I never managed to perfect the hiring process and made a number of mistakes. Over the first four years of the business we hired around 35/40 full time staff (20 was our highest employee count at any one time).
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"One bad hire will cost way more than their salary if they pull the rest of the team down"
These are the mistakes I made - some could have been avoided with a different funding structure - but nonetheless there are some key learnings for me here:
1. Don't hire someone who isn't 100% right for the business
If you aren't 100% sure about hiring someone then don't. Find a way to make sure they are the right person even if it means inviting them back in for a 3rd or 4th interview. Early on, even if we weren't sure, we'd hire them anyway in the hope that they would be good. In reality, this is bad for everyone involved.
2. Don't pay someone less than they are worth
Because of wider company financial pressure we hired people for less money than they were worth (even if they buy into the excitement of the business and accept the salary offered). This only ever ended badly for us. They would either leave after six months once they had a better offer or feel undervalued. It's also not a great way to start a working relationship with someone.
3. Don't have a weak hiring process and structure
This is probably the biggest lesson we learned, a lot of these mistakes could have been avoided if we had had a stronger hiring process. By hiring process I mean everything from the job spec all the way through to their first six months. There's a lot of advice online about hiring processes. Find one that fits your business and stick to it. If you are unsure, ask a similar company that has been successful how it works for them.
4. Don't hire from a place of desperation
When revenue was down, we would rush a hiring process for new sales people out of desperation. This hugely increased our chances of hiring the wrong people.
5. Don't hire someone without the right skills unless you have got the training structure
Early on we thought it would make sense to hire people that had just graduated from university or school in the hope we could 'mould' them into how we wanted them to work. If you have a very good training program then this might be a good strategy. But in reality for us and most start ups, a comprehensive training programme isn't a luxury we had. When we hired people who already had the skills we had far more success.
6. Make sure there is full transparency during the interview process
This isn't a mistake we made more than once - but during the interview process it is just as important for it to be the right fit for the candidate as much as the business. We always made sure we were very clear about where we were as a business and explained the challenges we faced. This meant anyone coming on board had no huge surprises.
7. Set expectations within the interview process
During the interview we found it far better to go through expectations to make sure no assumptions were being made. This then made managing that person a lot easier within the first six months. We found asking the candidate if those expectations were okay often brought out any concerns they had.
8. Don't over-sell the opportunity and don't under-sell it
We made the mistake of making the company and role sound better than what it was early on. This was usually out of excitement rather than trying to deceive anyone. This allowed us to hire people that might not have otherwise taken the job. But ultimately that doesn't end well. We found it far better to talk about all the great things but also highlight the challenges.
9. Don't overestimate a good CV
Just because someone has a good CV, doesn't mean it's all true or that they are right for the role. While their CV is important, don't let it cloud your judgement throughout the process. Just because someone has worked for a huge business in a good role, doesn't mean they will be the right person. Often they might be, but base it on your own findings during the interview process.
10. Get a second opinion & and make sure you get a reference
We always had two people interview a candidate just so a second opinion was gained. This heavily increased our success rate. While getting multiple references might seem a pain and long-winded, it will increase your chances of a successful hire.
11. Find a way to test their ability as much as possible within the interview process
We found role playing or asking them to complete a task worked really well. This way you could get a taste for their work and approach. When hiring anyone that was to be doing design work we would set them a 15 minute task. When hiring anyone within sales we would ask them to role play a sales situation. This allowed us to make a far better judgement than when we just talked about their ability.
12. Think about how they would fit into the company just as much as their ability
We hired on ability a number of times and didn't take into account team fit. This caused us to have a team friction that didn't get on for a period of time. This created a poor working environment and wasn't fun for anyone until it was rectified.
Once we realised these mistakes and corrected them, it slowly started to increase our retention, company output and culture.
"Anyone who worked for me that didn't work out was 100% my fault and I am grateful for everyone who put their trust in me and the business. Unfortunately I lost some great people because I didn't have the structures above in place."
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