Let’s face it, size matters. Although one could argue that every hire counts no matter what the size of a company, there is something uniquely important about the hires you make when a company is small. These first 100 team members are your high-impact hires: the ones that can change the trajectory of the company’s growth and will shape the company’s cultural footprint for years to come.
Here are three guideposts to consider when hiring those first 100.
1 | Culture Fit
Culture fit is hands down, the most important aspect that you as a leader can be hiring for. The first 100 team members are the individuals that will be contributing to, building upon, and perhaps even changing the culture of the organisation. What do I mean by culture? In this context, culture is the core values and behaviours that define a team. Good cultural fit means that you think an individual would be successful at your organisation because they demonstrate working styles that align with or complement the overall team’s working style. Good cultural fit does not mean that you think an individual would do well because you both get along and might enjoy playing soccer on the weekends together (although that may also be true!). If you have yet to formally define the organisation’s core values, then make sure that both you and the hiring team have a good gut feeling on this one. And if there are any niggling reservations that you have after the interview, listen to them. After years of growing teams, I’ve found that any cultural reservation you have will most likely come true.
2 | Generalists Not Specialists
Startup life is, at best, organised chaos. It’s standard for startups to have shifting priorities, ever-evolving market strategies and a revolving door of new normals. The more people you can hire that are comfortable in the organised chaos, the better. Those that are generalists – individuals that thrive in wearing multiple hats – usually have greater success at startups than those that are specialists – individuals who are subject matter experts that enjoy focusing on one thing. As the startup grows and naturally evolves from chaos to clarity, so too will hiring needs, shifting from generalists to specialists. But for the first 100 that are truly helping to build the plane as it flies, general skills are more valuable.
3 | Checks & Balances
Depending on the size of your team, you may not be the person directly hiring for every open role. If you have hiring managers leading recruiting, systematise the interview process so that there is one consistent person that always conducts a final interview and gives the green light before someone gets hired, no matter what the role. This final interviewer could be the founder, the CEO, the COO – anyone who is on the core leadership team whose cultural instinct you trust. I recommend this for the first 100 and beyond. Now I know you may be thinking that interviewing every final candidate is a large time sink. It is, but it’s worth it. As Steve Jobs once said, “I consider the most important job of someone like myself as recruiting.” If that doesn’t convince you, let’s play this out. Remember how startups are organised chaos with shifting priorities? Part of that reality is that some hiring managers may not work out in the long-term. Say you have a hiring manager that has hired four people onto their team and a few months later, that hiring manager doesn’t work out because of cultural fit. Now you have four more team members that were hired to the hiring manager’s cultural standards, not the company’s. Best guess is you may have four more individuals that might not work out because of cultural fit, all because there wasn’t a checks and balance in place in the recruiting process.
Another common mistake that startups make is to give someone a title that they cannot grow or scale into, so balancing title nomenclature is important from the onset. If an individual is named the COO at a 20-person company, can they still perform the responsibilities of a COO at a 100-person company? A 200-person company? Lookout for title creep to ensure that individuals have room to advance as the company grows. You will thank yourself later.
In Summary
Hiring at any size of company is important, but those first 100 hires make a deep imprint on a company. No doubt there will be hiring mistakes made along the way, that’s all part of the learning process. But keeping these guideposts top of mind for the first 100 and beyond ensures these high-impact hires are net positive.
Ready to hire but want some extra support or capacity to grow? Reach out to learn more about how I can help.