10+ Ideas for Evaluating before Hiring new Staff
“3 things: 1) I look for a positive attitude. 2) are they easy to work with, 3) are my people going to like working with them? It’s very important to like the people you work with, otherwise life (&) your job is going be quite miserable. And, in fact, we have a strict ‘annoyable are un-employable’ policy’ at Tesla & SpaceX. And we fire people if they continue to be”. Elon Musk, CEO, Founder
Hiring Topics: Prep, Date, Alternatives, Projects, Benchmarks, Hackathon, Incentive, Slow Down, Walk Away.
Hiring is costly; hiring mistakes are even costlier. Should Founders have trial periods for new employees and if so, how? The following answers are provided by the Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC), comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. In partnership with CitiBank, the YEC recently launched #StartupLab, a free Virtual Mentorship program that helps millions of Entrepreneurs start & grow businesses via live Video chats, an expert content Library & Email lessons. Below are the advice from Founders on hiring.
1.Prep: Create Evaluation Modules. “I always make time to build one for the task I want a potential employee to complete before hiring. That way, if they doesn’t work out, I already have materials in place to evaluate a replacement”. – Kelly Azevedo, She”s Got Systems
2. Test before you Permanently Hire. “It all starts with the Interview process, and you should have one that is pretty thorough. There are lots of Interview forms on the Web. Nevertheless, everyone starts off as an Intern or PT employee, and then we give them tasks with varying degrees of difficulty that “test” there skills, creativity & leadership. We can tell before 90 days, if they’re savvy & fit our culture or not. If they do, we offer them full-time positions”.- Derek Capo, Next Step China
3. Date New Hires before you Marry them. LoL “Bring new people in on a “contingent” basis for any good reason, the most important being your cost-to-benefit ratio. Give a potential hire a specific deliverable & problem to work on, and have then do so in your office or around your team, so they can get advice & guidance, if needed. Make hiring a Team effort, and make sure that no one gets hired without the cultural approval of all those involved on the hiring process”.- Derek Shanahan, Playerize
4. If you don’t have lots of $$$, offer High Commission Plans or Equity. ”We found lower base/higher variable Commission plans cost less up front and weed out people who are not going to earn their keep. When you are low or cash-strapped, consider offering people equity instead of a salary. If they can prove they can perform the job well, it will be worth it to pay them. If they prove not to be well-suited for the role, they will be gone before their shares vest”. – Ben Rubenstein, Yodle
5. Assign Internal Projects. “We frequently use Trial periods for our positions. One efficient way to do so is by assigning an Internal Project. Assigning a project, rather than contracting for a set period, gives you more flexibility in terms of start & end dates – if the candidate turns out to be a poor fit. It also eliminates the risk associated with the person being classified as an employee during the Trial period”. – Chuck Cohn, Varsity Tutors
6. Set Benchmarks for Success. “Trial periods are great, because they allow both you & the new Hire to assess whether it’s a good fit. Be sure to set clear expectations and goals for the trial period, and regularly meet to discuss progress (30 days) During these sessions; it’s important to being candid about what’s working and what’s not, so you can both win”. – Tracy Foster, ONA bags
7. Set Up a Hackathon. “As a former VC, I observed that issues between Team members posed the biggest risk for company failure. If you’re hiring developers, the initial process is a two-week period of typical tasks, which is also a Test to see if they are a “culture fit.” The final part of this trial is a hackathon, a multi-day coding marathon, often with little sleep. It proves whether they can handle the Startup environment”. – Sharam Fouladgar-Mercer, AirPR
8. Institute Incentive Pay. “In order to send clear signals about performance, give new employees base pay, but also Incentive pay around key work competencies (ie, creativity, quality of work, reliability, etc). You should have discussion about expectations in the beginning, then at 90 days. These will determine if they are right for your organization. You should also continue on a regular basis (ie, 3, 6, 12mo)”. – Suzanne Smith, Social Impact Architects
9. Don’t Half-Commit. “There’s sitting on the fence with new Hires. In-decision sends a bad message. Make sure your up-front screening process looks for a the right experience, creativity & culture fit. Trust your intuition. Make sure you feel great about the hire. Then dive “all in” with the person, and assume they will be there for a long time” – Raoul Davis, Ascendant Group
10. Slow Down to Speed Up (???) “We tend to avoid Trial periods. Often, you don’t know it was a bad hire until a lot of Training time has been invested. Focus on the right hires. It is normal to want to be fast-paced in the Startup environment, but with Hiring, it pays to take it slowly. For significant positions, a) we run candidates through a gauntlet of Interviews, b) Test for skills/logic &, as a final step, c) we are 100 % focused on a Cultural fit” – Anderson Schoenrock, ScanDigital
11. “Walk away $$$ from Zappos. “They put new recruits thru Training, and then offers the person $3,000 to walk away and quit. This means the people who stay are really committed to working for Zappos. Giving people an “out” or another incentive could have a similar outcome for your company”. – Natalie MacNeil, She Takes on the World
Comments: Do you know any other good methods to assure you’re hiring the right Candidate?
by Young Entrepreneurs Council 02 Dec 17 enhanced by Peter/CXO Wiz4biz
For more Info, click on Hiring.