10 Tips for Hiring the Right People

Most startups are small and in the beginning, you'll probably be the only employee. But as your company grows, you may need to hire new people. Especially if you're looking to scale your business. In order not to spread yourself too thin, it is important that you hire the right people for their roles in the company.

In this article I will outline 10 tips for hiring for a startup environment which I've learned from experience. As a startup founder and COO, I've hired many people. In no particular order:

1. Don't hire someone who's tried the same thing before

It's not just about knowing how to do something, you also need to know how not to do it. It makes total sense from a business perspective as well, if you're hiring someone who has already failed at doing that thing successfully you're wasting your time and money. If you hire them for being great at something that they already did nobody wins because ultimately nobody can be great at everything.

2. Make sure they don't overstep the mark

If you're hiring a new employee, it's very easy to assume that they will follow your company culture. If you want to succeed with your startup, it is important that you hire people who fit into your company culture. Hiring someone who is used to being treated a certain way at their previous role can mean complete disaster for your startup if they choose to act outside of the set parameters of your business. Make sure that the person you hire understands that this is a startup and their role is limited.

3. Know what role you're looking for

Before you start interviewing people, make sure that you know exactly what role you are looking to fill. As a founder, I continuously get asked by investors and other people in the startup community what it is that I am looking for when hiring people. The truth is that it really depends on our current situation if we're in a hurry to hire someone we need someone with specific skills. If we are taking our time to find the best talent, we just need someone who will fit into the company culture and offer something which we don't already have.

4. Interview the right people

There's no one size fits all when it comes to interviewing new people. I've interviewed people who would make good employees except that they had completely different values and beliefs than I have. That's fine, but it puts you in a situation where you're choosing between two bad options hiring someone that doesn't fit your company culture or firing someone that is absolutely fantastic.

I generally start interviewing my prospective candidates by asking them some questions about themselves explains why they want to work for our company and what their expectations are. Then we talk about their experience, their ambitions, whether they feel comfortable working at our company, etc.

5. Hire someone that fits your company's culture

It is important to hire people with similar values, beliefs, and goals as your company. No matter which startup you're working for, there will be certain aspects of culture which the founder will want to see in the new hire. For me personally it was very important that my employees were transparent in their communication and their work ethic. I wanted them to work hard and be passionate about what they do.

This means that I ended up hiring people from all walks of life from major corporations like Google, Facebook and LinkedIn but also from local startups in my own country especially for the senior positions.

6. Hire someone else to do the job

This might seem a little counter intuitive, but you need to consider whether hiring yourself is really the best idea. Having employees is a great way to build equity and market presence. The main motivation for me was that I enjoy being part of an entrepreneurial team as opposed to working independently in my own company.

So, while I have built part of our backend software myself, I have also hired software engineers who are much more experienced than me at building this sort of thing. It has been invaluable having that extra level of quality control on the product we're creating.

7. Hire someone who shares your vision

At my first startup, I thought that the way to build a successful company was to hire people who had a minimal personal stake in the company. After all, it'd be better to work with people that are motivated by the idea of building something great rather than people looking to make a ton of money or those in it for the ego boost. But, I've learned from experience that this isn't the case.

In fact, I have hired people for both of these reasons and ended up with disappointing results because there was no chemistry between us. It's important to make sure that the person you hire has a level of passion for the company and the product that you're building.

8. Hire someone who will fit in with your team

You need someone who, even if they're not joining your team yet, will be able to join your team once they start working for you. A good way of gauging whether or not this is true is to ask them how they feel about the idea of joining an entrepreneurial team. If they don't quite get it, there are other roles you could try instead possibly coming from a more traditional corporate background.

9. Hire someone that is a good cultural fit

You don't want to hire someone who has a completely different philosophy about how things should be done than everyone else in your team. You want someone that can fit into the kind of culture your co founders have created: one that is open and communicative, supports the idea of teamwork and an entrepreneurial spirit, where you are all working hard together towards a common goal.

10. Hire someone who will have the right attitude to work with you

I've worked alongside several people in my career who've had a very negative attitude towards some form of collaboration whether it be design thinking or teamwork as a whole. This can be a little frustrating for you, especially if it's the person who is supposed to be able to design your product. It's important that you hire someone who is likely to have a positive attitude towards your sort of process.

Even more importantly you need someone who can work in harmony with your team despite occasional conflicts. This will probably come out during interviews, so just make sure that you ask them what their attitude is when working in a group.

Finally

It's important to remember that hiring is a long process and takes time. Don't rush it. It's something which needs to be done right or not at all. This post should hopefully have given you some insights into what sort of questions to ask during an interview and how to go about doing it. But, in the end, you have to decide for yourself. Do things your own way and even if you make mistakes along the way, you'll learn as a result.