Hiring For start-ups!
As a start up, hiring staff is always a great challenge as roles that need to be filled keep on popping up but most of the time the founders are inexperienced in recruitment. The Start-Up Grind event hosted at the Watershed in Cape Town managed to shed some light on how other start-ups have managed to build and grow their teams from creation. Sitting on the panel was Andrew Mori, CEO at Deimos a cloud technology company, Brett Jones co-founder at Offerzen, a developer job marketplace, and Pivendren Naik, Engineering Lead at Stitch, a fintech company and the panel was moderated by Lindo.
What these panelists unanimously agreed on was that they all did everything in the beginning, from admin, to business development, sales, marketing until they got to a point when there was need to delegate, then roles where formed. On when do founders know which role needs to be created and filled, Brett said, “When you realize that you are now doing something you are not supposed to be doing.”
Founders always interview the initial staff that joins the team and it is the single most important thing a founder can do for his company. Andrew Mori was largely involved with hiring in the beginning but because he is more of a technical person, he struggled with it and he handed it over to people that were more capable. Brett insisted that recruiting is a mindset thing, it is a lot of work and should be taken seriously, he went on to say, when you are hiring, think about what you are hiring for before you do!
Pivendren Naik mentioned that Stitch started hiring from their network when they started, which is how he got the job in the first place, which at the time was part time/weekends only until it developed into something permanent. Hiring within your network is important because it allows the company to organically grow with more referrals coming from your network.
Today, company culture is important in a world where people associate themselves with culture and values more than the salary. People want to be a part of something that they identify with and respect. Andrew Mori mentioned that it is important to set company values in the beginning and overcommunicate the values because you are hiring people from different backgrounds with different values. Your team becomes the custodian of your company values. It is important that they understand what your company stands for. Pivendren Naik believes that culture manifests differently within a start-up and if the person does not fit they will be eventually kicked out by the team.
Brett Jones discussed the issue considering either culture fit or skill? He said, one size does not fit all, as most companies design an interview process and put candidates in a funnel and pick the best one without considering what’s best for the company or for the individual themselves. Brett Jones went on to say, have a conversation with the candidate, sell your company to the candidate, your interview should be a sales pitch about the company to the candidate and then assess culture fit afterwards. At the end of the day candidates should feel like they want to work there!