Hiring101 for early stage startups

Hiring is hard and I learned about it the hard way! Based on my conversations with other founders and my personal experience. Sharing some thoughts on how to hire!

✅ When should you #hire?
1. When a work is taking up more than 40% of your daily bandwidth as a #founder and early team members
2. When a task cannot be automated by an AI agent (Welcome to the new world of hiring)
3. When a task that is needed in the hour doesn't fall within the expertise of the team and founders

🏆Whom should you hire?
1. Someone who can bring in Energy and Efficiency into the business
2. Someone who is ready to own things as much as founders are
3. Someone who is willing to put in extra hours and effort
4. Someone who is ready to lead during the founder's absence
5. Brownie points if someone worked in early-stage startups and knows the playbook.
6. Someone who has the potential to align with the mindset of the business and has the potential to contribute to the culture.

❌ Whom not to hire? (Founders should know this definitely)
1. A product manager, before hitting PMF. The founders need to be the product managers till PMF, blind rule!
2. A sales and marketing person, before the founders understand how to do it
3. Folks without experience. During early days, it's all about time and execution and you can't afford to lose time initially.
4. Market leaders who haven't worked in early-stage startups. The playbook is different. Example: A person who handles a big marketing budget at a series B+ level company and comes from a prominent tier 1 B-school but has never worked in an early-stage venture, won't be the right fit for you.

👎🏻🔥 When to fire? (This is extremely important)
1. Have a max of 2 months to see the potential of the individual. Trust me, you will get to know a lot in those two months. If they are killing it, proceed with them or otherwise, take the tough call.
2. When someone asks for frequent appraisals irrespective of the appraisal cycle, because they are strong at what they do. Fire such folks immediately. It tampers with the culture and others get inspired by such behaviours.
3. When there is less ROI from an individual. High salaries, less output is a complete no-no.
4. Saying no frequently to wartime situations in a business. During the early stage, everyone is important and if the team starts backing off during tough times, then its difficult to sail the ship.

🌱 Things to keep in mind for founders:
1. Have structured appraisal cycles.
2. A part-time or full-time accounts officer should be your first hire
3. Balance the salaries of people who are getting paid well but outperforming
4. Set clear policies. Anything out of the policy should be a no.
5. hashtag#Work on the retention of team members.
6. You will surely make wrong hires, don't hesitate to take the hard calls soon!
7. If you can't hire for a role, take others' help who are good at the job to hire
8. Eventually, get an hashtag#HR or founders' office person to help in hiring
9. Referrals are the best form of hiring.
10. Do the hiring yourself initially!

Cheers!