Introducing the Planet Fund
As you are now well aware we have recently recruited two new team members! We thought some in our community might be interested in our hiring process so we decided to outline it from start to finish…….. here goes.
We decided very early on that we would do our best to remove as much unconscious bias from our process as possible. We know utilising the Applied platform is really helpful for this purpose. We first became familiar with the platform when Giant Leap made an investment into the business and cannot speak more highly about Applied both as a mechanism for removing unconscious bias and as a game changing tool for running an incredibly efficient recruitment process.
We started by posting our job description and asking applicants to answer four questions.
We have been approached by an early stage venture that needs advice and support on raising capital from new investors to fund their growth plans. The company is developing a promising new battery to couple with home rooftop solar generation that could become the market leading technology. A number of retailers in Australia stock their battery and customer feedback has been exceptionally strong. They are now getting enquiries from European retailers and need capital to launch a European presence. What are the top three factors you would want to investigate further about this venture to help you form a view about its attractiveness to our investors and why these factors are so important to your viewpoint? (NOTE: we are not looking for you to demonstrate any specific technical knowledge about battery or solar technology).
It is 4pm on a Friday. The three Partners of Ecotone have just boarded a flight to New York and will be out of reach for the next 14 hours. An email comes in addressed to one of the Partners with you cc'd. It is from the Founder of Green Startup, a venture we are supporting on a capital raising and reads as follows.......
"This is a disaster! I have just received an email from one of my biggest investors saying the terms we have proposed on the new convertible note disadvantage him as a preference share holder. I thought you guys specifically tested this with the lawyers??!! Wasn't your Analyst speaking with the lawyers this morning? I need to get back to him by 9pm tonight or he is voting against the resolution to approve the issuance of convertible notes. What do I say?"
Outline any steps you would take (approx 100 words) before you reply and then write the reply email (approx 150 words)......
You have agreed to take on the next big project at Ecotone Partners.....establishing an Angel Investor Network focussed on connecting these investors to ventures with climate solutions. This will include:
- the design of the network including investor experience, communications, events etc
- deciding on a structure for attracting and managing deal flow (deal flow = climate focussed ventures that are looking for investment)
- finding and engaging investors and founders
You need to put together a team of two people (you and one other person), what 2-3 skills does the other person need to complement your own?
What attracts you to this role? And why are you the best person for the role?
We were getting close to our application close date and despite our best efforts, our gender mix was really bad. Female candidates were running at about 20%. So, Amanda wrote a blog post here which we pushed out into the world to try and encourage more women to apply. It definitely had a positive impact with our final applications finishing 30% female and another 12% declining to disclose their gender.
So, at this point we have not seen a single name or resume. All we have is four answers from 69 candidates that have been randomised so we can’t even connect individual answers to each other. Our job was to score each answer by giving it 1 to 5 stars. We scored all the Question 1s, then all Question 2s and so on.
At the end of the scoring we had a short-list of 6 candidates we put through to the next round.
For each of our shortlisted candidates we scheduled a 2 hour and 15min block with them. The first 15 mins was a briefing call with Dan who gave them the following project.
These were then blind reviewed by the team (i.e. Only Dan knew which candidates had written which Investment Memos). We then put the top 5 through to interviews.
This is the first point at which we saw any information about the individual candidates. We conducted 3 x 45 minute interviews with a mix of structured and unstructured questions. We were also keen to ensure each candidate got plenty of opportunities to ask us about our work and the role.
Ultimately we found two new team members who are not only an excellent skills match for the roles but also really values aligned and excited about our work and joining our team. We couldn’t be happier!