By : praval

Image Courtesy: Will Lion

Hiring scenarios become very different when it comes to hiring for startups. The process of finding the right employee can sometimes become tedious for a startup owner. The challenge lies in searching out the right employee from the large number of applications that one gets. An employee, who is a master of a trade and may be jack of a few.

Here are a few pointers that startups should touch base with;

1. Avoid Job Sites - Avoid searching for resumes of candidates for your startups on job sites such as Monster, Naukri, Jobs Ahead, etc. as the trend reveals - people who upload their resumes on such websites are more inclined towards working for a MNC and not a startup!
2. The Resume Content – It is of common knowledge that a percentage of resumes you get always try to hide or over present the credentials. The best way to judge a candidate is to interact with him rather than judging him by the content of his resume. Another way to find out the correlation between the candidate’s ability and his credential on his resume is by following an interesting parameter called ‘keyword density’. Mukul Kumar, VP of Engineering, Komli writes in his blog, “My personal experience has been that the higher the keyword density, the more likely is that the candidate is bogus. You cannot learn – all of “C, C++, Java, PHP, MySQL, Oracle, OLTP, Apache, Tomcat and RoR in 2 years”.
3. The Conversion – There are many ways of accessing resumes – newspapers, online portals, recruiters, consultants, direct, referrals etc. The most efficient way to access the resume is from a source which has the highest conversion rate amongst all, as it saves the most amount of time. Referrals work the best for startups. Try to have knowledge about any interested candidate from your current employees and then get in touch with him. On finding him suitable enough, you can select him and this in turn will make your current employee happy as well.
4. The Interaction – For a startup owner, time is a very important thing. Interact with your candidates and figure it out in the first fifteen minutes that whether the interviewee is good enough for your startup. If he matches to your requirements, then it is advisable to go into technical details. Also, look whether a candidate is good enough to solve your current problem. This should be done because the ability to solve current problems is a must know as his ability to solve complex algorithms would not do you much good. The ability to implement a conceptual construct into a practical application is what an interviewer should look in the candidate.
5. Never be sure until the Joining day – Never be sure of a candidate until he shows up on his joining day. It is extremely difficult to understand why people commit to a job, accept the offer letter and then do not turn up on the joining day. There have been umpteen instance of a candidate not turning up on the D day and every startup owner learns this the hard way that it is difficult to stop this breed of candidates.

The list is highly abridged keying in some salient aspects of hiring for startups in India. There are no set ways which always work. Best wishes for your next hiring day!