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What You Feel: You Don’t Have The Resources To Hire The Right People
Perspective: I wish I could count only on one hand the hiring mistakes we made. Your team is the most important asset and yet recruiting in a young company is the skill to which we devote the least time and discipline.
After all, when you are the lonely entrepreneur, any resource will do. You are overwhelmed. You turn a blind eye to deficiencies that might be obvious. This is a mistake. Hiring the right person can unlock value of the business for years. Hiring the wrong one can set it back years. Here are a few tips:
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Pay More. The difference between someone who makes $125,000 versus $150,000 seems like a fortune when you have little money (or it’s your money). The difference in talent and experience can be significant and worth the additional spending. With the right team member, it will unlock more than $25,000 in value.
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Be Wary of Strategists. Thinking is easy, executing is hard. You and I could come up with a great business idea, but only few can execute it. Except for the few that love execution, as people advance in their careers, they generally become tired of execution and steer toward “strategy” and “strategic thinking.” Many times at larger companies leaders have teams that get in the weeds. In a younger company, you need leaders to help build the structure of the business – and to like it.
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Use Outsiders to Interview. You are often too anxious to bring on resources to be objective about a candidate. Ask a colleague or advisor who has little to do with the business to interview finalists. Provide them with enough information to understand your needs and pay attention to their advice, which is often more objective than someone whose balloon is full.
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You Need a Bench. Boy this is a tough one. You don’t have starters and I am asking you to create a bench. Early stage businesses often have single points of failure. You have a single vendor, customer, or employee that is critical to the business. Put another way, what would happen if you lost that vendor, customer or employee? You also need to be able to make changes. For example, when it comes to employees, you don’t have the capital to hire at the level you would like to hire. Also, the early employees of the company may not be the employees of the future. You may have employees that don’t embrace your cultural values or the behaviors that you don’t tolerate. Given all these factors, you must have the ability make changes. Without a bench, you keep under-performing employees longer and compromise on the non-negotiables (culture, etc. ).
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Don’t Hire Teams of People That Have Worked Together Before. In theory, that sounds great. Here’s the problem. When you hire a team and need to hold one accountable, or provide constructive criticism, you are now subject to the whims of the team. Even though you may be addressing an issue with one team member, you have to think about the implications for the entire team. These people know each other enough to have moved as a team to a new company. They are likely “in bed” together. This makes it difficult to hold one team member accountable without ruffling the feathers of the team. When this happens, a normal issue of accountability can threaten the viability of your business. This can severely undermine your business. Don’t do it.