What does Hiring Through Founders’ Lens look like?

Building a startup is challenging. What role do founders play in laying the foundation by hiring the core team of a startup? How does one finalize the idea of their business? If you are on a quest to gain a deeper understanding of the entrepreneurial journey and want to get some answers to these questions, this article may be of interest to you. Jeevika Tyagi and Rakhi Pal, two young and innovative entrepreneurs explain their business strategies.?

Hirect recently held a webinar, "#ThroughFoundersLens," to shed some light on the involvement of founders of startups in the process of hiring. At the webinar, Jeevika Tyagi and Rakhi Pal shared their insights on hiring for their startups and the journey to establish themselves successfully as entrepreneurs.

Rakhi Pal is the Co-founder of EventBeep, an online events platform that caters to the student community. EventBeep allows students to connect mutually through interest groups & voice channels to get guidance and mentorship from top experts in any field of interest. Rakhi is well-known for her participation in Shark Tank, where she and her co-founders raised funding from Peeyush Bansal, Ashneer Grover, and Aman Gupta. In the past, Rakhi has also worked with companies like TIE Pune, MentorBox, and the Automotive Research Association of India (ARAI).

Jeevika Tyagi is the Co-founder of Aastey, a sustainable clothing brand for women of all body types. The mission of Aastey is to change stereotypes and amplify the body inclusivity cause. Jeevika began her career working for a Wall Street company in the finance sector but has experience in both Brand Marketing and Product Marketing for startups.

Here are some of the highlights from the webinar.

1. What inspired you to start your startup?

Speaker: Jeevika Tyagi, Co-founder of Aastey

We took time to reflect on the causes of the pandemic, which led to a lack of mindfulness. I observed that the environment was not improving. So, I felt like there had to be new sustainable business practices. For years, my friend and I noticed that brands have always told us to fit into a specific size or perfect image of a woman when in reality, the perfect woman can come in any size or shape. This creates a lack of confidence and insecurities among us women about fitting into a specific size. We took these two problems we cared very strongly about -- making the environment sustainable and not fitting into a particular size -- and thought, why not solve them together? So we set our eyes on building a sustainable athleisure brand available in all sizes.?

Everyone was resonating with this problem, and we realized that this is a huge market that we can tap into. The active and athleisure wear market was a 200 billion dollar market and has probably grown since. Nobody had ventured into this domain in India, so we started building.

Speaker: Rakhi Pal, Co-Founder of EventBeep?

EventBeep came into the picture when we figured out this scenario where students didn't know what they wanted to do. Students didn't know how to pursue their dreams or take up a degree aligned with their passion. But, what if the students understood that if they follow something they are interested in pretty early on in their life, their chances of being successful in that particular domain becomes considerably higher. We thought, why not?. So, I was working on those lines when I met my co-founders Venkatesh and Sourab, who were working on something similar at an event and thought, since we were already doing something similar, we could collaborate rather than compete with each other. That's where I started it as an initiative with my co-founders, Venkatesh and Sourab.

1. What kind of challenges do you face while hiring for your organization?

Speaker: Jeevika Tyagi, Co-founder of Aastey

We had to set up the core team. We are ourselves involved in it. Early stages, you're setting up processes and things that should not break when building for scale. And it's that same game; it's tough to hire the right person coming at the price they should. But for us, primarily, what's worked at Aastey is that we have no bias in hiring. We're in a hybrid model. You make the first cut as long as you have a laptop and internet and have the right attitude. And after that, it's all about cultural fit. Not telling a person's capability by a piece of paper or by two rounds of interviews is a challenge for any organization. It's not until somebody comes into the organization and understands your vision and kind of takes the leap of faith from both ends will you know if this person will shine or not? So that’s a challenge.

1. What are the core competencies you look for in the first few hires for your startup?

Speaker: Jeevika Tyagi, Co-founder of Aastey

We always look for multi-skilled people. If you're a startup, you'll always have a lack of resources, lack of funds. We are always looking for people who can pick up more than one skill can expand and dilute into different departments as and when needed.

For us, the individual must close a project and have what it takes to get to the next milestone. You'll find a lot of them have great talent; they're good at starting projects and implementation, but sometimes what matters in a startup is if the candidates can move fast and close open loops. So it's a unique skill set to have, and we value that at Aastey. We value Doers. It's about how fast the candidates can learn, make a project grow, and close it.

Speaker: Rakhi Pal, Co-Founder of EventBeep?

The first thing we look for is learning something new and getting things done. Transferring or infusing skills is not that tough at the end of the day. Nowadays, there are many people with technical skills but very few people with people skills who understand people. Here, I don’t mean communication skills or soft skills. I mean how to value people for those you build products for and build relationships with those you are working with. A zeal to work with startups is also an essential criterion that we look for. We hire freshers and experienced people ready to work with startups despite their past work experience with more prominent companies.

1. What are the principles of recruitment you follow in your organization?

Speaker: Jeevika Tyagi, Co-founder of Aastey

For us, the core principle is that if everyone from co-founders to HRs has enjoyed chatting with you, then you’re probably an excellent cultural fit already.? “And that's a core principle we use for recruitment”, she added. We're not using bots right now, so we're not filtering applications based on the Ivy League and the ISBs & IIMs. It's great if you've been there and if you still feel aligned with the vision of Aastey. But it doesn't matter to us which school, College, or years of experience that you've had. What matters to us is, have we enjoyed chatting with you? Are you somebody who will close open loops and move fast? Are you aligned with our vision? Do you understand the bigger picture? We have three simple steps. We do the first round, then we do a project, and then we do a cultural round, and all this is done in a matter of two to three days, and you're good to go. So we have a prior probation period, and we see that if the person flies, then the sky's the limit.

Speaker: Rakhi Pal, Co-Founder of EventBeep?

If you are the best at your work, you don't have to worry about anything else. Those who are self-driven, self-motivated, have a good heart, and are willing to learn are a good fit for us. We need not force the person to do it. It doesn’t matter if you work day and night on your schedule as long as you get the things done; we are not rigid about the check-in and check-out time. I always say there is no time limit. The principle for hiring is that a person has to be driven by three Ps: Product, People, and Purpose. If all of these 3 things drive the person, we are good to go with that person.

?