Ask any Start-up CEO or founder, and chances there they’ll all tell you the same thing: Recruiting is hard.
Every business wants the most intelligent, dedicated, and experienced players to fill out their team. But entrepreneurs need people who are more than intelligent and experienced. They need passion. Wall Street experience and an Ivy League pedigrees aren’t as important as shared interests, ethics, and values; or people prepared to mature with your company’s own growth.
Start-ups need people who not only believe in the company’s mission but will work their butts off in a multitude of ways to fulfill it. With no bandwidth to babysit and mentor people, start-ups need people who can hit the ground running, and take ownership and run projects on their own. And they need them now “(Willing to take a 20% salary cut to work on something they can, at least, feel good about doesn’t hurt either).”
Often in a start-up’s infancy, hiring for a specific position in a rapidly growing business can prove challenging. Every member of that initial team must be able to perform various roles. They need to function as a Swiss Army knife of sorts; all the tools needed to build your perfect start-up rolled in one. Finding people who can do that while still being experts in their domain isn’t simple.
Especially since the recruiting process, naturally, works a little bit differently than it does in established companies. For a larger business, the recruitment for individual roles has the ability to more focused and targeted. Start-ups don’t necessarily have the same luxury. Since you’re looking for those Jack-of-Trade types, it can be difficult simply to describe the role you’re hiring for. (Help Wanted: marketing guru with a background in graphic design, business operations, customer service, and it would be super great if were a pro at baking for office birthdays either).
So how do you choose the right people?
Well, there’s no formula to it but here at “Idyllic” , we don’t hire clones like most organisations do. We hire diverse people. We don’t look for people who fit in, we look for people who stand out. People who are self-assured and confident and who believe in what they do. We respect and love the fact that each and every human is unique.
Sure, we assess their skills for the role they are being hired for, but that’s just one aspect of their personality.. we’d rather focus on putting together a great team of awesome people. It’s worked really well for us and we’ve managed to build a team of extremely talented, crazy passionate people.
How do you hire? What do you do differently? We’d love to hear your thoughts on it.
