity in the decision making to avoid any monoculture. To ensure that, the people who are on the interview loops should not always be the same. This will be tough with smaller companies, but you want to have enough of a group so that the collective set of interviewers is seldom the same group as a previous interview loop. Using combinatorial math, with just 11 employees, you can have 240 different groups of 3 interviewers if the 11^th person is always the “as appropriate.” Who said you wouldn’t use your high school math in your real job?

The “as appropriate” interview is something I took away from my time at Microsoft. It’s basically the person who is the most senior on the loop, and has the authority to make a decision on the person being interviewed. The “as appropriate” is what it sounds like. Depending on how the initial set of interviews went, this person may or may not actually have to sit down with the candidate. If the “as appropriate” occurs, it’s basically a fit interview. The candidate has cleared the hurdles of whether or not they would be able to do the job, so this interview is to gauge whether or not the candidate will fit in with the rest of the company.

In general, all of the interviewers should ask a few questions that can help gauge whether or not the candidate would be a good fit for the interview. I like to ask what they do for fun outside of work. It’s a very non-threatening, and very open ended question, which gives the candidate a moment to relax and talk about something that they really enjoy. If they have nothing to offer here, their silence tells you more than any words possibly could.

More important than fit questions, during the first set of interviews, the candidate should be subjected to questions that measure whether or not they can actually do the job. It never ceases to amaze me when I read feedback on candidates and it’s clear to me that the interviewer didn’t ask any questions about whether or not the candidate could actually do the job for which the person is interviewing. I really don’t care where they went to school or what their last job was. Anything on a resume should more or less be considered an embellishment of some sort, and really, the resume is what got you in the door for interview. What really matters is what comes out of their mouth when they are asked direct questions that have to do with the job for which you would be hiring them.

If they are a marketing person, ask them to come up with a marketing campaign for some product. If they are a developer, ask them coding questions that are real (perhaps even something you just solved that week). If they are a sales person, make them sell you something. If they are a customer service rep, have them walk you through how they would handle you if you were calling to complain about something. This may seem like common sense, but all too often, the people who are doing the interviews spend time talking about themselves, the industry, the company, or the product, without really asking questions that could determine whether or not this person could do the job. It ends up being a long form fit interview.

When an interview loop is set up, there should be a form evaluation that is following the candidate all day. After each interview, the interviewer should fill out that form, and at the very top should write “hire” or “no hire.” The reason for getting these filled out right away is to ensure that the interview is still fresh in the mind of the interviewer. The binary nature is to force a decision. “Maybe” is not an appropriate answer. The “as appropriate” or HR person should manage this, and people who have yet to interview the candidate should not see the feedback. If there are things on which interviewers think follow-on interviewers should focus, then send emails to that person (or have a side conversation) before the interview. You don’t want to have a later interviewer swayed by talking with someone else on the loop who has already done their interview. Their decision should be theirs and theirs alone.

You can decide to be super hardcore, and have a rule that one “no hire” is enough to ensure that the candidate doesn’t make it to the as appropriate. I prefer to have a two strike rule, just to ensure that someone’s bad day isn’t influencing their decision making ability. This will vary from company to company, but decide which you want and stick to it.

How good are you at predicting the hire-ability of a candidate? I’ll bet you have no idea. Few companies measure this, but it’s a fantastic way to ensure that the people who are saying “no hire” don’t get future interviews if they keep missing candidates who make it on board, and people who say “hire” are selecting candidates who eventually don’t make the hire cut, or get into the company and leave within one year. Post interview accountability is one of those attributes that I am happily surprised when I hear a company is tracking it.

The last, and most important of the rules, is that you should always be selling. Would you want to go work somewhere if the person interviewing you was slagging off on their boss? What about if it was clear that they weren’t excited about what they were doing or the people with whom they worked? Your primary job in interviewing is to make the candidate want to work at the company. Their job is to convince you that they should work there, but your job is to ensure they want to work there. I’m not suggesting sunshine and puppy dog tails or anything like that, but be upbeat. Always be selling the company to the candidate. If they ask you about things that you don’t like about the company, be honest, but also talk about how the company, you, or your boss are addressing those issues. Don’t complain. Constructively criticize, but never complain.

The moral? It’s important that you have a very well defined interview process. If you don’t take it seriously, how can you expect the candidate to take the company seriously, and how can you expect to attract top talent to the company? Each person in the loop should know their role, and have equal say. Feedback should be immediate and decisive. Determine if the person is a good fit for the company and if they can do the job. Measure the results of hiring decisions made by interviewers. Last, always be selling the company. Leave a candidate with the feeling that this is the absolute best company to work for, and leave the decision about whether or not they can join be yours to make.