You’ve got a million-dollar idea, funds and time to implement it… Everything, except human resources. This is a typical problem every startuper faces at the beginning of the way.
When you start a company, the first thing you have to think about is responsibility. Who are these brave people who can take responsibility for developing young business?
What Experts You Can’t Do Without?
The formula says a dream team consists of hipster, hustler, and hacker.
Not sure about hipster, but who you really need is a visionary, person who came up with the idea and decided to make it real. Programmer is responsible for the implementation process.
Marketers, or hustlers, will estimate the product from customer’s point of view and explain your advantages to prospective users. Startup is always something new, so the audience won’t instantly understand why they need your innovation. The marketing department is here to help them as well as a copywriter who brings your idea to the audience and presents it in the right way.
Who Is Your Perfect Candidate?
Let’s now think about a person you’d like to work with. What qualities should your perfect candidates have?
Responsibility and Independency
There is always a lot of work in startups. Hire the candidate who never sits idle waiting for tasks. Independent in this case means somebody willingly starts working without your orders. Such people generate ideas and are eager to implement them. What’s more, they are not afraid of taking responsibility for their decisions.
Working in a startup is stressful, so the whole team needs support or even assistance. Helpful people who don’t mind sharing their knowledge are highly appreciated in young teams. Hire those right person who can create team spirit and takes care of the colleagues.
Experience and expertise
Young and enthusiastic people are often associated with startups. Of course, teens and students are an integral part of starting businesses. They usually have more free time they can dedicate to the project; their passion can help in business development, but running a business without experienced people is a matter of luck. Although their experience costs more, it’s worth having a leader who will be an example to follow for aspiring businessmen. Depending on your goals, such investment into the future of your project can be fully repaid in the nearest time.
Stress-resistance
New businesses are unpredictable, so you need people with nerves of steel. Confidence, courage and persistence, these are the qualities of your perfect candidates who have to survive lots of difficulties and challenges on their way to startups success.
What Should You Refuse From?
1. Hiring friends
Sharing values and interests doesn’t grant you a proper level of tasks completion. When it comes to making remarks to your friend, it’s always embarrassing, and in the long run you might face a hard choice – friendship or startup?
Moreover, when you’re friends, you’re peers. But as soon as you invite your friend to join your business, you find yourselves in employer-employee relations. Is your friend ready to accept a role of subordinate?
2. Scepticism
The success of your startup depends on your team, and consequently, their attitude to the work. If a person is skeptical about your ideas at the very beginning, don’t think they will change their mind soon. The more challenges your business will face on its way, the more complaints you’ll get. And mind that you’ll spend at least 8 hours a day with this person in the office. Are you sure your team will be able to put up with such colleague and won’t catch the virus of dissatisfaсtion?
3. Exaggerated promises
The reward is what makes your employee work for you. They all have their personal lives and issues, they all have to pay bills and buy food, so don’t expect people work for the idea only, no matter how cool it is.
Take your time and think what can you offer based on your current situation, not on what you hope for. Be honest with the candidates and don’t promise pie in the sky.
What To Pay Attention To?
Every single factor plays a key role, starting from experience and up to candidates’ trait of character.
If we have a look at statistics, you can see that the majority of startups hire CXOs who are 30+ years old experts. Top managers are to be experienced professionals with a wide network of good friends in right places. They already know how to present and protect their product, and how to manage projects in general. CXOs need to constantly encourage and inspire their team.
One more important feature is flexibility – startupers have to be ready for sudden and unexpected changes to adapt quickly. Hire those people who know the market and target audience. Those who are keen on your idea and fully support it are your perfect candidates too.
During the interview, ask people if they are ready to work on the idea that can fail at any moment. If you notice that the person is hesitating, look for the other candidate.
Author Bio: Julia Kravchenko is a Partner in Qubit Labs company that ramps up dedicated software development teams for any industry. She spends her free time to reading tech news, writing articles about outsourcing, IT staffing, remote working and internet marketing. Follow her on TW.
