Recruitment is tough and all founders realize this in due time. A funded / not so funded / not funded startup has its own set of hiring challenges. Every founder knows how difficult it is to assemble and retain the right people especially in early days. In the early days, founders use their repetitive hiring experience and intuition to make an initial team, but many founders with no hiring experience are prone to make these two common mistakes:
1. Hiring a False Positive
False positives are those people who fit your selection criteria perfectly. Their overall personality/ communication/ behaviour is such that they come across as an ideal candidate. There could be the case that these guys have mastered the art of giving interview or they have researched about you well and behave as you desire.
These guys may appear good but are not as good when it comes to execution or getting their hands dirty. Needless to say – hiring these candidates is a big mistake. It is very important for founders to develop a knack of identifying false positives. As an interviewer/ recruiter/ selector, you should just not ask a set of questions and go as per the words/ answers but you should try to read between lines, go beyond words, try to find out the actual attitude of a person. His track record can also come handy as there should not be any mystery around it.
Doing a trial period of 7-10 days for all the key positions is also a great to avoid a wrong hire, and I have seen this practically working with startups.
Trial period gives enough time to both the parties to know about each other and take an informed decision. So, in nutshell. you should avoid hiring a false positive person and if hired you should part ways as soon as identified.
2. Rejecting a False Negative.
As name suggests, it is opposite of false positive. The person who initially doesn’t seem to fit the bill but is actually a good prospect when it comes to execution, learning new things.
He/ She can become an excellent leader or team member in the future. He may not tell you things which you want to listen or behave as you would expect an ideal candidate to. This doesn’t mean that he is not good and lacks the basic know how but it could be the case that he didn’t get the required exposure.
In order to gain competitive advantage you don’t have to do bigger things but small things differently. Hiring a false negative person is one of them. The big question is how to identify these guys.
The answer is “Intuition”. You can’t explain the selection of these people with logic. Again trial or live in period comes handy. At any cost, you should not allow these people to leave as they are the potential game changers.
The above mentioned points are in the context of hiring but I think you have also realized that this is applicable to every case when we are choosing people, be it personal or professional purposes.
What are your thoughts?
Twitter – @losesaga
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This article was originally published here.
Alok Rodinhood Kejriwal
Interesting… Its the toughest call when it comes to starting up…
people make or break a startup. I think (you may not agree) that luck has a lot to do with it
Sushil Shirke
Quite agree with you Nikhilesh & even more with you Alok – luck has to be on your side in all cases. I have been working on my 3rd startup and being in the startup industry for quite some time, all I can say is, “hiring the right starter” is turning out to the most toughest of tasks.
The only thing that helps is being able to detect the false positive and negative at the earliest.
Sridhar Rajendran
Quite an informative post Nikhilesh. Not just while hiring but in general it helps when we have good instincts about picking the people we spend most of our time with. To me, personally meditation had helped in calming down the judgmental part of my brain and honing my ‘gut/instinct’. More reasons for entrepreneurs to close your eyes and breathe 🙂
Nikhilesh Tayal
Agree Sridhar, Infact first I observed this in general context and then from hiring perspective.
Would love to know more about the meditation technique which is helping you
Nikhilesh Tayal
Alok, I am not sure about the Luck part. Startup is a long term game and right people will come in your life/ startup. It could be a matter of time
Would like to know your perspective when you mention Luck.
Nikhilesh Tayal
Yep hiring the right starter is the toughest part but highly underrated. Entrepreneurs discuss about product, marketing, investment etc but not this.
Sridhar Rajendran
I have been following the techniques taught by Art of Living for over 3 years and they have helped me a lot. I am sure Alok would attest to that as well 🙂