Hire and Fire — Tough choices
I have never found firing people a pleasant task and I doubt there are few managers who do. It should be a fairly rare occurrence if you have chosen well in the first place then this situation should arise infrequently especially for a small fast growing start-up.
There is no easy was to fire someone. You need to be strait and tell it how it as a manager. Keep it short and simple deal with the facts and do not waffle. At heart I’m an nice person and have a lot of empathy for people. I personally have never been fired so I can’t share the pain which people go through. The self doubt and the questioning.
Firing people is tough but not firing people is even worse. I have had several experiences where I let someone linger on who was not a fit for the company. This is not good for anyone and can be destructive of moral for other people at your startup.
This equally applies to startup co-founders and key early hires. There comes a time when the startup changes or there is a pivot these critical junctures often lead to people reassessing their priorities. For DRVR we have had several critical pilots — first one came in 2015 when we decided to relocate the business to Thailand — this led to the majority of the staff leaving (4 out of 7). Quite dramatic a change but everyone at the time was working part time and the choice was move to Thailand and work full or do something else.
Hiring someone on the other hand is a pleasant experience but it’s also something you want to get right. If you get it right you should not have to fire people. Our hiring process at DRVR is based on aptitude, merit and ability. We have a strong preference to hire for the person rather than the role.
Let me give you an example. Last year a young Japanese man — Masato Kagiwada applied for the only open position we had — Office manager. I saw his CV and immediately knew that he was totally unsuitable for the role. Admin work in Thailand 100% requires a Thai speaker — and it’s a very fiddly paper work intensive job. Masato had no knowledge of Thai.
DRVR is selling services to the automotive industry. Who is that in South East Asia? Is it Fiat or Renault? No it’s the Japanese. So I figured he might be a good fit as a future BD person. He had very little experience, working at Yokohama city council was about it. I cast my doubts aside and invited him in for an interview. We talked quite informally for about 40 minutes (talking informally with someone from Japan who you have never met and only met at a job interview is pretty tough;)
I mainly use the first interview to get a sense of the person. I quite like the BEI question style but tend to reduce the formality of it and try to tease this out for specific situations. I’ve not personally had a job interview for a long time but it’s no different from a pitch except I’m pitching myself instead of the business.
He was extremely keen to start working for us and offered to do any job. I asked him to come back on Monday with a presentation which showed me what he could do.
Come Monday he shared with me the work he had done on the weekend. He had spent time talking to truck drivers, business owners and tried to understand some of the existing products in the market. He had done his home work and outlined what he would do in the first three months at DRVR. If you want to impress at an interview that is how you do it! I gave him a job on the spot.
Now he has gone off to Korea to lead our K-Startup Challenge team. He has full responsibility for that and his own budget to manage. I very much believe in giving people the chance to shine. Sometimes they let me down and i’m disappointed but more often I’m not. A true leader unlocks the potential of people and trusts them.
