The journey of starting off - Three Different Phases of Learning.

The only thing that never stops in the professional, social and spiritual life journey is "learning"!

Through this article the idea is to call out and share very specific points about why I started off , my learning and where I continue to invest my time and mind space. Surprisingly, some of these are basics too. And its only fair when you are on a fast-paced , independent journey, many such "Back-to-Basics" moments will happen to you. My dear wannabe entrepreneurs, early stage #startup founders, investors who are flag bearers for start ups, growth stage startup leaders and aspiring #talent who are considering new opportunities in the ecosystem please read this. I'd like to say, its intended for you folks primarily. And "others" can also read and thank me later :)

This article discounts some scenarios like high performing and influential top talent who really join for making an impact but did not get empowerment and ownership by their leaders. I have a lot of respect for all of them and soon will pen something down in that area in order to share my experience there too.

The "Why" Part:

After 15+ yrs of my progressive career , in which few years were spent in IT Training and large part of the time was in Tech, Leadership, Strategic and Business recruitment in some large tech corporations , marquee growth stage start ups and an insightful stint at a Venture Capital firm. This collective journey lead to the the idea of "giving back" to this ecosystem that gave me so much. Little did I know, I was signing up for a much bigger learning phase just in 1 year timeframe which equalised or was much more (was in multiples) than my entire professional tenure. Indeed, thankful to founders that I have always worked with. I'd like to say they all knowingly/ unknowingly contributed to my learning "how to learn to be a founder/entrepreneur". While I saw founders not even shaking a bit by their folks leaving them high and dry either due to lack of commitment, for better money , lesser challenges, for fancy titles. I have also seen them confidently facing uncomfortable situations of taking tough calls of terminating /firing senior employees purely for betterment of the company's culture; I have seen some successful founders who stood for value, culture and first principals who continue to be some of my favourites. Every bit that I gathered as a learning helped me in having that courage to build my own set up.

Now the "Why" part. Over the years, start ups and founders were the last ones to take realtime benefit from "so-called hiring solutions", some recruitment agencies who worked with large MNCs and several organisations but also want to work with start ups Everyone other than talent hungry start up founders looked at recruitment as a "source of quick money". This included freelance recruiters, some recruitment agencies, self proclaimed "consulting" firms who never had a business model for true consulting curating it for startups but charged hefty just for a JD-CV, first they sprayed CVs and then prayed. All this lead to additional contribution to the VC money-burn process. There are times in my early journey of start-up recruitment , I even have fought with my stakeholders not to reward some consulting agencies as there was no true value add. But we did pay as most of them pay for JD-CV match plus our fear of time slipping through. These thoughts kept creeping in as I joined the VC firm because I met many more such "agencies". I saw a problem and wanted to solve it . The idea was to truly partner with clients (VCs and start up founders) in real time consulting manner and going beyond the JD-CV match. Where we tell stories, identify career aspirations of talent by curating our work. In these early days of our advisory venture, glad to have achieved all that to some extent and we continue to progress and deepen our experience here.

Learning the "How" Part:

Early team building phase: Like a lot (almost all) of startup founders, I too have committed my share of mistakes. In fact a bunch of them, while building my own team; ironically so, for a recruiter. It took some courage to state it here. Hired without intense and structured evaluation process, hired just with expectation setting based on aspirations instead of some realistic ones, missed identifying peoples' personal baggages etc etc. List is long. Big learning when I internalised all of it was - the high performing and truly hard working individuals in the team suffer because of this plus impacting the goals. Like most of the "desperate-for-talent" founders I too did think purely from "customers first" angle and had a fear of time that was slipping through. Understood the importance of preparedness and plan to deal with some mediocre ones. When 360 degree evaluations are not 100% foolproof but they significantly reduce the risk of hiring mediocre ones. Either have a long "trying , testing and enabling" period for them or set right expectations and take hard calls to end the association early-on. We don't have bad people , we only meet "unsuitable ones". But those "Unmanaged unsuitable" ones can turn nasty and bad , beware of that! Been there and seen that in many founders' lives. However, looking at it in its entirety, we only emerge powerfully after such experiences. This could be of a great advantage for the next set of talent that joins, good way to give a positive perspective no?

Another key learning - Power of young and fresh talent . Young talent is as pure and positive as fresh dough which breaths energy in to the space. Can be moulded as there is a higher chance of faster learnability in them. This is very relevant and true for those early start ups where attracting seniors is a challenge plus affordability is a concern too. Have always been a big fan of fresher and intern hiring and have been preaching the same to our start up client partners too. While it sounds politically incorrect statement for a Leadership Recruitment Advisory like ours, but thats exactly the point - not looking at a value creation as a business goal alone.

Interview and Assessments - spending good amount of time with potential talent in taking them through the vision, goals and what one is building and mainly "Why". Irrespective of seniority levels of candidates, who apply , we have started giving "real time" case studies and assignments interviews. We advice the same to our founders too and that has been a huge success so far. Despite clear reasoning , those who are unwilling are either old timers or just fear the real time assessments & evaluations. I have seen bunch of them running away exactly at the time of assessments. Great, thats real validation, weed-out and a lot of time saved!

The continuity phase - All this "why" and "how" part will truly be packaged well only when its remembered and implemented in every step of the way as we move forward as a company. No matter how well we are doing, the point is to remind yourself where you came from and how you have learnt , without carrying a baggage of past - Thats the whole trick. All of these experiences really have enhanced our ability to consult and advice the start up founders even more effectively as we have not only observed the space, but have "walked the talk".

Although, we constantly hear and believe entrepreneurship is a lonely journey, but its also a lot more rewarding and gratifying. In the end, it makes you humble with self realisation and multiple moments of "oh , there is so much more to learn". There will be times people with lack of awareness point fingers at you and reflect their weakness on you, the best response is to "just keep going as you believe & focus only on what you want to solve". You always got to have 1-2 timely sounding boards /mentors /coaches who know the real you, they should not only be updated about retroactive decisions but should be aware of your overall journey with your people. I have also seen some start up leaders disheartened with certain incidents specially people related ones. I practice and preach only one thing to them - "You know what you are doing; if so, just do it!" In the end only that counts. "The Doing".

Giving it a spiritual twist - In the end , nothing matters and there is only "one thing" that exists and that is "Nothing":)

Would like to get messages, DMs and comments on this article and happy to share more learning and learn more by sharing...

By getting into the groove of writing I already planned my next article about Recruiting: In Startups. Hoping I will have some takers for that too :)