Starting to hire... again

As we get closer to officially launching a new business line, I am going to start shifting a lot of my attention to hiring once again. I had a nice little break from the grind of hiring for the past 6 months as I focused on setting the groundwork for the new business line.

In the early days of Secfi’s financing business, I felt like I was spending almost 20 hours a week just hiring. Resume reviews, hunting, interviews, planning, etc. It was exhausting.

Luckily, this time around we have much more help with an awesome HR and recruiting team. Regardless, I’m forecasting that a lot of my time will be spent hiring. Anyone that has done it at a startup knows it’s not easy.

Prior to even beginning the process, it’s important to really define what you are looking for and why. Too loose of a job description is going to leave you with too much room for error in what you actually need. There are a lot of good looking resumes out there, but most of them won’t fit what you actually need. Often you can meet individuals who are smart and driven, making it hard to pass up on them, but they just do not fit what the role description is. That won’t ever end up well.

Secondly, I find it vitally important to set-up a fair and objective interview process. Everyone should go through the same interview flow and case studies. We should be grading everyone objectively based on set criteria. If you don’t do this, you’re setting yourself up for hiring based on emotion which leads to bad decisions.

Planning for hiring isn’t the most fun part. I’d much rather be out there meeting people, but without proper planning, you’re going into the hiring decision blind which is never a good thing.