Startup Hiring Advice from Lever CEO Sarah Nahm with Holly Liu

Career Trajectory and Founding Motivation

• Holly's path to founding was non-linear, moving from a design focus at Stanford (class of 2004, the first to launch with Facebook) to Google.
• Her first role at Google (2004) was an unexpected creation: a dedicated speechwriter for Marissa Meyer, a role that required building a function from scratch.
• She spent subsequent years on the Chrome team working with Sundar Pichai, viewing design thinking as a core framework for leadership rather than just product execution.
• She left Google not with a "lightning strike" moment, but to seek new experiences and test working dynamics with future co-founders.
• The initial thesis for Lever (2012) was the observation that "talent" had become the primary driver of competitive differentiation as software transformed blue-collar industries into knowledge work.
• The first two and a half years were spent defining the problem; the team built an initial product, received negative feedback that it was merely incremental, and discarded it to restart.
• Series A fundraising occurred in October 2014, after which the team collectively agreed to appoint Holly as CEO, shifting her from an individual contributor to a leader.

Talent Acquisition Strategy

• Lever differentiates from large tech firms by using culture and proactive, outbound recruiting as offensive tactics rather than passive job postings.
• 81% of the engineering team was sourced through proactive outbound efforts, often found via non-traditional channels like GitHub, meetups, and eventbrite.
• The company maintains a 2–3 year talent pipeline; candidates nurtured through this process are hired 35% faster than first-time contacts.
• "Motivation fit" is a formal, early-stage interview step focusing on career goals, affinity for ambiguity, and the candidate's definition of "impact."
• Lever utilizes "Career Trajectory" interviews (a modified Topgrading approach) to analyze past success/failure patterns rather than abstract brain teasers.
• Job descriptions were replaced with "impact descriptions" defining success outcomes over 1, 3, 6, and 12 months, which increased diversity in applicant pools by removing skills-based gatekeepers.
• Founders are advised to spend 50% of their time on hiring and to train teams to share authentic stories about why they joined the company to aid recruitment.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Implementation

• A primary roadblock to inclusive hiring is the expectation that software alone can solve systemic inequities without concurrent shifts in human behavior and culture.
• Diversity initiatives at Lever started with addressing "cultural surface area," identified through mundane operational issues like the distribution of kitchen dish duties, which disproportionately fell to women.
• Lever resolved dish duty inequity by implementing a Slack bot for rotational assignment, a practice maintained until a facilities team was hired.
• The company initially ignored Martin Luther King Jr. Day while celebrating President's Day; correcting this required acknowledging that holiday selection was a cultural statement, not just a heuristic balance.
• Lever dismantled the "technical vs. non-technical" stereotype by training engineers on qualitative customer value and non-technical staff on scalable system design.
• DEI culture is reinforced through "Ramp Camp," a 1-week onboarding where new hires take assessments to generate "colors" (e.g., Red, Green), creating a shared, non-biological language to discuss personality differences.
• Employee Resource Groups (ERGs), such as "Leverettes" (women) and a Parents ERG, are empowered to directly shape company policies, including parental leave revisions.
• Leadership development includes a biannual, six-month group coaching program for all managers to ensure they advocate for inclusive practices.
• 65% of employees are members of at least one ERG, indicating a high level of engagement in bottom-up cultural shaping.

Forward-Looking Statements and Founder Advice

• Remote work presents a trade-off: it expands the global talent pool but requires intentional investment in systems for information flow and culture building that co-located offices provide for free.
• Lever adopted remote work later in its lifecycle, prioritizing a strong co-located culture first to establish shared best practices before scaling geographically.
• The definitive advice for early-stage founders is to treat "getting great at hiring" as the single most critical driver of culture, results, and scaling success.
• Founders are encouraged to view their role as the ultimate recruiter, recognizing that team composition is the most direct lever for solving business challenges.