Hiring is hard; hiring well is even harder.
One of the best decisions you can make for a growing startup is to hire self-starters. This is what an early startup needs. Even better if they are deeply technically skilled, let’s call them curious generalists.
The criteria to look out for in self-starters:
- They move with urgency.
- They take communication seriously.
- They are aggressive prioritizers.
- They are great communicators and collaborators.
I think professional managers stifle startup magic. Change my mind.
Self-starters seem to thrive in environments where decisions are made quickly and where they have the autonomy to act.
What happens when you hire bad middle management type jobbers versus doers?
Politics, middle manager drudgery to name a few. They bring along baggage, enough to slow down the team. Speed and building what is important in the startup world is everything.
I have made hires that took so long and so much resources, and then on week 2 or so I’d discover it was in fact a bad decision.
A worse decision here would be inaction, to let go or thinking time will make things better - it rarely ever gets better.
I am going to take from my recent personal experience, when we had to hire the first designer for the Unfinished app, we had to hire 3 designers and let them go in sucession, mostly because we were cash-strapped but we developed a system to put them in the arena, give them what they needed to swim and let the team work with them for 1-2 weeks before we decide if it was a fit.
It is important to note that without hiring the right PMs, this would have failed because they wouldn’t be able to set a high standard for the team.