Guidelines for hiring

Once the top level vision was in shape, the focus shifted to actually hire people.

We are fortunate enough to have access to a large talent pool that we could dip into, to get some of the best people around. However, we wanted to put it in writing as to what would be our guiding principle in selecting the people that could come and help us realize the vision. We spoke about these with all the candidates, ensured that they understood and answered any questions they might have had, even before getting into the technical discussions. I'm happy to share these:

1. We wanted to hire people smarter than us.
Philosophy: Only A players would hire A+ players. B players would hire C players and C would hire D players. We were hiring only about 20enggs and our task was made that much simpler because of smaller numbers.

2. Loyalty to the vision:
Philosophy: We wanted people to join us for what they can contribute, to work on something cool and attempt to change-the-world and have fun. We were wary of people that focused little too much on what they can extract out of the company. Its not that we do not like money. We do like and want tons of it, but we are happy talking to people that are excited about the vision and can tell us how they can be part of the journey.

3. Growth is about learning and contributing:
Philosophy: A leader is the one who can influence and it has got nothing to do with official title or #yrs or whatever. We want all of us to be leaders. Since we are small and a niche product company we won't grow fast. Growth only means that you have become better in your role, that you are lot more effective, that you know more, that you are now contributing more to the organization this week/month/year compared to last week/month/year.

Most of us took the same titles that we had in our previous organizations. We did not succumb to the easy route of giving fancy titles, just because we could.

4. Need people who can push their seniors
Philosophy: The juniors should be pushing their seniors to operate at a higher level all the time. One of the question we ask ourselves, even while hiring a fresher is that "can this person reach the level of his immediate senior in say next one year?". If this happens, the senior has no option but to push his senior to higher level and so on. Personally, I'd be looking for a bigger challenge about 1-1.5year from now and would like to hand over my current responsibilities to my deputy.

5. No traditional managers
Philosophy: We believe growth comes from leaders who create change and engage their organizations, instead from managers who push their people to do more for less. Initiative become key. We want passion and ideas to lead people and not bureaucracy and threats (My favourite mantra is "lead and inspire" than the boring and irritating "manage and drive"). I always keep asking the question why should someone be led by me? And we believe there is no need for leaders without followers.

Even with 20+ people we do not have a designated manager, people step-up when needed, to do managerial tasks and focus most of their time on technical things.

6. Need people that are positive, optimistic and energetic:
Philosophy: We hire for attitude. We believe products and associated deliverables are by-products of people having fun. Fun doesn't necessarily mean partying and dancing. Solving a complex problem is fun. Working with cross functional teams and making the customer happy is fun. Learning new things regularly is fun. Supporting colleagues is fun. Having diverse interests and hobbies and willingness to share knowledge is fun. We spent lot of time talking to people about what they do on weekends for its a pointer as to how they approach their life.

We are yet to work out our HR policies on several things, including titles and career paths. Infact we do not have an HR person and do not plan to have one in the near future. So we did all the talking during interviews. Once the technical competency was demonstrated and we had a reasonable idea that this person could fit-in, we used to explain the above 5-6 "ways of working" and used to see whether they "resonated" with the person. We used to do this, before getting into salary discussions. We did loose some people because they thought we are crazy and/or its all HR gibberish to give lesser salary. All the best to them, our salaries are comparable to the best in the industry. We could see the excitement in the people and some of them started-off by telling that salary is not the criteria. Not bad that we hired top talent mostly from MNCs. There is a huge responsibility on me though to live upto the vision that we have set for ourselves.