Competencies of first few hires in a startup

Hiring the first few hires for a startup is one of the most challenging decisions that the founders take. Hiring your core team right plays a vital role in bringing new skills, perspectives, and bandwidth that mounts the business to the next level. The company can grow leaps and bounds with the right hires as it helps them hold substantial merit in the market.

However, while choosing the first few hires, the hiring folks must be careful in making the right decisions. The recruiters must emphasize the responsibilities, skills, and type of talent that efficiently fits the company culture. If you're someone with a pursuit to understand different ways of scouting the right hire for your startup, then this article is for you.?

Hunny Bhagchandani is the founder of TorchIt (Incubated at IIMA, CIIE). It is a social enterprise focused on empowering Persons with Disabilities (PwDs) through utilitarian and affordable assistive devices to the beneficiary. Hunny also received a National Award for his initiative.

Next, we have Sainadh Duvvuru, founder of HappyLocate. HappyLocate provides a diverse set of employee relocation services. HappyLocate.com is an AI & ML-based tool that helps corporates automate & manage their end-to-end Employee Relocations for a rich joining experience, process efficiency, and cost-efficiency. In simpler terms, we can call it a digital platform where end-to-end relocation is managed & coordinated with services.

Learn how they scouted key hires for their startups and gain some tactical and insightful tips from their discussion below

1. What was the idea or inspiration behind your startups??

Speaker - Sainadh

There's always a history as to why any individual becomes an entrepreneur. I had relocated six times, and coincidentally, my co-founder had too. We noticed the entire market was very fragmented. There was a need for a robust, organized player in the market, who could provide a rich experience for people who were relocating. The industry was not known for customer experience, and we wanted to solve this problem.?

After ideating, we got into the details, including the data pointer that said relocation is the second most stated reason for people to drop out of offers. More than 70% of the relocations are corporate-initiated relocations. So that's when we decided to solve the problem of relocation in India structurally. Our motto was "Move wherever you want to for your growth, and we are there for you."

Speaker - Hunny

While doing my engineering, I was enrolled in a social internship at a blind school where I had to work with visually impaired students. So, my visually impaired friend was traveling from afar to work on the project and one day got a head injury as the road had some construction going on. The white stick he used to navigate only helped identify the ground-level objects, which caused him to bump into a higher-level entity.?

I learned this is a prevalent problem for visually impaired people and started developing a device to help identify objects. I removed the light from the torch, put in the electronic sensor, and did programming in audio. I had the Minimal Viable Prototype ready within one week, which I demonstrated in the blind school. They were delighted with this prototype and ordered around ten units on the first day. My university approached the government of Gujarat, which had a startup scheme running, and we got selected for a 25 Lakhs rupees grant. So, this is how a project became a startup. After 16 months of hard work, testing different prototypes, we finally launched our product in October 2017, and it came into the market in January 2018.

2. What type of candidates do you hire for your organization?

Speaker - Sainadh

While it's a general question because we look for multiple candidates for multiple roles in any organization, we hire people who can perform. Startups are unstructured but agile because they move very fast, at least in the initial phases. I can't decide if this person will only do these ten KRAs or if these are his key roles and responsibilities for the next year or two. Hence, we decided that we would have people who have a growth mindset. When hiring, we not only look at people for a specific role like operations, finance, marketing, or sales but also ask this question "Can this person manage my company's 100x growth tomorrow?"

We usually reject people who don't have a growth mindset, but we might be wrong. We are still exploring what those ways or techniques are, which can identify if a person has a growth mindset. Time is an essence, and we want to quickly find out how we can work together (candidates and the startup).

3. How involved are you in the recruitment process at your organization?

Speaker - Hunny?

I am very much involved in the hiring process and what I specifically look into is whether the candidate is aligned with our vision or not. Alignment with a company's vision is the main point, at least according to me. At TorchIt, our vision is to serve a purpose and empower people in the disabled community. Whether the candidate is motivated towards achieving this purpose or not is very important to us. So, whether the candidate wants money or wants to make an impact and earn money in the course is what I look for.?

Speaker - Sainadh

While hiring a candidate, you should have in mind that you are introducing a fabric into your culture. So that's where we (founders) get involved in understanding the candidate better. My co-founder and I get involved in hiring people for leadership positions and what we mainly look for is culture fitment of the candidate rather than their technical skillset. Technical skillset is essential too, but the cultural fitment takes a more significant portion of our time in the assessment. Hiring is a two-way street, and the candidate should understand the vision and mission of the company. So this is something that we see in the candidate.?

4. Who are the early employees in your startup? How did you hire them?

Speaker - Hunny

We were initially looking for people from operations and manufacturing who could assemble our devices because we had a bad experience with outsourcing. We couldn't manufacture in-house because we were relying on a third party until one day, I decided to create an in-house team for this as per my father and mentors' suggestion. We had pre-orders, registrations, and money, but we failed to deliver without a team. So, I addressed this problem by making a team that can look after all assembly and manufacturing. Then we hired for operations, marketing and sales to scale up. So, these were my vital initial hires.?

Speaker - Sainadh

Everyone hires the wrong people initially, especially in startups. It's a learning process where we make mistakes and learn from them. In our early life, we have engaged in hiring many tech resources. A digital revolution in hiring happened during the last two years because of the pandemic. We did our initial hiring for tech people through our network, friends, existing companies, and colleges.

Having worked in the sales and marketing domain, I was able to understand the candidate's attitude towards sales. I hired Sales and Marketing resources through platforms that were focused on the startup ecosystem. In 2016-17, not many students wanted to join startups. So, we wanted to understand if the candidate is interested in working for a startup before talking to them. Hence, we relied more on those platforms where many startup enthusiastic candidates were available. My co-founder and I approved every employee who joined the organization. So that's how we have hired our initial set of people,

5. How do you build and maintain a strong candidate pipeline?

Speaker - Hunny

Of course, we get a couple of resumes through different platforms. We also have one or two HR agencies managing the pipelines of candidates for various positions. My HR network also helps me maintain the pipeline of candidates along with various platforms. Hirect is also one of the platforms which we use to hire directly.

Speaker - Sainadh

We started exploring multiple sourcing channels. Hiring is also a funnel, and you need to understand that you can't rely on only one source. You have to have various sources, be it all the digital platforms. You also need to have a backup of campus hiring. Every company sits on a gold mine that is an employee reference, but this can be used only when a dedicated recruitment team exists. You need to engage your employees to ensure that they share good resumes with you who can fit into the organization. Most of the employee referrals would generally be cultural fits because they know the kind of culture your firm offers, hence this saves a lot of time.