Hiring diamonds in the rough
When you work for a startup you can’t always offer a glamorous salary, a glamorous office, space, or pretty much most things that could have glamorous added to the front of it.
But that doesn’t mean you can’t hire great people.
In fact, quite the opposite: if you know what to look for, you can hire incredible people who work incredibly hard, achieve great results, and most importantly, are loyal to you in the long term.
I’ve attempted to put this in my order of importance though the top two are fairly even.
Genuineness
While I like a candidate who comes prepared, I can’t stand it when the responses are overly prepared and are attempting to answer the way we think the question should be answered.
There is no right answer for most of the questions we ask in interviews. While it is important they’ve done a bit of research about us and the industry, I want to know more about them and how their ambitions and skill set align with what we need.
Don’t answer what you think we want to hear — answer with what you actually think and be open to critiquing what we do and how we do it.
I’m going to hire the person gives consideration to the question and is open in how they respond, not the one is searching for “the right answer”.
On that note, it’s also better to admit when and where you think you may be weak as a candidate. This understanding of the self-awareness says a lot more to me than having a “good” answer for everything. We have our faults just like you and we’d rather work to develop someone who is interested in developing than work with someone who is too set in their ways.
Cultural fit
Hiring one bad apple in a small company can create ripples throughout the organization that are difficult to settle. We have opinionated people in the office and our diverse backgrounds create excellent debates; I’d go as far to say that we stimulate disagreement at times to ensure we are looking at issues from all angles.
We all have our quirks and what makes us successful though is that we have an open culture — one where people genuinely respect each other and each other’s opinion so these discussions stay on topic.
When we hire we look for people who have similarities in approach, not necessarily that they work the exact same way.
We have parts of the office that prefer quiet to work, we have parts that work better when there is a buzz around them.
We have people just out of university and those who have 20 years working experience.
But we have a binding thread of openness, acceptance, diligence, and teamwork. Together we drive each other to improve so that we can contribute more to the team.
Motivation
why do you want to work with us and ultimately what do you want to do?
This is less about what you can do for us and rather what we can do for you. I want to know what makes you tick, why you are going to come into the office every day and work hard, and ultimately what you want to do after SyndicateRoom.
As much as I’d like to think everybody will stay around forever, I know that regardless of how much fun the office is, how much people learn, and how much I hope they will ultimately gain from working with us, I encourage people to pursue their passions. If that ultimately means they leave, having found their dream job, I’ll take pride in having been a part of their development.
What I need to know is that they want to come in, they want to learn and work hard, and in doing so they will give a tremendous amount to us in the time that they work for us.
Dedication to learning
It’s not about your pedigree. Where you have studied means a whole lot less to me that whether or not you have that hunger to continue developing yourself — not just in learning about us and our systems but in general.
Maybe it’s a bit of a competitive streak that runs through us all but simply put, I don’t think there is an organization out there with a team more dedicated to personal development than our team.
We have a book club, we have MOOCs, we have people being certified in everything from marketing to finance and accounting — people who aren’t even in roles that necessarily require these skills.
Harking back to the point above, we have a fairly young team and I do hope that most of them go on to start their own businesses at some point. I can only smile and encourage they continue to do so. They motivate me just as much or more than I hope I motivate them.
