Who will I hire?

I was a newbie entrepreneur and learned many things by the choices I made. Hiring the right candidate was one such learning curve. Your experience can span 2 or 20 years in a corporate world; when you spend money, hire people, expect them to do a job and grow with your start-up, there are a lot of things that can go wrong. Let’s not put the blame entirely on the people hired, its very possible we shoulder some or most of it(I will be doing another article on this).

Mr/Ms. Platinum Resume

We all want the best, especially when picking our core team in a start-up. This is the mind-set we employ when hiring candidates with an A/A+ resume. What’s better than a sterling CV, great grades, good recommendations, and killer brand experience? A lot! Design a hands-on exercise as part of their interview. It will help assess the way your candidate thinks or functions. Fit in some of these standard interview questions to ask them - Why are they committing CV hara-kiri to be interested in joining a no-name; no-business startup? Will you be able to work for less money and perks than your peers? Is spending more time in the office something that holds their attention? I see tags on a CV these days, then my questions and thought process questions for the candidate go up a few notches. Also, first thing I look for in a candidate is purely respect and decorum. It is also a good idea to dig a little deeper and check in with the candidate’s references, peers etc. on their attitude and credibility.

Mr/Ms. Superficial

I have often seen CVs that run into 3 or 4 pages (Without a nice BIG picture!). I thought that was such a 2002 thing, but there are some people who still have lengthy CVs and LinkedIn profiles. A lot of skill endorsements and recommendations get thrown about, which is completely fine. For a start-up, very often you are looking for people with specific skillsets and expertise or ability to pick certain things up very quickly. I would like to pretend to focus on one or two key areas which the candidate knows like the back of his hand. What are the shreds of evidence that suggest the same? If you know 20 programming languages then you might not have the depth in any, even though the principles are the same across several. I often reiterate with colleagues that it is important to build a depth of knowledge in key areas as it is very relevant to future employability. Generalists have value but I rate the value of a generalist a lot lesser than T-Managers or Experts

Mr/Ms. Know-it-all

The team spirit in business is defined by the first 50 employees. This makes it imperative to get the attitude mix right in your core group of people. You need to have people who can feed off each other, go to war with your product/service, and burn the midnight oil to support customers or fix bugs/new releases or something else critical. A know-it-all is going to dampen the dynamics of a business in more ways than you can imagine. Information flow will get stalled and with more such characters, you will have an increasing no. of groups being formed finally resulting in work politics-related issues

Mr/Ms. Politics

Some individuals are born to world saving politicians :) And it’s quite difficult to pick them out at an interview or Onboarding stage.

They appear personable, have a great attitude on the right skills, demands, etc. But problem seeps in or starts when you have a few of your trusted employees or vendors raising objections about that person. And oftentimes one will not get the wind of the same because say if the organisation has more than 20 or 50 people it takes a while for this invisible mudslinging and polarising to occur. Only one piece of advice I have for myself now and all of you: NIP it in the bud. Irrespective of how good the resource(s). The longer you let the situation drift the worse off the situation becomes. I remember a few instances when 1-2 vendors complained to me about “bad vibes created” by a new team in an organisation. More than a complaint, they took a decision that the revenue or account was not worth it better to service another set of clients.

Yes sir/Yes Madam

The culture requirements of product vs services based companies are different. And you need drastically good leadership to make both kinds of organisations perform as well. I will not look at hiring any “Yes sir” types in a business at any stage. Unlike a conventional legacy enterprise, the cutting edge in an intellectual cesspool is through reliable aptitude, intellectual ability, and reactiveness to solve problems. I need to be and like to be challenged, as that aids learning and refining thoughts. An organisation with a lot of different viewpoints will ensure that things are built looking at different angles and customer-centricity is maintained

Mr/Ms. Too Scared to Speak

No No No! If you can’t communicate, then you should probably sit and code on your own or join a mime group. Communication is probably the most important thing in teams and enterprises. People can be misunderstood all the time and that happens. Silent Lucys and Donalds in an organisation make it quite difficult to function even if their effort is top-notch and their deliverables are on time. There are exceptional periods and situations where limited interactions might be the norm but it’s safe to say that would be a one-off.

The point I have made above holds no discrimination against introverts. Communication about your tasks, overall direction of product or service, and information flow is critical in a young company.

Hope this has given you a flavour of some kinds of hiring decisions that I have regretted or noticed in organisations. There are plenty more and I am sure my friends in the industry will help elaborate. When it comes to hiring a candidate, we should not be biased and evaluate them solely based on their performance. In the end, only the right candidate can grow independently and yet rooted with the company.