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4 Hiring Tips for Your Lean Startup

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There’s a ton do when you’re first starting a company. Each co-founder or employee executes several job descriptions jumbled together, and it seems a simple solution to just hire a new person and delegate away responsibilities, never to be worried about again. This becomes especially relevant post-funding, because it suddenly becomes plausible to hire with the intended result of getting more done faster.
But this isn't necessarily true, according to Eric Ries, creator of the Lean Startup methodology. “As you add people to a team or project, there is an increase in communications overhead that makes everyone slightly less productive,” he explains.
It may seem counterintuitive to do anything slow when following lean startup methods, but Ries' point stands: To continue executing effectively, you must not introduce a point of friction to your team. Finding the right person is paramount, and worth the wait.

1. Don’t Hire Too Soon

When you first think you need to hire someone, write a detailed job description. It’s not enough to have a problem that you don’t think someone on your team can solve. That often leads to imagining that your new recruit will bring magical powers with them. At this point, if you don’t really understand the problem, how will you choose the right person to take it on? A killer job description will help you understand what tasks you need done and whether it really justifies another full-time employee.
When Artsicle was just starting out and still bootstrapping, founder Alexis Tryon says the company approached a good friend to join. Within a few months, it became clear that it was too early — they didn’t have a job for anyone yet, and had put the cart in front of the horse, Tryon says.
Ries recommends that someone in the company take on a job before hiring an outside person to do it. This helps you understand if the new job is truly critical, and if so, will make integrating a new person into the team faster, because an existing employee will understand the problem and have credibility around it.

2. Use Your Personal Connections

The people you’ve worked with before are a lower risk because they’ll integrate into your team easier, and you already know their strengths and weaknesses. Take an inventory of people they know who are awesome at what they do, and ask yourself, “Why is this person not working for my startup?”
Zeb Dropkin, founder of Renthackr, takes a comprehensive approach to recruiting, including going to events and reaching out to the press — he says that when candidates have already heard of his product, it speeds up the conversation.
“I'm primarily relying on my first and second degree personal network to gain intros and and advice from people that could be — or help me find — a lead developer,” Dropkin says.

3. Hire for Aptitude, Not Skill Set

One unique challenge for non-technical founders is how to land top tech talent. Although Dropkin is essentially a non-technical founder, he’s learned to code, and aside from improving his product, this changes his conversation with developers and enables introductions he may not have found otherwise.
For other non-technical founders, being tasked with hiring a developer can bring varied results, at best. Nelly Yusupova, the CTO of Webgrrls International who also runs workshops for non-tech entrepreneurs, recommends hiring people who are willing to adapt and learn rather than someone who already has a specific skill set. Especially on the tech side, this will set you up for success in the long term.
“In the tech space, skills become obsolete every two years,” Yusupova says.
Tryon adds that even when there’s a candidate who looks better on paper, the right personality and passion will more than make up for the difference.

4. Do a Practice Run

Yusupova recommends giving your best candidate a small, non-critical task to work on to see how they solve problems and communicate with the team. Other companies invite a person in to work with them for a day and follow it up by going out for drinks.
“We've had engineers in for a day of coding before going out for beers with the team, which really adds up to give us a full picture of the candidate," Tryon says. "At the end of the day, we all ask ourselves whether this is someone we'd be excited to see every morning. If not, it's a no go.”
This allows you to test for the culture fit that’s so critical with a small team.
At Eventbrite, co-founder Julia Hartz puts together a hiring team that debriefs after each round of interviews. The active forum enables each member to voice opinions on each candidate, and they are able to keep standards high, asking, why is this person perfect for Eventbrite? Relying on intuition has helped them cut down on mistakes, she says.
Finally, remember how difficult hiring mistakes are to undo. The typical cost of a hiring mistake is three times an employee's annual salary and benefits, Yusupova says. Couple that with the human element and emotional drag of removing a piece of your team, even as it proves ineffective, and that should be sufficient incentive to hire intentionally and with hesitation, for the eventual win.
How has your startup found success in recruiting? Share tips with the Mashable community in the comments.
Image courtesy of iStockphotoRonTech2000

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