Joining an early stage startup as Head of Talent
When Louis Cibot, Zenaton’s co-founder, contacted me for the first time on LinkedIn, I was “super excited” about this exciting opportunity. I was eager to leave my comfort zone and relive the joys of entrepreneurship - but this time as a HR employee in an early stage startup. I was eager to build something from scratch, feel the founder’s energy and commitment and to help them bring their seed to success. This was a story I wanted to be part of — to break tech norms. These are all the reasons why I made the decision to join Zenaton a few months ago.
Zenaton is on a mission to democratize asynchronous tasks. We are building a SaaS smart task queuing system with real time monitoring and an orchestration over layer.
“You said early stage?”
When you join an early stage startup, you have to take charge of a variety of subjects and there are a wide range of themes to tackle! First thoughts : “The amount of work is huge.” & “How do I figure out where to start?”
My advice: Take a step back and look at the big picture. When you arrive in an early stage startup you need to understand the first actions that can bring the most value to the company.
My first month…
…allowed me to audit the first employees to understand why they decided to join us. What is our value proposition? How can I help candidates to come and thrive in our culture? Which processes can we set up at Zenaton to make team members successful?
Four major contributions to help an early-startup succeed.
1- How can I become a sparring partner for our founders ?
First thought : “ Do we need to have a tennis court in the office and play doubles?”(joke)
Second thought : “ How can I find the appropriate time and place to speak and bring value?”
Playing doubles tennis is an exercise of mutual trust and coordination. Learn how you can let/take some balls and how you can cover open areas. The same dynamic must be created between founders and HR.
My advice for HR : Try to understand the founders’ daily rhythms, and catch them when you think it’s good time. You need to understand also that project risk is assigned to only one contractor: the founders. Product development and business orientation are their two main interests. You have to learn patience and help them understand that you have a good business understanding to help them scale. Come with ideas, come with projects and evaluate together the right time to prioritize and start the first one.
Some of my achievements as a sparring partner at Zenaton :
- Finding a new office : We have made some office visits- one question came up- Do we want more space with small rooms or less space but with a large open area? What kind of ambiance do we want to create at Zenaton ?What kind of culture do we want? After spending time together, two words run come to mind: Collaboration & Sharing. These two words have guided our choices!
- Give measurable objectives: At Zenaton, we want our Zenatonien (as we call team members) to be the owner of their job. How can we translate company objectives into team member objectives? How can they take ownership if they don’t know about the founders’ expectations? That is why we have worked together to formulate measurable objectives and allow them to measure their work and be proud of themselves.
2- If the founders brings the vision, they give team power !
Why have they decided to create Zenaton? Which kind of problems do they want to tackle? What is the way that they have imagined doing it? What are the things on their mind?
To onboard new employees, founders need to provide vision. Vision helps all the stakeholders to understand their contribution in the project and give them a sense of accomplishment. Vision helps them to have an overview and help them to think -outside of the box- as a founder.
Every week at Zenaton, we have a “Week Launching” meeting where founders can share information about the achievement of our goals as well as sales and technical team successes. We display visual boards to help everybody be aware of our goals, new customers and to follow the progress of technical projects…
3- Keys of team growth : Recruitment
HR needs to build a team with the same care and thoughtfulness that the product team builds the product and the engineering team builds the infrastructure.
I have chosen to work in an early stage startup because I have the flexibility to build processes that fit with what the culture we want to create. To build Zenaton processes, I asked myself, which processes can make me proud of my company? Which experience would I like to create for our candidates / new recruits?
Some parts of our recruitment process :
- Create a scorecard to understand our needs :
The individual scorecard defines the contribution of each person to the organization. It measures the added value to the realization of the vision. It provides a way of measuring and tracking progress on an ongoing basis and keeps the individual focused on important priorities.
It’s the first time that I have worked on building a scorecard. This allows me to target better candidates who can fit with us. But it also allows me to evaluate them with an objective point of view.
- A first video conference call :
At my previous company, I shared a classic 30 minute call with candidates, but at Zenaton we have decided to do video conference calls to see each other and create a stronger connection from the beginning. The first step is explaining Zenaton’s lofty ambitions to become the ubiquitous development tool for running background tasks and workflows. The second step is to understand the candidate’s expectations and get an overview of their skills.
- One on-site day :
I was a bit skeptical about this on-site day : Can we expect a candidate to take a day-off for the recruitment process? Do we take the risk of losing some candidates ? Yes and No! Maybe it’s a risk but it’s a risk we have decided to take because it allows our candidates to discover our world, our way of thinking, way of working, and it allows us to know if we can work effectively together.
If you join us for an on-site day, you will :
- Meet founders to have a better knowledge about Zenaton product and vision,
- Meet one team member : to get a feel for the ambiance and understand why the team member has decided to join,
- Meet me : technical skills are important but we also place a heavy emphasis on soft skills and culture fit,
- Work on a case exercise- which depends on the team, you will join- and make a presentation,
- and SHARE LUNCH TOGETHER !
4- Team well-being: understand their needs and give them positive feedback
My thought : “How can I bring my energy and expertise to Zenaton to build a strong team ?”
We are all unique and we have all different needs. It’s why we are so rich!
I love helping people to develop their own potential, understand their needs and show them they have all the resources to achieve success. I am also here to challenge my founders and help them to build their dream team. I am here to help them to encourage people to give the best of themselves and to develop an environment which is both demanding and motivating.
And I would like to say : THANK YOU TO MY TEAM!
I would like to thank you for bringing me in to your “technical world”, thank you for allowing me to grow with you. I hope we spend great moments together.
If you want to share your HR experience or if you want to zenatonize (a new word thanks to Julien Alric), feel free to contact me !
