The Startup Hiring Challenge

Most entrepreneurs in their early days feel that funding is the hardest challenge that they are going to come across while building their companies on the assumption that once they have money in the bank, life's going to get all breezy. Little do they know that the real challenges of building a company grounds up are far different and far greater.

Over the last few months post raising our seed round of capital, I was extremely excited about building our team of people who I will count upon for taking us to the next stage. But the excitement didn't last long and the kind of people I was looking for were nowhere close to be found. Being a firm believer of what Jim Collins said in his book Good to Great, "Great vision without Great people is irrelevant", I knew that HIRING was going to be a hell of a challenge. Its extremely important that a founder understands that the key isn't to look for people simply with great skills or university backgrounds but people who are a Good Fit.

A GOOD FIT

The concept of a good fit is contrastingly different from the concept of the right talent. A good fit is comprised of number of factors and I will list the important ones here for you:

1. The Right Skillset - This takes care of whether the candidate has the right skills to carry out tasks in his/her job profile, be it technology, marketing or something else.
2. The Right Focus : Secondly, a quality person who is ALL IN with you for the long haul. What that means is, he/she understands the mission and the vision of the company and strongly believes in it. Someone who understands that building a company from scratch takes relentless effort and sacrifices, not just by the founders but by the entire team. Different people are going through different phases in their lives and while some of them are looking for stability or chilled out weekends, the people you likely want won't get either of these.
3. The Right Culture : Thirdly, considering the candidate's cultural fit in the team is of paramount importance. You have to test if the person takes initiatives, has focussed approach to solving problems, can work in a collaborative environment and is open to constructive criticism. These points can vary based on the culture of your company but largely most companies should be looking at these common traits. I have realised that a lot of people will fail here if you rigorously test them out.
4. The Right Motivation : Now while you might find a few candidates that have all of the above but might or might not fit here. What you really need to know is WHY they are looking for a change from whatever they were doing before interviewing with you, WHY do they think that they will be the right people to build this company and WHY would they leave many other great options so they can join you.
5. The Right Offer : Now luckily, if you have found all of the above in someone, its important to make the right offer. Some people have personal responsibilities and don't afford to come without a minimum salary while others are in a position to take great risks. Each individual is different and to understand their needs and make the right offer considering the company's resources and strategy is crucial to converting this candidate into a team member.

The right fit not only stands true for a company but is as true for a candidate looking to join a new company. He/She needs to look for the same things just from the other side of the table and make an informed decision.

A company which is a right fit for you will go a long way in contributing to your personal life, professional growth and overall happiness.

MY HIRING JOURNEY

Being an early stage company, I wasn't big on funds and didn't afford paying the massive fee to hiring agencies, so it all had to be done by me. I will divide my journey into 4 main phases and each had its own ups and downs. The downs or the failures are whats more critical to learn from so you can save time and frustration there.

Strategise:

This is the most critical part of your entire journey. If you get it right here, you are likely going to have a crazy win but if you go wrong here, you are going to lose as much. I had spent weeks trying to perfect my strategy on how we will be going forward in the next 4 quarters and the human resources needed to execute that plan.

Although you will almost never have a concrete plan, but you should make one keeping in mind your target which will help you achieve the next level in your journey.

• Ups: For me luckily, I found some great mentors to help me focus on things that are going to matter, where to invest the money, how to not spend too fast but neither too slow. Honestly, I would have taken a lot of bad decisions if I didn't have these people spending their precious time entertaining some of my most basic doubts. I think their own successes and failures played a key role.
• Downs: There was a drastic change in my entire strategy than what I had raised money for considering the current market sentiment, existing startups in the same space, etc which took me a while to adjust to. I knew I was doing the right thing by moving my model's focus to B2B side of things early on than our previous idea of simply a B2C focus on our app which might not have been enough to take us to the next stage. I almost spent a month or more and it was a tough time taking such a different road ahead. Thankfully, I got a wonderful bunch of investors that completely supported the move.

Search :

The next thing in line is to start searching for these people. All the 8 people that I currently have in the company came from only two platforms, AngelList and Cutshort. I will have to commend Nikunj on the job well done for building an great tool like Cutshort.io and to AngelList for truly being their for entrepreneurs by having such a useful platform for free. I tried looking in my network as well and some of you will definitely find the right people within your circle, so don't leave that out. I browsed through the resumes of some 1200 odd people and ended up talking to 300. Trust me, its not as easy as it sounds but its definitely worth the drill.

I would suggest you to keep a diary or a notebook because as you interview a lot of them, you are going to start mixing specific things about each candidate which won't just come in handy today but will definitely be at a later stage. These can include things like expertise, current & expected salary, years of experience, motivation to work in certain sectors like big data or why you liked the person and why you can't hire him/her now.

Some of the people will be a good fit for your next phase and you should definitely keep in touch with them and the ones that seem to make it for the current round of hiring, go after them and get them.

• Ups : I have been lucky that all the people I ended up finalising were really amazing. Infact they were better than I had expected and it gave me a high to put together a stellar team.
• Downs : The biggest blunder was that I wanted good people to join me immediately and that I almost only looked for people who could join in 15 days or so. That way, I ended up losing some great candidates and lost more time than I would have had I waited a month for their notice periods. My search might have stretched a bit due to this, which eventually got frustrating.

Decide :

Now that I had zeroed down to the final few candidates for each position, it was about deciding and making an offer. I went through each person's profile again and took some days to think about each person's fit. Since I believe in a collaborative hiring process, I spoke to my existing team members about the value that I hope each new candidate could bring. After taking in their feedback and thoroughly considering my views, I made an offer and welcomed them to our team. I expected the candidate to sign the offer and send it back via email within 48 hours. If there was a delay, I followed up and checked with the person but I didn't let this linger for long so I knew the person wasn't holding me off for something else and wasting my time. Read more on decision making here.

Ups : I was able to convert almost all the people that I hoped would join the company at the right cost within the right time.

Downs : With some of the good fits, I took a bit too long to decide whether I wanted them in the team or not. This ended up losing those candidates since they got other good opportunities and I had to go through the entire process again. I also was very rigid about the salaries I could offer and I learnt that I should be flexible to a 10-15% fluctuation when I see a great candidate. Also, I took a bad decision on one of the candidates who flipped his mind after we had waited 20 days, which means a massive loss of time since we had to start all over again. So I take it as a bad judgement call on the candidate's fit in the company.

Wait :

This phase is when you have sent the offer letter and the candidate has signed it and sent it back and now you wait until their joining date. Most people do not understand the value of this part and its essential that you give critical importance to this. You should actively engage with the new recruits and introduce them with the company, its current progress and short term goals. You should also share the skills they will be most needing so they can devote some time to honing them. It's more like the relationship building phase for a company.

While I hope you were able to pick people that aren't going to ditch you for another offer that they get during this time, but by constantly keeping in touch you are also able to sense any such issue early on and take measures in time.

Ups : I actually got some amazing people like Gaurav in the team, who not only engaged regularly and gave great ideas but also helped me out with marketing work before the joining day.

Downs : From the guy who wasted my 20 days, I learned that you always need to be ready for a backup plan until that person has really joined the company. You can't put all your eggs in one basket and hence its important that you are in touch with other good candidates as well who you can hire in case anything goes wrong with the one you finalised.

Well that would mostly sum up my entire hiring experience after our recent funding. I hope this comes handy to companies that are in early stage and are looking to hire people or to employees that are looking to join early stage companies. I will keep sharing my experiences as they come so we can all learn and grow together.