What to Look for When Hiring for Your Startup

Some startup founders think about hiring, and they imagine a tedious task that takes them away from more important work. But there’s nothing more important than hiring. It’s an exciting part of the growth process, and one that lays the foundation for everything your company will accomplish.

If you’re a savvy founder, you will relish the recruitment and interview processes, and you will also spend a disproportionate amount of time considering what to look for when hiring a new employee for your startup. Through the years, I’ve interviewed countless candidates for positions at my companies. What do I look for when hiring? There are 7 key traits that I consider must-haves.

Continue reading to learn more about what to look for when hiring someone, plus other tips for the hiring process.

1. Attitude

My axiom for hiring is this: “Hire for attitude; train for skills.” If you hire someone who doesn’t have the right attitude, their skill level won’t matter. But, if you hire someone with the right attitude, you can teach them everything they need to know about the job. And, because they have a positive attitude, they will be that much more willing and able to learn.

I put this as No. 1 on the list for this reason — if you hire team members with good attitudes time after time after time, you develop positive synergy. You and your employees are able to accomplish more together than you would be able to apart because the positivity becomes contagious, lifting your business to new heights.

The opposite is true, too. If you continually hire employees who bring the wrong attitude to work, the negativity will weigh down and hold back your business — no matter the collective skill level.

2. Culture Fit

Make sure any new employee fits your company’s culture, too. At a startup, growth is the priority, and everyone needs to feel comfortable in a fast-paced, high-growth environment where each day is different. Specifically, startups need employees who are:

●     Able to roll with the punches

●     Quick on their feet

●     Eager to contribute when and where they can (whether or not a task falls into their job description)

Looking for clues during the interview process? Evaluate how comfortable a candidate is with himself or herself. Quality candidates who will fit the startup culture are not cocky or arrogant, but they are observant. They also ask the right questions during the interview process. When in doubt, trust your instinct. You’ll know deep down whether someone is a fit or not.

3. Curiosity

Few traits are more valuable than curiosity. When you hire people who are curious, they become natural problem solvers. Rather than falling back on their past experiences or “the way things have always been done,” they seek out new information and try new things. Curious people believe that anything can be figured out with enough research, trial-and-error and commitment.

The great thing about curiosity is that you don’t need experience to have it. I’ve hired curious people with years of experience in their discipline, and I’ve also hired curious people right out of college. Look for curiosity in your candidates, and you’ll find in time that you have a team of problem solvers on your hands. As you can imagine, that’s a good thing at a startup.

4. Humility

Most new employees make lots of mistakes as they get started. This is true for employees with lots of experience as well as entry-level team members. The important thing is for new employees to recover from mistakes with ease, processing them as learning experiences, and suggesting good ideas for how to proceed from a mistake. That’s humility.

Your employees should also be comfortable moving outside the scope of their positions. As a business owner, I’ve done all sorts of low-glamour things: taking out the trash, cleaning the kitchen, vacuuming the floors, answering the phones. I did these things because they needed to be done and because I was the person best-positioned to do them in the moment. That’s humility, too.

Plus, as a business owner, my cheerful willingness to complete jobs that needed to be done set the right example for the rest of the team. If you can hire for humility and lead with humility, you’ll have a company where everyone feels empowered and compelled to jump in and do the things that need to be done, no matter how lowly. That’s humility in action — and it’s something that can push your company closer to its goals.

5. Drive

Someone’s “drive” is a trait that’s often hard to describe and quantify. The best way to explain it is this: You want people on your team who take end-to-end ownership of any task, researching as needed, finding ways to overcome obstacles autonomously, and returning deliverables that need little correction. These people are invaluable to a company. They take initiative. They have drive.

Driven employees are also idea generators. They come up with new product ideas, they come up with ideas for clients, they offer ideas for how to improve a process and accelerate a project or generally improve the operations of the business.

This is another area where owners and founders can encourage driven employees to push as hard as they like. Have an open-door policy that invites ideas. Provide equity in the company so that work becomes more than a paycheck. Offer to pay for training and other professional development opportunities. I love when employees learn new skills to fill a gap in our company’s capabilities. These driven employees often show up early, often stay late, and always work effectively to move the company forward.

6. Passion

If you’re wondering what to look for in a candidate during an interview, passion is a contagious trait that will shine through. Find team members who are passionate about the industry, about your products or services, about their specific discipline within the company. When employees are passionate about what they do, work doesn’t feel like work — instead it feels like meaningful time spent on something valuable.

Passion typically shines through in an interview. You can see passion in how candidates talk about their work, in how they ask questions, even in how they greet you. A workplace full of passionate employees is far more enjoyable than otherwise. And a workplace full of passionate employees also increases the company’s chances for success.

7. Team Focus

This one is easy: Look for team players when hiring team members. When you hire employees who have a team focus, many of the things listed above fall into place. Team players typically have the right attitude, they are typically curious problem-solvers, they are typically humble, and they typically fit into a startup culture, etc.

What do I mean by “team focus,” though? I mean someone who is quick to credit others for success, someone who cares about the career paths of their direct reports, someone who goes above and beyond when needed — even if the task isn’t in their job description. Bringing that style of team focus into an organization helps smooth a startup’s journey.

Hiring Best Practices for Your Startup

Beyond figuring out what to look for when hiring an employee, how should you handle the hiring process? There is so much that goes into recruitment, interviewing, etc., but I like to focus on these 3 best practices:

1. Take your time: Don’t rush. If you hurry just to get a warm body into a position, you risk hiring the wrong person. And the cost of hiring the wrong person can be astronomical. So take your time and wait for the right person.
2. Your team will determine your success: Remember that your team is the single best predictor of your company’s success. If you hire a great team, the chances of reaching your business goals skyrocket.
3. Look beyond the résumé: What do most of the traits listed above have in common? They are characteristics that don’t show up on a résumé. Be careful when culling your applicants based on experience or where they went to school or what companies they’ve worked for in the past. Instead, look for thoughtful applications — applications that clearly took time and energy. That’s a good first indicator of passion and drive.

I can’t emphasize how important hiring is to your company and its future success. If you get the right people, everything else — all the complications, frustrations and challenges — becomes that much easier to overcome. Hire as though you’re building a company — not just filling a role. Because you are. The first 20 hires at any startup should be made deliberately with the future (and your future goals) in mind. Wondering what to look for when hiring is a great starting point. The 7 qualities to look for when hiring an employee listed above can serve as your guide, helping you develop the high-quality team you need.

How is Your Hiring Going?

If you’re starting or running a company, you’re likely hiring all the time. How is the process going? Do you have your own qualities to look for? Or your own best practices to follow? If so, please get in touch to let me know about them. Or, if you’re having hiring issues, I’m always here to help. Contact me with questions or to get feedback on hiring issues you’re facing.