Hiring Talent

This is a constant issue which most entrepreneurs, leaders face in today's very competitive environment. Somehow I feel that apart from everything else hiring the right talent and then backing them to the hilt is the most important aspect for success of any organisation.

There are times when even after pulling of the best hire you have a misfire, please be rest assured that it is not the talent's issue, there have been times when I haven't fitted in an organisation, not that the organisation was a wrong one, just that it wasn't right for me. This in no way means that the organisation or the talent is an issue, the issue is that the match has to be exact so much so that it is like match the following questions we solved in our kindergarten class but as simple as it may sound, it is equally a difficulty to put some of the matches right in a highly competitive corporate environment.

The bigger issue is to back the talent you believe in and who does not crack up in situations of emotional drain, mental imbalance or through peer pressures. I have faced these in my career with some of the hires but patience paid of very well and all the time lost in the backing up of that particular talent eventually got paid many more times than one could imagine, so backing a talent after a hire is the wisdom of the leader and those instincts are so important for a leader when he or she makes a decision on critical hires. These are even more difficult a situation when one is hiring for a start-up or when one is in that critical growth stage in a company's evolution because growth depends with people skills and the ability of the skill sets of the organisation to execute a growth strategy.

For me hiring a critical resource whether in product, technology or sales has always been on five very important parameters.

1) First and foremost, what I look for is the hunger to succeed, if that hunger surpasses even intelligence, I rate the person a little higher because hunger gets you to find the relevant food to fill your stomach and in this context hunger drives people to learn on the smaller gap of intelligence in time.

2) Secondly, I look for passion in the person on the mission story I have for the company. If this does not match then I end the process of hiring right here because unless the talent believes in the story and relentlessly shows the same instincts I feel about my idea, he or she may not last the distance given we invest time, resources and capital for at-least a year to then know they are seeking greener pastures. Like you know grass is always greener on the other side but if you have the water with you it is just a matter of time before your grass shines more than the other and for that water to constantly be available in a human system; passion is an important element.

3) Then I look for integrity and bank a lot on my references, whom I trust the most given these are people who have mutual admiration and have spent enough time to know the kind of people you should hire or not. People help people succeed and it is very easy to know a person through such references, which is why I always tell budding entrepreneurs and leaders that only when the people who they work with succeed (in growing) will you be known as the true leader irrespective of how much ever you have grown a organisation in size because it is never a one man show and though the initial years are driven by the leader a well oiled machinery normally continues to roll on.

4) I love hustlers! Don't take the wrong side of the meaning :-), in the corporate world hustlers are people who are enterprising and are go-getters who find ways to move things at a fast clip. You cant have the entire organisation of hustlers, that then will be a great recipe for disaster but each org in a company has to have a hustler depending on the size of the company. I look for this quality a lot too because I know my job will get done :-)

5) Finally the one thing I very clearly want a talent to possess is the future of how his/her contribution would be to the organisation. What he or she brings to the organisation today is important but in time various changes and course corrections that a company takes to achieve it's ultimate objective needs a lot of understanding through flexibility and adaptability and so every hire I do, I look for a 18 month commitment to the least and that I derive through the above four attributes and past history of the candidate.

These have helped me immensely in growing my previous ventures and companies where I have been in leadership roles. Most importantly most of my hires are leaders in their own right today, which is a big high for me because creating a leader from a talent is my biggest passion and I tend to work towards that in a big way and in the process achieve every possible goal I would have set up for the organisation.

While people come and go and brands last forever, brands are built by people!

Happy Hiring :-)