Tuesday, May 06, 2008

Recruiting Top Management

Businessweek has a nice refresher on recruiting top management. While it primarily seems to be written for large companies, the lessons are equally relevant to startups. Of course, there are some additional points one needs to keep in mind when recruiting for startups:

  • Sell a personal vision - not just of where the company wants to be, but also why the prospective candidate should get involved. Money? Significance? Career advancement? Broad-skilling?
  • Build credibility - let others speak for you. Customers? Investors? Advisors?
  • Prepare well - have a detailed view on why you need this person - is he going to feel overqualified once he comes in?
  • Hire the best - this is a motherhood statement, but one which cant be emphasized enough, especially for startups.

Any others that have been useful in your experience? I have benefited from it, and would like to join someone who does this.

Most of the points are valid. Being an entrepruener myself, I have tried and tired of startups and funds, and more dearth of them, the cost implication would be a matter of concern.
It is alright to recruit someone with a high challenging appetite, who might also want some big dough! But he should sort of do some additional job, that you may not
Say you are hriing a CTO with 15 years experience, he or she should not only do the PM role, also the QM role as well and do a bit of AM with the clients, saving the cost involved.
So if you pay less, the guy gets dejected, lulls, switches the job. Period. You startup remains as "one". Pay the cost and get the best!
These are just experiences that I have personally gone thru. Feedbacks?

No comments: