It’s a curious thing, executive hiring. It would seem that every person who starts a business assumes that because they are strong in their field of expertise, they automatically know how to grow a team and mentor them to success. Truth told it’s never been that easy and with the current talent market it’s become even more difficult to find the right people to help your company thrive.
Executive hiring is critical to a company’s success and really should not be a DIY task, although plenty of founders and co-founders do it that way. With that in mind, we’re offering these 5 tips for executive hiring for your startup. Bear in mind that this is primarily focused on executive hiring but this information should be useful overall as you begin to define your executive hiring program.
- Don’t hire your friends unless they actually have the right experience.We see it time and time again, founders and co-founders start their companies hiring their friends. And to some extent it makes sense to hire someone you like and trust when you’re starting out. Which is great if your friend has the skill set you actually need for the success of your company and is not “just a friend”. Once the business gets rolling, that friendly hire may turn out to be what’s standing in the way of the next level for your business (or may be what’s preventing it from getting rolling in the first place). The challenge with hiring friends is you may also have to fire your friends which is a difficult and awkward place to be.
- Understand what you truly need in the role before interviewing people.
Another unfortunate mistake we see are companies that need to hire a talent and begin by coming up with a generic job description and begin interviews only to then decide that what they thought they needed was not what they actually needed and subsequently change direction in mid search. Your employer brand suffers when you do that and you get a reputation of not having the best leadership in place, being disorganized, etc. which then leads to poor Glassdoor reviews, negative word of mouth, etc. “Ready, Shoot, Aim” might be the ethos of a startup, but it is counterproductive when it becomes your talent acquisition process.
- Understand your culture and hire a culture fit.
One of the top reasons people do not make it in a job is because the person does not fit the culture. Culture can be somewhat difficult to define but it’s important to note that your culture is not “whatever the leadership says it is”. Make the effort to find some cultural assessment tools and find out what your company culture truly is – from executive level to front line workers. When your website states that you’re a “group of entrepreneurial go-getters with an open door culture” and your Glassdoor reviews cite oppressive micro managing and fear of the rudderless executive team, you can bet that any potential team members are going to pay more heed to your Glassdoor reviews. If you don’t like the results of your culture surveys, then fixing that culture should be your priority before bringing on additional team members who will further cloud your cultural picture.
- Don’t hire someone you are not sure about just to fill the job.
Hiring fast is never a good decision. Having the wrong person in a job can cause far more problems than leaving a job open longer than you would like to. Though neither are ideal situations, if you are faced with this situation, hire slow rather than fast. This ties in with tip 2 in that you truly need to understand your needs before you try to fill them. If you start your search without knowing your true needs you’ll waste a great deal of time which will most likely lead to a mis-hire when your team begins to settle for the talent available rather than the talent they truly need.
- Hire both for passion AND skill.
This meme gets posted on LinkedIn all the time: “Hire for passion, Train for skill”. Thanks but if I need emergency surgery I’m going to err on the side of slightly jaded surgeon vs. carpet salesman with a passion for medicine. That’s obviously an extreme (and somewhat tongue-in-cheek) case but it begs the question: Is it better to hire a culture fit with a passion about the product/mission who may be weak on skills but appears trainable? Sure. If you have a training culture and those passionate but untrained talent will have access to mentors and a clear definition towards their goals and career growth. But few companies (and fewer startups) have the infrastructure and support to consistently mentor and large number of passionate trainees. Most of companies, especially high growth companies, do not have time to train people or mentor them. Which leads to high turnover rates, which leads to poor employer brand, etc.
If you need executive hiring assistance for your startup, we are available to consult on these topics as well as numerous others. Our goal is to have your executive hiring work from the beginning, eliminating the executive hiring learning curve for you and your business.
