Plan a Hire Backwards, From Their First Good Day

The first question most founders ask me is how long a search takes. It is a fair question, and the honest answer is that it is the wrong place to start.

Start instead from the day you need this person up and running, and plan backwards.

The clock is longer than the search

Finding the right person is rarely the slow part. In my experience it takes more than a week and less than a month when the brief is clear. What takes time is everything around it.

In the Netherlands a notice period of one to three months is normal. Then onboarding, which in a serious role means sixty days at least before someone is genuinely carrying their own weight. Add a relocation, a partner’s job, a school year, and the date you had in mind moves.

So if you need someone fully working in a given month, the offer has to go out roughly three months before it, and the search has to start before that. Work it backwards once, on paper, and the calendar stops being a surprise.

Fast is not the goal

Being able to move quickly says nothing on its own. A search run in a hurry produces a hire made in a hurry, and that is the most expensive kind. Intensity is good. Haste is not.

Know where they are going before they arrive

The second backwards question matters more than the first. What does this person need from you in their first month?

A strong hire who arrives into a vacuum, with no clear direction and nobody holding the strategy, does one of two things. They build something that is later thrown away, or they quietly steer the ship somewhere you did not choose. Strong technical people are especially exposed to this, because they will always find something to build.

You do not need a finished strategy. You need a North Star clear enough that the first month has a direction, and an honest view of who holds the product until someone else does.

The short version

Decide the day they are up and running. Count back the onboarding, the notice period and the search. Then decide what they need from you on day one.

Everything after that is execution, and it is the part I am good at.