DEV Community: Kathrin

Candidate Selection Criteria: How Founders Should Change Their Hiring Approach as the Company Grows

Kathrin — Mon, 19 Oct 2026 11:20:37 +0000

A strong candidate for a 15-person startup and a strong candidate for a company with 3,000 employees are two very different people.
My name is Ekaterina Selezneva, and I’m an IT recruiter with over 12 years of experience in recruiting. In this article, I’ll explain how to approach hiring IT specialists at a startup, during the scaling stage, and at an established company, as well as explore some of the common hiring mistakes founders make.
At the end of the article, you’ll find a practical reference matrix for founders, outlining the key qualities to look for in candidates at different stages of your company’s growth.

Table of Contents

The MVP and Seed Stages
The Scaling Stage
Established Company
Key Takeaways

The MVP and Seed Stages

While the project is at the value validation stage and in the process of securing its first paying customers, speed of work is of utmost importance. At the same time, there are still no established processes and clearly defined responsibilities in the company. There are also no guarantees that the project will take off and begin to scale.

Who should you look for at this stage?

In many ways, the first key hires become co-founders in all but name, as they need to not only fulfill their core responsibilities, but also build internal processes from scratch. Technical skills are undoubtedly important when hiring for a startup. However, I would focus first and foremost on the following qualities:

Ability to bring structure to chaos. A candidate has to have experience building processes from scratch and be able to independently identify what needs to be done first.
Being comfortable with a high degree of uncertainty. Can your candidate remain productive even when priorities and tasks change rapidly?
A willingness to take ownership. An ideal candidate can make decisions independently, even when clear instructions and established procedures are not yet in place.

My insight: I call professionals like these “zero-to-one” talent.

Who is responsible for hiring candidates?

Hiring at a startup often remains the responsibility of the founder. Founders typically recruit their first 10–15 employees themselves, relying on word of mouth, personal networks, and social media posts. At this stage, a full-time recruiter is usually unnecessary. You absolutely can handle a function like this without a dedicated hire until the business has proven its viability. Bringing in a recruiter starts to make sense when the team grows to around 40–50 people. If the hiring workload is still relatively small, a freelance recruiter may be a good option.

There are exceptions, of course. I’ve been working at Humanoid since the very beginning. It is a UK-based technology company specializing in AI and humanoid robots for industrial and commercial applications. Recruitment had to be a part of the project almost from day one because it was launched in a venture studio. This meant the project already had a team capable of hiring the core team from the outset.

However, during our first six months, we didn’t have a structured interview process in place. The CTO conducted candidate interviews, while recruiters assessed soft skills and candidates’ willingness to work in an uncertain environment. We relied on engineers in our professional networks to evaluate technical skills, as we hadn’t yet built that expertise in-house.

Common Mistakes Founders Make

When a startup is just getting off the ground, there is no established hiring process yet. As a result, candidate selection often comes down to the founder’s personal preferences in what makes someone a good hire. This is why startup founders tend to make the following mistakes:

Hiring based on whether or not they plainly like someone. In the early stages of a project, founders often turn to former colleagues, friends, and acquaintances, overlooking whether these people have the skills and mindset necessary to succeed in the environment of a startup company. They assume that if they get along well personally, they’ll work well together on a project, too. Despite any pre-existing personal relationships, though, I do recommend you start by evaluating whether the person can actually deliver on the business’s needs.
Building a team of people with identical strengths. For example, the entire team might consist of highly skilled engineers, but no one has the ability to carry your project all the way to production. At the early stages, you need a team with diverse backgrounds and different areas of responsibility.
Looking for a star employee from a well-known company. Someone may be an outstanding professional in an already established organization with structured processes and clearly defined responsibilities, yet have little to no experience working in a startup.

Tip: How to Sell a Role When Nobody's Heard Of Your Brand Yet
This was exactly the challenge we faced when hiring Humanoid’s first employees. Recruiting IT professionals was particularly difficult because our brand was still new to the market. Three things helped us attract candidates to those first roles:
1. We focused on selling the vision, not the company. Our goal was to build humanoid robots. For specialists in robotics and AI, the field itself was already professionally exciting.
2. We prioritized hiring people who had experience building similar products from scratch. For example, our CTO had previously worked in the autonomous driving sphere: a field with a similar spirit and level of complexity.
3. We leveraged the professional reputations of our first key hires. Once we had recognizable names on the team, mentioning them helped make our vacancies more attractive. For example, we hired a professional from Boston Dynamics to lead our Boston office.

Within the first three months, we had assembled the core team, including several functional leads. By the six-month mark, we had hired approximately 70–80 people.

The Scaling Stage

At this stage, the company typically develops a sensible roadmap of goals for the next 1-2 years. It begins to understand what its target audience is, and starts to articulate its mission, values, and company culture. The first stable processes begin to emerge, including within recruitment. Interview stages are clearly defined, and the team knows what each stage is meant to assess. However, the company is still evolving rapidly. New functions are being introduced, and some processes still need to be built from scratch.

Who should you look for at this stage?

It’s no longer enough to hire someone who can build systems from scratch. You need people who can scale up what’s already been established while remaining productive in an environment that still involves quite a lot of uncertainty.

When evaluating candidates, I recommend looking at the following:
The scale they’ve worked at before.
What exactly they’ve scaled up.
How quickly they make up their mind.
Whether they can work effectively in an environment where processes exist but are still evolving.

Example: At Humanoid, when hiring leaders for complex technical projects, we look at candidates from companies with a strong project-driven culture and products of comparable complexity. Tesla, SpaceX, and other technology companies are among the organizations we look to for relevant experience.

Who is responsible for hiring candidates?

Once a company grows to around 40–50 employees, the founder and C-level executives can no longer handle the hiring workload on their own.
Initially, bringing in a freelance recruiter may be enough. But when hiring demand becomes substantial, the company needs a dedicated Talent Acquisition function.

Tip: It is key to move away from hiring as a series of ad hoc decisions. At this stage, your company needs a clearly defined candidate profile:

What tasks will this person be expected to handle?

Which competencies are essential for those specific tasks?

What experience is genuinely relevant?

How will the company assess these competencies during interviews?

What indicators will show that the hire has been successful?

These criteria should be established BEFORE the search begins.

Common Mistakes Founders Make

During the scaling stage, founders often fall into one of the two extremes: they either continue hiring exclusively “zero-to-one” talent or start looking for candidates from large corporations. The problem is that the former may not know how to scale what’s already been built, while the latter may be accustomed to multiple layers of approval, fully established processes, and a different pace of work.

That’s why I wouldn’t necessarily divide candidates into “startup people” and “corporate people.” Instead, I recommend understanding the environment in which each person performs best and determining whether it matches the environment the company is building today.

Tip: How to Amicably Part Ways with Employees Who No Longer Can Keep Up with the Company’s Growth

Someone who aligned with a project perfectly in its early days may no longer be the right fit as the company grows. And that’s absolutely normal!

Before deciding on letting an employee go, take a closer look at the challenges that await the company in its next stage of development. Is this particular person capable of handling them?

Some people adapt well to new conditions, while others recognize for themselves that the new environment is no longer the right fit. For example, Humanoid’s first CTO was a classic “zero-to-one” professional. He enjoyed building processes from the ground up. Once he had accomplished that goal and the processes were running smoothly, he lost interest and moved on to another project.

In some cases, however, a company genuinely needs to part ways with an employee who can no longer handle the demands of their role as the business grows.

If you’ve decided to let an employee go, here are three tips for handling the situation with respect and consideration:

1. Don’t let your decision come as a surprise. If it becomes clear that someone is struggling with the demands of their new role, try addressing the issue early on, rather than putting this conversation off until the actual talk about terminating their employment.
2. Separate the person from the responsibilities of the role. As a founder, it's not your job to feel guilty or come up with excuses. What matters is you understanding the reasons behind your decision and communicating them honestly and clearly.
3. If you’re letting go of more than one person, speak to each of them individually. How you handle these conversations affects your company’s reputation in the market.

Established Company

In a large, established business, processes, team structures, and areas of responsibility are already well defined. But a different challenge emerges: solving a single problem often requires collaboration across multiple teams, navigating internal policies, and going through several layers of approval.

Who should you look for at this stage?

In an established company, employees need to operate within a large, complex system. As a result, the criteria for selecting candidates differ from those that worked at earlier stages of company growth.

When hiring, I would focus on the following:

Experience working in large organizations. Does the candidate understand how to get things done when progress depends on multiple people and decisions require several levels of approval?
Experience solving similar problems. Don’t focus solely on the job title or company name on a resume. Look at the actual work the candidate has done. If you’re hiring someone to tackle a specific challenge, it’s a plus if they’ve handled something similar before.
Ability to collaborate across teams. This means building alignment, negotiating, and both giving and receiving feedback. In a large organization, most tasks depend on other people in one way or another.

My insight: At a startup, people can see the results of their work relatively quickly. In a large company, the connection between an individual task and the overall business outcome can be much less obvious. Employees need to understand how their work contributes to the product and the business as a whole.

Who is responsible for hiring candidates?

At this stage, hiring is a collaborative effort between Talent Acquisition and the hiring manager:

Talent Acquisition is responsible for the sourcing strategy, market research, candidate sourcing, initial screening, part of the soft-skills assessment, and overall process management.
The hiring manager is responsible for evaluating the candidate’s professional expertise and technical skills.

Additional stakeholders may be involved when hiring for C-level positions. For example, at one company where I worked, the HR Business Partner also conducted a competency-based interview.

Important: Each side should have one clearly designated decision-maker. If five managers all share responsibility for the final decision, the hiring process tends to drag on. And if the candidate then fails to pass their probationary period, no one would be willing to take responsibility for the hiring mistake.

Common Mistakes Founders Make

At this stage, hiring mistakes more often than not are related to how the recruitment process is organized.

Too many interview stages. Ten interviews don’t guarantee a more accurate assessment. They do, however, prolong decision-making and exhaust candidates.
Delayed feedback. While the company is still deliberating, a strong candidate may accept another offer.
No clear agreement on the salary range. In my working life, there was a case where a team publicly advertised a salary range with a specific upper limit. When a strong candidate from Amazon Robotics applied, however, the team offered significantly less than the advertised maximum, without providing a clear explanation. The candidate declined: relocating to a country with a higher cost of living while making the same money as before simply didn’t make sense.

Important: Before the search begins, the recruiter should research the market and establish how much the company is genuinely prepared to pay for the role. Everyone involved in the hiring process must agree on that figure and stick to it.

Key Takeaways

You can’t define the ideal candidate once and use the same profile at every stage of your company’s growth. In the early stages, you need someone who can build systems from scratch. During scaling and growth, you need someone who can develop and expand those systems. In an established business, you need a professional who can remain productive within a large, complex organization.

To stay focused as your business evolves, use my practical reference matrix to identify whom to hire at each stage of your company's growth and what to look for when evaluating candidates.

And if you need help recruiting IT professionals, feel free to let me know in the comments!

"Women have no place in technical professions." Have you ever heard something like that? My name is Ekaterina Selezneva. I am a mentor and an IT recruiter at a robotics company. I’ll share some recommendations for women who want to work in IT.

Kathrin — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 08:17:42 +0000

Kathrin

Jul 16

Not a woman’s job? What holds women back from building careers in IT

#womenintech #career

8 min read

Not a woman’s job? What holds women back from building careers in IT

Kathrin — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 08:14:18 +0000

On average, women hold only about 20% of technical positions in IT across Europe. In other words, for every woman in a technical role, there are roughly four men. Is it because IT is simply less appealing to women, or are there invisible barriers that make it harder to start and develop a career in this field?

My name is Ekaterina Selezneva. I am a mentor and an IT recruiter with more than 12 years of experience. Every day, I interview a lot of women for a variety of IT positions. Over the years, I have identified several reasons behind gender inequality in the tech industry. In this article, I will share my perspective on the issue and provide some recommendations for women who want to build a career in IT.

What makes me qualified to talk about this?

I am a woman who has worked in IT recruitment for more than 12 years. During that time, I have closed positions in AI, fintech, robotics, and biotech: all industries that are still often considered “male-dominated.” Today, I work for an international company that develops humanoid robots. When I joined the team, it consisted of just three or four people. I have built the company's AI department from the ground up, hired the first C-level executives, and helped support the company’s growth. Today, our company employs around 200 people. Our robots perform what would otherwise be physically demanding work in manufacturing facilities and logistics centers across Germany, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Canada.

I also am a mentor in the Women in Tech community, where I work with young women who are just beginning their careers in IT. The topics my mentees bring up are incredibly diverse. For example, with one mentee, we explored how to implement automation in recruitment. With another, we built an entire career roadmap for her future as an IT HR professional: from where to start and how to source candidates to identifying the right target audience. In addition, during volunteer mentoring sessions, we discuss topics such as finding a job, presenting experience effectively, and responding to employers’ objections.

All of the above informs my perspective from several angles: as a woman working in the industry, as a recruiter who makes hiring decisions, and as a mentor helping others take their first steps in the IT industry.

I am also the mother of a 17-year-old daughter. She has already faced the challenge of choosing a career path and will soon begin taking her own first steps toward finding self-actualization in the professional sphere.

Reason #1. It All Starts in Our Heads

In my work as a recruiter, I've noticed quite an interesting pattern. A man is often willing to apply for a job if he meets only about 60–65% of the requirements. He often assumes he will figure out the rest somewhere along the way. Generally, women tend to approach job opportunities much more cautiously. Many will not even click “Apply” unless they feel they meet 90–100% of the requirements.

Women also often hesitate to promote themselves and tend to underestimate their value, even when they have impressive career experiences to show off. Recently, someone asked me which achievements I am most proud of. I admit, my first thought was: “What achievements? I’m not doing anything extraordinary!”

In today’s IT job market, employers are not looking for the perfect candidate. Companies are looking for people with potential, healthy self-confidence, and the ability to grow quickly. The offer often ends up going not to the strongest candidate out there, but to the one who is willing to put themselves forward.

Where do these issues around confidence come from? I believe a lot depends on upbringing and the environment in which we grow up. For example, I was born in Russia. In our culture, girls are often taught to be obedient, quiet, modest, and to always meet other people's expectations. Speaking openly about your achievements is frequently seen as bragging. Girls are also often told that working with hardware and technology is “not a woman’s job.” I believe this is one of the reasons why fewer women consider technical professions as a path to self-realization.

Today, I live in Europe. My daughter is growing up in an environment where diversity is the norm and expressing yourself is encouraged. Watching her, I can see that there are far fewer gender-based stereotypes and limitations in her life. At the same time, the growing popularity of IT and artificial intelligence means that many young people are choosing future careers without thinking about gender-related prejudices.

Reason #2. The Glass Ceiling: Does It Exist In a Woman’s Professional Life?

Have you ever heard of this invisible barrier that prevents people from advancing beyond a certain level? Speaking from my own experience, I have not encountered it personally. Perhaps that is because I have never aspired to become a CEO, so I have not had to compete in that area. It might be true that I have experienced questionable or sexist situations in my work life, but they were certainly not severe or obvious enough to leave a lasting impression.

However, the fact that I have not experienced it personally doesn't mean the problem does not exist. I regularly speak with women working in the IT industry at large companies, and many of them confirm that women are often added to leadership teams reluctantly. As a result, they tend to remain in individual contributor roles rather than moving into management positions.

For example, Anna Znamenskaya (former Marketing Director at Viber and Apple, and former VP of Marketing at Quadrant) often speaks about this bias at the executive level. Last summer, I was taking her job search course, and she shared many examples of how the market can be biased against women seeking top leadership positions in technology companies.

When women repeatedly encounter this “glass ceiling,” many conclude that they will not be able to fully realize their potential in IT and eventually move into other industries.

Can Diversity and Inclusion Policies Solve Gender Inequality?

Are companies trying to address the gender gap? Yes, but the approach varies significantly depending on the country and business culture.

In companies across the CIS region, topics such as inclusion and diversity are rarely addressed through formal policies. If an executive team or technical department consists entirely of men, it is generally accepted as not a problem. There is also a widespread belief that large businesses should be led by men and that leadership is “not for women.” As a result, women are often given fewer opportunities to move into senior leadership positions. But even if a woman makes it to a board of directors composed entirely of men, it can be difficult for her to communicate effectively and defend her point of view without having a particularly strong personality.

In contrast, many European and American companies actively implement Diversity & Inclusion policies. They are expected to maintain various forms of balance, including gender and nationality.

On paper, this sounds like a positive development. In practice, however, such requirements can create some challenges for hiring teams:

They can slow down recruitment and business processes. Imagine that a critical project is stalled and a role must be filled urgently. You find an excellent candidate who is a perfect match in terms of both hard and soft skills, but he is a man. The company chooses not to hire him because its current target is to recruit more women in order to meet a 30% representation goal.
Things like this can disrupt culture dynamics within the company. A team cannot simply be diversified mechanically for the sake of reporting metrics. If the core of a company consists, for example, of professionals from the CIS region (where, much like in the United States, achievement-oriented values are common) a specialist from Spain may find it difficult to integrate due to differences in communication styles and career expectations. In such cases, the company may need to adapt and reshape its internal culture.

No matter how strongly companies support these policies on paper or enforce them through formal requirements, reality often tells a more complicated story: inequality cannot be eliminated solely through artificially imposed quotas. In the end, hiring managers still tend to choose people based on their hard and soft skills rather than their gender or nationality.

Until women themselves believe in their abilities and actively position themselves in the market, it is unlikely that external regulations alone will help them advance in the field.

What Women Can Achieve in IT: The Example of Mira Murati

Whenever you feel discouraged or believe that the limitations of the industry are stronger than your ambitions, I encourage you to look to women who have broken all possible stereotypes and paved their own way. One of my personal role models is Mira Murati, the former CTO of OpenAI.

Mira was born in Albania into an ordinary family, without influential connections or significant financial resources. At the age of 16, she moved to the United States to study, and built her career through her own efforts. Eventually, she became Chief Technology Officer at OpenAI. In many ways, she was instrumental in the launch of ChatGPT and helped spark the artificial intelligence boom that we are all witnessing today.

In 2024, she left OpenAI and founded her own company, Thinking Machines Lab. She did not leave alone: more than 30 leading specialists followed her to the new venture. I remember reading an article on LinkedIn about how OpenAI’s leadership, and even Mark Zuckerberg, tried to retain some of these people by offering extraordinary compensation packages. Yet many of them still chose to join Mira. They were not staying for contracts or salaries; they were following her as a leader, drawn by the scale of her vision and the mission of the company she was building.

To me, this story is proof that technology absolutely is a sphere for women, and that a woman in a leadership position is no less capable than a man in the same role.

4 Tips for Women Building a Career in IT

As a recruiter who evaluates candidates every day and helps young professionals grow, I would highlight four key principles:

1. Find a mentor. This is one of the most powerful ways to accelerate your growth in the industry. Look for someone in your professional community who has already achieved the goals you are striving toward. People who have built their careers through their own efforts are often happy to share their experience. A mentor can help you identify your blind spots, they might talk openly about the mistakes they've made in their careers, and explain the lessons they learned from them. This can save you from reinventing the wheel all by yourself and making common beginner mistakes.

2. Build your network. Your career path is closely connected to the people around you. Networking is much more than simply exchanging business cards; it is a tool that provides:

-Referrals and access to the hidden job market, including opportunities that never appear on job boards.
-Insight into how the industry really works, which technologies are gaining momentum, and where the market is heading.
-The ability to turn to trusted colleagues for advice, expertise, or support whenever you need it.

3. Don’t compare yourself to others. Everyone reaches important milestones at different times and under different circumstances. If someone you grew up with has already become a senior executive or startup founder while you are still working as a developer, it does not mean that you are falling behind. It simply means that you are moving at your own pace, and your breakthrough may come later. The only person worth comparing yourself to is the person you were in the past. If you know more and can do more today than you could a year ago, then you are moving in the right direction.

And the fourth—and perhaps the most difficult—piece of advice: do not downplay your achievements, and do not be afraid to talk about them!

Conclusion

The gender gap and biases in the job market are not going away anytime soon, and they certainly won’t be solved by artificially implemented top-down quotas. But what we can do is stop undervaluing ourselves and waiting for the perfect moment to apply for a job.

That’s why I encourage you to stop waiting for a perfect match with a job posting and take action! And if you’d like support from a mentor in the recruitment field, let me know in the comments!