How to build your first startup team? – Tips

Have you missed out on our first blog that gives an overview of building your first team, read it here?

In this blog we bring to you cheat codes that can help crack your first phase of kick-starting your startup i.e  ‘recruitment’.

Hiring your first team is eventually a leap of faith. However, before you take this leap, trust your instincts and be certain of the candidates chosen to accomplish company objectives. Putting together a team whether big or small can be quite dicey with respect to personality indifference, hierarchical polarities and contrasting visions.

Do not be under the wrong impression that recruitment is the hardest phase of a startup and the rest just fall in place.Striving to keep the team together and well-balanced is where your actual challenge begins.

Follow these tips, to ease your anxiety and build your first startup team.

Tip number 1:

Look for core competencies in every hire.

Understanding a candidate’s core competency is very important. Every individual has a defined yet varied skillset, that may or may not suit your business. Before you take a final call on who you recruit, analyse, if the desired candidate is the perfect subject matter expert you were looking for to handle respective tasks without supervision. However, you should take note of not hiring people who are over-skilled in just one kind of skillset, as this might mean the candidate is not ready to explore different paths or challenges for growth. These kind of candidates end up leaving you hanging in the air when you assign a task that isn’t anywhere related to their skillset, as, they lack the need to explore.

Tip number 2

Flexible work hours.

It is the new age of out-of-the-box thinkers who turn out to be kick-ass entrepreneurs and implement flexible work patterns that help ease work pressure. Hence, ditch the corporate culture and give your workforce enough space and time to complete allocated tasks. This way your employees tend to be more loyal and put in more effort towards the betterment of your organisation.

Work from home at least twice a month should be implemented as this results in fewer leaves since the employees get to work from their own comfort zone without having to travel.Did you know opting for flexible work patterns can lead to employee retention?

Tip number 3:

Define your office culture

Having your objectives and core values in place is essential, as, you will have to seed these from the start within every candidate recruited. Understanding how you would like your organisation to be portrayed 2 – 5 years down the lane is important as it helps to create a defined culture and work process right from the start that would benefit both you and your future employees.

Know your:

1. Goals – What is your core objective? To be among the top 5 CEO’s? Or to provide the best product/ service for consumers worldwide.Goals can be both short-term as well as long term. Short-term goals can include baselines you set for recruiting your team. Long-term goals can include execution of processes, expansion of business, return on investments target etc. In short, define your vision & mission
2. Practice – What kind of process would you like to follow hierarchical or flat? Do you want to personally be involved with every individual and measure their growth or set up a reporting system that helps you analyse their performance weekly/ fortnightly or monthly. Do you want to be an entrepreneur who is approachable, easy going, ready to take in ideas or do you want to be the dictator with fixed motives.Know what you need!

Tip number 4 :

Previous work experience matters

Hire doers or as we call it ‘the executionists’. Do not hire senior level managers who were part of the board of directors, as, they are used to giving orders than getting down to actual business. Go for candidates who have been team leaders or supervisors as they contribute more value especially during the initial phase of your start-up. Super senior level managers tend to be just philosophers and can only add on to your expenditure even before sales kick-in.

We hope these tips turn out to be helpful.If you are looking for a fully furnished office space then click here