claude-skills-reference/c-level-advisor/chro-advisor/references/people_strategy.md

People Strategy Reference

Hiring, retention, performance, and remote/hybrid frameworks for each growth stage.

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Hiring Strategy by Growth Stage

Pre-Seed / Seed (1–15 people)

Who you're hiring: Generalists who can do multiple jobs. Specialists are a luxury you can't afford unless the specialty is your core product.

The test: Could this person be the 5th employee at a startup and thrive? If they need a defined role, clear process, and a manager — not yet.

Sourcing at this stage:

• Founder networks first (highest signal, lowest cost)
• Angel List / Wellfound — self-selected for startup risk tolerance
• Referrals from existing employees (offer a referral bonus from day 1)
• GitHub / Dribbble / published work for technical roles
• Avoid: Big job boards, recruiters (unless technical retained search for C-suite)

Interview process (keep it lean):

1. 30-min intro call (culture/motivation fit, comp alignment)
2. Take-home or live work sample (2–4 hours max, paid for senior roles)
3. 60-min deep-dive with founders
4. Reference checks (3 calls, not emails — you want the real story)

Offer timeline: Decision within 48 hours. Top candidates have multiple offers.

What to get right:

• Written job scorecard (outcomes expected in 30/60/90 days) — not a job description
• Equity range disclosed in first conversation
• No exploding offers. Pressure tactics lose good people.

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Series A (15–50 people)

The hiring shift: You need some specialists now. First management layer emerges. First "culture carries" — people who reinforce what you want to become.

Critical hires at this stage (in priority order):

1. VP/Head of Engineering (if founder isn't technical)
2. Head of Product
3. First dedicated recruiter (when you're hiring > 10/year)
4. First Finance/Operations hire
5. Head of Sales (when product-market fit is real)

Building the recruiting function:

• First recruiter should be a generalist with hustle, not a specialist
• Set up an ATS (Ashby, Greenhouse, or Lever) before you need it — not after
• Create interview scorecards for every role
• Track: time to fill, offer acceptance rate, source quality

Common mistakes at Series A:

• Promoting top ICs to management without management training
• Hiring "brand name" executives who've never operated lean
• Over-indexing on experience, under-indexing on trajectory
• No onboarding process → 90-day regrettable turnover

Job scorecards (required for every role):

Role: [Title]
Reports to: [Manager]
Start date: [Target]
Why this role now: [Business case in 1-2 sentences]

Outcomes (90 days):
- [Concrete deliverable 1]
- [Concrete deliverable 2]
- [Concrete deliverable 3]

Outcomes (12 months):
- [Strategic impact 1]
- [Strategic impact 2]

Competencies (top 3 only):
- [What, why it matters for THIS role]
- [What, why it matters for THIS role]
- [What, why it matters for THIS role]

Comp range: [Base] + [Equity] + [Benefits summary]

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Series B (50–150 people)

The scaling inflection point. Tribal knowledge breaks. Process matters now. Culture requires deliberate investment.

What changes:

• Recruiters become specialists (technical, GTM, exec)
• Manager training becomes non-negotiable
• Performance management needs structure (not just "we'll know it when we see it")
• Onboarding needs to scale without founders in every session
• Comp bands become essential — people are comparing notes

Hiring velocity benchmarks (Series B):

Function	Avg time to fill	Avg interviews	Benchmark offer acceptance
Engineering IC	35–45 days	4–5 rounds	80–85%
Engineering Manager	45–60 days	5–6 rounds	75–80%
Sales IC	25–35 days	3–4 rounds	85–90%
Sales Manager	40–55 days	4–5 rounds	80–85%
G&A (Finance, HR, Ops)	30–45 days	3–4 rounds	85–90%

Internal mobility: By 50 people, start tracking internal promotion rates. Target: 20–30% of manager+ roles filled internally. If it's < 10%, your career development is failing.

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Series C+ (150+ people)

Professional management era. Founders can't know everyone. Systems and culture carry what personal relationships used to.

HR function maturity required:

• Dedicated HRBPs per business unit (1:75–100 employees)
• L&D budget (1–2% of salary budget minimum)
• Succession planning for all VP+ roles
• Structured calibration process for performance reviews
• Total rewards strategy reviewed annually with board

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Retention Programs That Actually Work

What drives retention (in order of impact)

1. Manager quality — Gallup: 70% of team engagement variance is explained by the manager. Fix managers first.
2. Growth trajectory — People leave when they can't see their next role. Career ladders are retention tools.
3. Compensation competitiveness — Being at P25 on salary is a slow leak. Audit annually.
4. Mission/product belief — Especially for senior ICs. They want to work on something that matters.
5. Team quality — "I stay because of the people I work with." True at every level.
6. Flexibility — Location, hours, autonomy. Low cost, high impact.

What doesn't work (but companies do anyway)

• Pizza parties and ping pong tables
• "Perks" that substitute for salary
• Annual reviews with no action on feedback
• Forced fun events
• Vague "culture improvement" initiatives without specific behavior changes

The 30-60-90 Onboarding Framework

Structured onboarding cuts 90-day turnover by 50%+.

Days 1–30: Learn

• Complete admin setup (day 1, before lunch)
• Meet all key stakeholders (scheduled by their manager, not on the new hire)
• Understand: business model, current priorities, team processes, how success is measured
• No deliverables expected. Learning is the job.
• Weekly 1:1 with manager: "What's confusing? What do you need?"

Days 31–60: Contribute

• First real project (scoped to be completable)
• Present findings or work to the team
• Identify one process that could be improved (observation only — don't fix yet)
• 30-day check-in: formal feedback from manager

Days 61–90: Lead

• Own a deliverable end-to-end
• Offer one specific improvement recommendation with data
• 90-day review: mutual assessment — manager on new hire, new hire on onboarding
• Set 6-month goals

Stay Interviews (underused, high ROI)

Run with every employee once per year. Not their manager — HR or skip-level.

Questions that surface real risk:

• "What's keeping you here?"
• "What would make you consider leaving?"
• "What's one thing your manager could do differently?"
• "Is your role what you expected when you joined?"
• "What career path do you want? Are we helping you get there?"
• "Are you fairly compensated? Do you know how you'd get a raise?"

Act on answers within 30 days or don't ask. Unanswered feedback is worse than no feedback.

Exit Interviews — What to Actually Learn

Skip the happiness survey. Ask these:

• "When did you first think about leaving?"
• "Was there a specific event that triggered your decision?"
• "What could we have done to retain you?"
• "Where are you going and why?" (What does the other offer have that we don't?)
• "Would you recommend us as an employer? Why or why not?"

Track exit themes by manager. If one manager's exits cite "micromanagement" three times — that's data.

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Performance Management

The System That Works

Continuous > annual. Annual reviews with no mid-year touchpoints are theater.

Structure:

• Weekly 1:1s (30 min): blockers, priorities, relationship
• Monthly check-ins (1 hr): progress against goals, feedback exchange
• Quarterly reviews (formal): written self-assessment + manager assessment + goal revision
• Annual calibration (rating + comp): cross-manager calibration session, then individual conversations

Calibration Sessions

Purpose: Prevent manager bias. Ensure "exceeds expectations" means the same thing across teams.

Process:

1. Managers submit preliminary ratings independently
2. HR facilitates 2-hr calibration with all managers in a function
3. Managers must justify outliers (top and bottom)
4. Ratings adjusted for consistency
5. Managers deliver final ratings with rationale

Distribution guidance (enforce with calibration):

• Exceptional (5): < 10% — if everyone's exceptional, no one is
• Exceeds (4): 20–25%
• Meets (3): 55–65%
• Needs improvement (2): 8–12%
• Underperforming (1): 2–5%

Managing Underperformers

The most avoided management task. And the most damaging when avoided.

High performers notice when underperformers are tolerated. They leave.

The 4-step framework:

Step 1: Diagnose before acting (Week 1–2)

• Is this a skill gap (can't do it) or a will gap (won't do it)?
• Skill gap → training, clearer expectations, different role
• Will gap → direct feedback, clear consequences, then PIP

Step 2: Direct feedback conversation (Week 2–3)

• Specific: "Your last 3 sprint deliveries were 40% incomplete"
• Not: "You're not meeting expectations"
• Document. Send written summary after every feedback conversation.

Step 3: Performance Improvement Plan (PIP) Required when: two rounds of direct feedback haven't produced change.

PIP structure:

Name: [Employee]
Manager: [Name]
Date: [Start]
Review date: [30/60 days out]

Current performance issues:
- [Specific, observable behavior with examples and dates]
- [Metric not met: target X, actual Y for Z weeks]

Required improvements:
- [Specific, measurable outcome 1] by [date]
- [Specific, measurable outcome 2] by [date]

Support provided:
- [Training, coaching, additional resources]

Consequences if not met: [Role change / separation]

Check-in schedule: [Weekly with manager + HR]

Step 4: Exit or role change

• If PIP milestones not met: proceed to separation
• Don't extend PIPs indefinitely — it's unfair to the employee and the team
• Offer a graceful exit where possible: "This role isn't the right fit. Here's a package and a reference."

What not to do:

• "Quiet manage out" without clear feedback (legally risky, unfair)
• PIP as a formality before termination (if you know you're firing them, just do it)
• Tolerating underperformance "because we're understaffed" (it makes understaffing worse)

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Remote / Hybrid Strategy

The question isn't "remote or not" — it's "what kind of collaboration does our work require?"

Work type taxonomy:

Work type	Remote-compatible?	Hybrid compatible?
Deep individual work (coding, writing, analysis)	Yes	Yes
Async collaboration (code review, doc review)	Yes	Yes
Synchronous problem-solving (debugging, design)	Yes (video)	Yes
Relationship-building (onboarding, new team)	Harder	Yes
Executive alignment, strategy	Harder	Yes — quarterly in-person
Sales (enterprise, relationship-based)	No	Depends on market

Making Hybrid Work (Not Just a Policy)

The failure mode: "Hybrid" = go to office on Tuesday/Thursday, but no one coordinates, all meetings are still Zoom anyway.

What actually works:

1. Anchor days with purpose — Office days should have things that require the office: workshops, team rituals, whiteboarding sessions. Not just "presence."

2. Async-first culture, not async-only — Document decisions. Write things down. Use Loom for walkthroughs. Reduce "quick sync" meetings.

3. Equal experience for remote participants — If some are in the room and some are on video, the remote folks are second-class. Either everyone's remote or set up rooms properly.

4. Manager standards for remote teams:

   • 1:1s are non-negotiable (video, not async)
   • Over-communicate on priorities (people can't absorb hallway context)
   • Write down decisions (remote employees miss casual office decisions)
   • Recognize work publicly (Slack shoutouts, all-hands wins)

Remote Compensation Philosophy (pick one, be explicit)

Option A: Location-based pay Pay based on where the employee lives. Lower cost in lower-cost markets. Harder to hire in high-cost cities.

Option B: Role-based (location-neutral) One band for each role regardless of location. Simpler, more equitable. Higher overall payroll cost.

Option C: Zone-based Define 2–3 geographic zones (e.g., Tier 1 cities, Tier 2 cities, international). Set bands per zone. Common at mid-stage startups.

The wrong answer: No stated policy, and every offer is negotiated individually. Creates pay equity problems fast.