Tips on how to Hire the Best Team

Based on Sam Altman, your perfect co-founder is James Bond. But if you’re not that lucky, you should know what qualities to consider in startup teammates.

Altman, the president of Y Combinator, doesn’t mean your startup should be filled with trigger-happy philanderers who spend their own free time getting wasted.

However like James Bond, a great co-founder is unflappable, tough, and knows what to do in every scenario. He or she needs to act quickly and be decisive, creative, and looking pricing forward to anything.

As the leader of a team, you need to have some Connection in yourself, too : but don’t worry, the tuxedo is optional.

Co-Founder Relationships Are Critical Altman said that co-founder relationships are usually among the most important in the entire company.

“You have to watch out for tension brewing among co-founders and you have to address it immediately, ” he said.

“The number one cause of early passing away for startups is co-founder blowups. But for some reason, a lot of people treat choosing their own co-founder with even less importance than hiring. Do not do this! ” Instead, ensure you’re looking for someone in whose skills complement your own and who can fill in the spaces that you can’t. Also, search for someone with those Relationship qualities.

Having a Lot of Workers Doesn’t Mean You’re Cool Of course , after you find a co-founder, you’ll probably want to start hiring employees. But Altman cautioned founders to withstand the urge to hire people immediately.

A startup that has a lot of employees may seem cool, but careful hiring in the early stages is key for the longevity of the startup. Only hire once the workload is too much for your existing team.

Unfortunately, the expense of getting an early hire incorrect is really high. In fact , Altman said one bad hire can kill a young international.

Building an effective team takes time and thought. Minus a really good team, it will be more difficult to execute on your concepts and grow your startup. Therefore don’t rush the process.

Learning from Airbnb Five months. That’s how long Y Combinator alum Airbnb spent interviewing their own first employee. And they only hired two employees their first year.

Before hiring anyone, the founders had written down a list of the ideals that they wanted every Airbnb employee to have. The most important worth? Candidates had to “bleed” Airbnb. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t get hired.

For example , Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky utilized to ask people if they would take the job even if they had only one year left to live. That question alone had been enough to weed out the people who didn’t really offer the values Airbnb was looking for.

Your own employees play a huge part in defining your company. That is why you need to hire people who trust in your startup as much as one does.

Hiring Amazing People Altman said, “The best resource for hiring by far is definitely people that you already know and people that other employees in the company already know. ”

Experience is not really always a reliable factor. Encounter matters when you’re hiring someone to manage a large section of your organization. But for your early hires, consider their understanding and their belief in your mission instead.

The Importance of Projects Startups don’t operate such as traditional businesses, so why hire like one?

Altman suggested having the candidate work on task management in lieu of an interview. But if you have decided on conducting traditional selection interviews, then you should at least ask about projects that people have worked upon in the past.

Reference Check Altman also proposed contacting their particular references and asking questions like:

Is this person within the top 5% of people you’ve ever worked with? What particularly did they do? Would you employ them again? Why are not you trying to hire all of them again?

Attributes of an Ideal Candidate Here are some of the crucial qualities to look for in a potential hire:

Good communication skills Risk-taking attitude Maniacally determined According to Altman, Facebook owner Mark Zuckerberg tries to employ people that he’s comfortable hanging out with in a social situation. Zuckerberg also looks for someone he’d be comfortable reporting to if the roles were reversed.

It’s important that you enjoy dealing with your employees. Your group doesn’t need matching BFF necklaces, but nothing is even worse than resenting someone along with whom you spend 40-60 hrs a week.

When it comes to attracting and maintaining talent, it does not hurt to offer generous collateral.

It’s better to give your employees more equity compared to your investors, because workers will only add more worth over time. According to Altman, Con Combinator companies that have performed this well are often probably the most successful.

Retaining Your Employees Of course , your work is not performed after you hire your employees; now you need to retain them. And that can actually involve a lot more work than the hiring procedure.

With retention, the objective is to ensure that your employees are usually happy and feel appreciated. That means that first-time CEOs need to learn management skills.

Based on Altman, a speaker at a Y Combinator event informed other startup founders just how he learned from their failings as a CEO. Although he’s successful now, he had a hard time holding on to his employees early on in his startup.

Someone asked him what their biggest struggle was and he said: “Turns out a person shouldn’t tell your employees they’re fucking up every day until you want them all to depart because they will. ”

Characteristics of a Great CEO Being a CEO, you have to be aware that will, by default, you’re going to become a bad manager.

You need to overcompensate for that with these tips, that can come down to giving employees autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Famous business author Dan Pink said those are great motivators to get people to do great work.

Let your team take credit for all the good stuff. You need to take responsibility for that bad stuff.

Don’t micromanage. Let people have small parts of responsibility. This will actually force them to work harder.

Firing People When It’s Not Working Altman said there are three things to ask yourself about a possible hire. If the answer to just about all three is “yes, ” then chances are you won’t regret your hire.

Are they intelligent? Do they get things done? Do I want to spend a lot of time around them? Sadly, though, for one reason (or many) things won’t workout sometimes. Despite taking all the care in the world during the hiring process, sometimes you need to fire people.

If you’re hesitant about firing someone, it helps to judge his performance. Most people will mess up a few times. But if a person often does the opposite of what you will have done in a given circumstance, then you need to let him proceed.

If it’s not working out along with one of your employees but you do not want to fire him, after that maybe you just need to move your pet into a new position. It helps to hire smart people who are excellent at learning new things. All those kinds of people will suit pretty much anywhere you put all of them.

Execution Makes All the Difference Execution is one of those founder tasks that you can’t outsource. Tips are worth nothing without having execution.

If you look at a company that executes well, odds are its CEO is a master executor. So if you want a tradition where people work hard, pay attention to detail, and manage the customers, you have to represent those characteristics as a leader.

Whatever the creators do becomes the culture.

A CEO’s job is usually categorized as having 4 components - see the vision, raise money, evangelize the particular mission to people you’re trying to recruit, and hire plus manage the team. Yet Altman said that there’s a fifth component: setting the execution bar.

He said, “Execution gets divided straight into two key questions. 1: Can you figure out what to do? And two: Can you get it done? ”

Keys to Mastering Performance 1 . What you’re spending your time and your money upon reveals what you, as a owner, think is important. Identifying both or three things you have to focus on each day will help you to implement better.

2 . Say “no” to almost everything. You need to focus your attention on the right things.

three or more. Be intense. Running a start-up will consume your life, making little chance for accurate work-life balance. You need to outwork your competitors and that means numerous long nights, at least at first.

The enemy of delivery is indecisiveness.

“Indecisiveness is a startup killer. Mediocre founders spend a lot of time talking about fantastic plans, but they never come to a decision. ” The power of important action is something Altman knows about first-hand.

His company was about to lose out on a deal with an important client, so he called the potential customer and told them that his product was better and tried to set up a meeting using them. They told Altman that they were signing the deal together with his competitor and nothing can change their minds.

Rather than accepting defeat, Altman and his team got on a plane and arrived at the potential client’s office at 6 a. m. They ended up ripping up the contract with the additional company and Altman’s international closed the deal with them per week later.

Had they not really gotten on a plane and shown up in person, they would’ve missed out on a valuable client.

Growth and Momentum Fuel Startups Startups must in no way lose focus on growth plus momentum. That’s why strength is a requirement for any successful startup. Unlike traditional companies, startups are working to move fast while also being enthusiastic about quality.

“Momentum and growth are the lifeblood of online companies, ” said Altman.

“You want a company to be successful all the time. If you ever take your foot off the gas pedal, factors will spiral out of control. A team that hasn’t won in a while gets demotivated and keeps losing. So always keep momentum. ”

For many software startups, this means they need to keep growing. For hardware startups, this means that they can’t let their ship dates slide.

In 2008, Facebook’s development was slowing down and so had been their morale. Zuckerberg responded to this burgeoning crisis simply by creating a growth group to operate on small projects.

This particular group lived up to the name and got Facebook back on track. Morale improved and now the growth team is the most innovative part of the Fb family.

How to Keep Energy Maintain momentum by setting up an operating rhythm at the company early on. This means delivery products and launching new functions on a regular basis and reviewing metrics every week with the entire business.

This is where your Board associated with Directors can come in handy. They generally get companies to care about metrics and milestones.