Strategy of choosing companies to apply for
Once I finalised that I would target 11–100 membered startups, it was time to decide what would be my shortlisting criteria before sending in my resume.
Before sharing that I would like to highlight that startups are extremely volatile, they exist today but may not exist after 1 year, things are fast paced, culture evolves and sometimes are not even built when you join, perks & salary are not market standard, work-life balance may be thrown off the building, no fixed work domain, high accountability.
You need to choose which ones you are ready to sacrifice and which ones are your top priority, for example:
Are you comfortable with a balanced work-life but lesser pay & high perks or vice versa?
Because if you don’t make these choices early on, they will come to haunt you later after you join and make you question your decision.
Also, there are plenty of fraud/toxic startups out there, ready to take away your money, hardwork, & peace of mind, its you who has to be aware and make careful well-researched decision. Coming back to my choices, I was flexible with almost all the parameters but strict on culture and a good founding team.
When I would find any job description I would read through it properly, whether its well written, and the salary offered is upto mark with other startups or they are just trying to offer unreasonably cheap pay.
After this I would see whether they transparently share their interview process, if they do its a plus. If all this looks fine I apply, once I am shortlisted they usually send a link to book an interview date as per our mutual schedule.
In the interview I try to understand how the interviewer conducts the interview, this is mostly by my intuition and the people skills I have gained over the years. You need to notice the simple things — whether they smile, crack jokes, comfort you when you are nervous, give you ample time, or are too serious about getting the interview done, etc.
This helps you gauge how the person works and since its a startup you can get a faint idea about how the culture in the startup could be.
The hiring process for startups is gradually changing, instead of directly setting up interviews, they give take-home projects which are to be completed within a stipulated time period and submitted to them.
Often times malicious startups use this opportunity to get their work done, they would give their product work disguised as assignment and since many applicants would be working on it, they would take the best and deploy it while the applicant doesn’t get any credit or remuneration.
So I made sure whenever I took up any take-home project, it fulfilled 2 criterias :
1. It had a mix of a technology I knew + New technology/concept I could learn
2. It wasn’t something related to the startup’s core product
If the project didn’t fit any of the above points, I would not take the project.
After having done this, I would then do a background research on the core founding team of the startup.
1. Go to their official website and get their names
2. Search each one of them on Linkedin
3. Read their Linkedin bio and posts to get an idea of their personality
4. Find personal blogs or any content about the founders
5. Find PR about the startup or the founders and read them properly
6. Check Youtube videos for the same
7. Check Crunchbase & Glassdoor for the funding raised & reviews, respectively
Once you’re done with all of this, you’ll have a fair amount of idea about the startup, what it’s trying to do, its founding team, their culture and the amount of money they have raised.
So, now I’ve done my research and collected all data, all I have to do is ace the interviews, and once that’s done, make a call using the data whether to join the startup or give it a pass.
To sum up, well, its a lot to sum… Applying to startups is hardwork, so is working in them. Sometimes its better to be on a wheelchair with someone to Hodor or be a Dothraki in the battle. Choice is yours.
