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Permalink Reply by Alok 'Rodinhood' Kejriwal on November 6, 2010 at 3:00pm

Aditya, just look into their eyes and ask them what you want to ask them.

Trust me, their body will talk to yours. There is NO SCIENCE.

Its the first 30-60 seconds MAX. Then everything else that follows is falseness.

I also observe courtesy, manners, does the person have any respect for others or not... how does he or she talk to their office staff while asking for a coffee, to his subordinate, to her colleagues.

Any sign of ego, vanity, gloating, etc is a sign of trouble.

For example, I cant let people talk. I just keep interrupting people. That's a big turn off. I come across as over aggressive.

Also, in the first 5 minutes, ask them 'what do you think', 'whats your view'... the words that will come out will be their report card :-)

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Permalink Reply by Pallavi on November 7, 2010 at 2:40pm

Aditya

Easiest is to give them a situation - say what would you do IF this happens. Generally the response tells a lot.

Another thing we try very often is give people a very chaotic picture of current status of company, either they get excited about helping us or get worried. We generally don't hire the second lot.

Rest ofcourse is trial and error and in a startup a wrong hire is a big error.

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Permalink Reply by Neeraj Mehta on September 25, 2011 at 8:22pm

Alok... I really wish I could come and give you a hug... Your words and thoughts are so enlightening to all of us.. We all chose to become entrepreneurs and people like you with their helping words became inspiration. 
Thanks,

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Permalink Reply by Alok 'Rodinhood' Kejriwal on September 26, 2011 at 1:28pm

:-))

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Permalink Reply by Nayana Somaratna on September 27, 2011 at 1:32am

In my opinion, here are two good questions to ask :

 

1. How can you help my business ?

2. How quickly can you add value ?

 

I believe that the answers to these questions would tell you a great deal about the person.

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