How to Hire Your First 10 Employees - Glassdoor for Employers

How to Hire Your First 10 Employees

One of the hardest challenges you’ll face when building your startup is hiring your first 10 employees. This group will be the foundation of your team — and success — for the coming years.

Remember that these early hires will also fill the leadership positions in your company as you scale. They need to share your values, commitment, and work ethic. A mismatch not only impedes your growth but also hijacks your culture as a misaligned team will lack motivation and produce weaker results. After all, having the wrong team is one of the top three reasons startups fail.

Although the stakes are high, the right people are out there. Here are some tips for recruiting your first 10 employees.

1. Understand their motivations.

You’re looking for ambitious people who want to build something huge and are ready to do so (largely) on their own. People leaving their current roles are usually looking for opportunities to learn and be recognized. At a small startup company, every success reflects on one or two people. The chance to be directly involved is a powerful incentive for new employees.

That’s why great candidates who are focused on salary compensation are unlikely to be good fits. Instead, look for people who are willing to take less salary now for a potential payout later. This often means working with people who are talented but lack experience.

For instance, your first salesperson should be excited to personally reel in leads without relying on a customer relationship management system or sales playbook.

2. Don’t rush.

Finding great people takes time. Expect the hiring process to absorb the majority of leadership’s time as you scale. Founders and managers need to write job descriptions, get referrals, network, and check references. Iterating these tasks and doing them well is a full-time job.

If you try to use shortcuts like recruiting consultants, then you won’t know if the candidates are genuinely interested in your company. Many candidates are (understandably) focused on landing a job to pay their bills. Finding the company that best fits their passion may not be a top priority.

And for your first 10 employees, you have minimal margin for error. Your startup’s first leaders will need to set a strong example. Take the time to ensure they are motivated, capable, and eager to meet expectations. Asking deeper questions like, “How would you feel if an emergency project came up while you were working on something else?” can help evaluate candidates more thoroughly.

RELATED: The Scrappy Guide to Recruiting for Small Businesses

3. Take a staged approach.

Regardless of the candidate, don’t be tempted to make an offer without seeing their work and having them meet the team. In an ideal world, you would spend weeks working with a candidate before making a hiring decision, but hiring on a freelance basis isn’t always possible. You’ll need to find a reasonable proxy.

Consider asking candidates to complete a work project during the interview process to test their commitment and skills. Most potential hires expect at least a phone call before agreeing to a project — especially in-demand candidates. Be wary of candidates who cite competitive offers as a reason they can’t complete a work project.

Perform on-site interviews for the strongest candidates from the work projects. A great work project signals individual productivity, but it can’t assess a candidate’s ability to communicate and collaborate. To do that, you might ask an engineering candidate to present to another engineer an overview of a feature they recently shipped or discuss how to avoid a recent outage. Within reason, the more you vet potential hires, the better off you’ll be.

4. Look for tomorrow’s leaders.

Unless you’re a very hot company, experienced candidates will usually be unwilling to risk of joining your startup when appropriate salary compensation isn’t possible. Your best candidates will be ones who grow into inspirational team leaders.

If you can’t hire someone with all the requisite experience, make sure you’re hiring for talent and enthusiasm. A talented, capable person who is hungry to learn can outperform someone with more experience who is less committed.

Don’t be tempted to hire someone who will only solve today’s problem, as this usually results in the worst possible outcome. Hiring a B+ engineer to launch your iPhone app will result in failed expectations at best or restarting the hiring process at worst.

RELATED: 10 Hacks to Hire for Hard-to-Fill Roles

Use This Checklist for Hiring Your First 10 Employees

Whether you’re interviewing prospects or “test-driving” a working relationship with a strong candidate, there are a few key qualities you should watch for.

• Evidence of talent: Baseline skills are a requirement in any role. If you’re hiring engineers, then they need to have coding experience. If you’re hiring sales representatives, they can’t be afraid of talking to new people. Test for these skills in the hiring process and look for an ongoing commitment to growth.

• Drive: The right candidates won’t just like building things; they will be compelled to do so. They will be the type who aggressively attack obstacles and are deeply motivated by earning increasing amounts of responsibility or ownership. Ultimately, they want to build something big.

RELATED: 15 Interview Questions to Ensure Candidate Quality

• Work ethic: It takes a strong work ethic to deliver success, especially for a startup. A strong work ethic allows you to overcome the numerous setbacks you will regularly encounter.

• Flexibility: Your first 10 hires have to be willing to put the company’s mission first and to jump in wherever they’re most needed, just like you will. The right candidates recognize this is the most efficient way to reach the levels of ownership and agency they desire and also the results you are looking for.

Going 10-for-10 on your first hires is unlikely. But with these strategies, you’ll stand a much better chance of attracting candidates today who will help your company grow to hit tomorrow’s goals.

Ash Rust, founder and managing partner of Sterling Road, is an entrepreneur turned pre-seed investor. Sterling Road is a venture fund focused on pre-seed B2B companies. Ash has mentored hundreds of startups through accelerator programs including Y-Combinator, Techstars, Alchemist, and universities such as Stanford, UC Berkeley, and Oxford. Connect with Ash on Twitter @AshRust.

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