How We Hire at Clipboard

A candid take from someone who has seen a lot of hiring processes

I’ve spent my career in talent acquisition across different industries, company stages, and hiring philosophies. I’ve seen fast and loose. I’ve seen overly polished. I’ve seen checkbox driven processes that optimize for speed but miss on quality, and I’ve seen prestige driven processes that feel impressive and produce very mixed results.

I can say this honestly and without hesitation Clipboard is the best place I have ever seen at hiring people.

Not because it is easy. Not because it is fast. But because it is fair, skill based, and actually predictive of who will succeed here.

This post was inspired by a piece written by George Markoulakis back in 2023 about how we recruited for the Product team. I’ll link it here because it is worth reading. The underlying philosophy applies to how we hire across every role at Clipboard. Sales. Engineering. Product. Operations. All of it.

I wanted to write this because I have a lot of incredible people reaching out on LinkedIn asking about open roles, their applications, whether I think they would be a good fit, or how to stand out in a competitive market. And I really do want to connect with you all. This is the most honest and scalable way I know how to explain what we care about and why.

We hire based on skill, not polish

Most hiring processes rely heavily on proxies. Where you worked. What your title was. Whether your resume matches a mental template. Those shortcuts are understandable, but they are also deeply flawed.

At Clipboard, we do not believe proxies are a reliable way to measure ability. We believe the best way to evaluate someone is to see them do work that looks like the job.

That is why we bias toward screening people in, not screening them out.

We intentionally cast a wider net and then evaluate candidates using role-relevant exercises and case studies. Despite what you might read on Glassdoor, there’s no hidden agenda here or attempt to get “free work” (which, honestly, wouldn’t even make sense). The goal is simple: to give you a real opportunity to show how you think, how you operate, and how you’d approach the work in practice.

Clarity is a feature, not a nice to have

One thing you’ll notice about Clipboard is that we are direct. About the work. About expectations. About feedback. About pace.

That is intentional.

Our interview process can be more involved than what you are used to. That is true across functions. We use written exercises, structured prompts, and cases because they allow us to evaluate skill in a grounded way.

That takes effort from you and from us. We are okay with that trade, and we want you to understand it upfront so you can decide whether this environment is right for you.

If at any point you read this and think, “this sounds like more than I want,” that is not a failure. That is the process doing its job.

Culture fit is not a vibe check here

The phrase “culture fit” gets misused a lot. Our definition is simple: would you thrive in how we work?

Clipboard is a high ownership environment. We write a lot. We expect clear thinking. We give direct feedback. We care about judgment and follow through. We expect people to operate with autonomy.

Rather than trying to infer that through behavioral interviews alone, we prefer to look at work product. How you structure a problem. How you prioritize. How you communicate. How you make assumptions and whether you label them. How you react to ambiguity.

That tells us far more than polished interview answers ever could.

Your case study is your competitive edge

I understand the market is competitive. I understand the instinct to want every possible advantage.

Here is the truth - the case study is your advantage.

We evaluate every case submission. Real humans at Clipboard, not AI. We read them carefully. We discuss them. We look for evidence of ownership, clarity, and sound judgment.

This is your opportunity to show that you can take instruction asynchronously and deliver results without being micromanaged.

We care more about how you think than the answer you land on. There is rarely a single right answer. We are far more interested in your reasoning than your conclusion.

Show your work. Explain your tradeoffs. Call out assumptions. Write down the questions you would ask in real life and tell us how the answers would change your approach.

That is the signal.

TL;DR

If you’re excited by ownership, clarity, hard problems, and a mission that actually matters, we would love to talk.

And if you make it through the process and think, “wow, that was intense,” you are not wrong. If you leave a Glassdoor review that says our process asked a lot of you, that is fair. We will probably read it. We might even smile, because the same process is the reason so many people here are exceptional at what they do.

If you want easy, this probably is not it. If you want fair, rigorous, and meaningful, you’re in the right place.

Check out our open roles here.