Recruiting and Hiring for Product Led Startups

Behind CV and Attitude

Recruiting in the dynamic tech startup and growup sector already requires a multi-dimensional approach; Getting product-led even raises the bar. I've learned that successful recruitment hinges on a blend of assessing personality, communication skills, professional expertise and leadership qualities.

And then there is the fifth very subtle element…

Nope, not this one. But still one that needs your attention. You need a Fit. And this means, you have to play Tetris:

Crafting a high-performing team is akin to mastering that game - a delicate balance of aligning individuals' horizontal competencies and vertical skill depth. The target as in tetris is to create as less space in between the elements as possible. The space stands for communication gaps and potential conflicts. Except, you can decide yourself wich elements you put in, via thoughtful hiring.

It is a game of constructing dynamic teams and seamlessly fusing expertise across different domains with as much “full-stack-mentality” as healthy.

So no job is alike and the profile you search for is very individual. The following aspects of recruiting are just a structure, not a blueprint.

Hiring for Attitude

The Hiring for Attitude approach is a bit of an over-simplification of the changes that are taking place in hiring and recruiting, but it still gets to the heart of the matter. Professional skills have simply become less relevant across the board, but the demands on cooperation at eye level within organizations have increased due to the complexity at the macro level. The extent to which hard skills are still relevant for filling a position depends on a number of questions:

• Do you already have the knowledge in the company? In this case the training works much better and is more specific. Or do you want to attract new skills to the company?

• Are the skills primarily experience-based? In this case, knowledge can hardly be substituted by training.

• How quickly does the position need to be fully filled?

The extent to which the dimensions described below are relevant for a specific position varies, see the Tetris game. There is no one-size-fits-all answer.

Hiring for Talent

Another basic aspect is especially relevant for creative work. If you could decide whether to hire a small team of high performers to do the job or a bigger team of average performers with the same budget. I am pretty sure, you know what to keep in mind!

1. Personality: The Core of a Candidate

In my opinion the importance to have people in the team that have the right mindset and that fit with their colleagues, is still underestimated . The bigger a company gets the more anonyme the recruiting process becomes and the more false ethical correctness sets in. To be ethically correct does not mean to hire everybody based on fact on a sheet of paper, but to handle your own biases well.

In a growth mindset, challenges are exciting rather than threatening. So rather than thinking, oh, I'm going to reveal my weaknesses, you say, wow, here's a chance to grow

Carol S. Dweck

• Growth Mindset

  Seek individuals who view challenges as growth opportunities. To dive deeper besides that buzzword the methodical interpretation called Spiral Dynamics might be of interest.

• Coachability

  Candidates should show a capacity to learn from others and to be guided in learning especially when it comes to soft skills. As this is not so easy to google: A good read on that topic is Trillion Dollar Coach by Jonathan Rosenberg and Eric Schmidt focusing on Bill Campbell.

• Team Fit

  Aligning with company values and culture is essential. But also take a look at the direct colleagues. Mention them drinking a beer together. Would it fit?

• Resilience

  The capacity to overcome challenges and to withstand pressure is key.

• Character

  Integrity and reliability are fundamentals here, but also you can question think opportunism or

• Self-Realization
  Will the job help the applicant to realize him/herself? This significantly increases identification with the organization.

You have a duty not only to the applicants, but also to the team and the organization. Meeting this obligation also means looking at the character and personality of a candidate, especially for a small team, where the influence of every single person on culture and well-being is great.

In looking for people to hire, look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence, and energy. And if they don't have the first, the other two will kill you.

Warren Buffett

2. Communication: The Basis for WeQ

Effective communication skills are non-negotiable, especially in a early stage organisation where everything is everchanging!

Leadership is not about being in charge. It's about taking care of those in your charge.

Simon Sinek

• Language Proficiency
  Candidates must be adept in relevant languages. Do not underestimate the challenge of language barriers. Although we all speak multiple languages now and english seems to be the universal language of the tech industry, there is still obstacle to communicate efficient and exact in a non-mothers-tongue!

• Agreeability
  The ability to engage in constructive debate is especially important in early organizations that still have to find ways through the jungle of uncertainties.

• Collaboration and Cooperation Skills
  These are essential for team dynamics. The ability to articulate one's own opinion clearly and to listen to others, i.e. to be a sender and receiver, is not something everyone is born with.

• Conflict Management
  Managing emotions and compromise are vital are directly related to resilince in the chapter before.

3. Professional Skills: Hard Capabilities

Technical and professional skills are the backbone of a candidate's capability:

In times of ai increasingly generating analyses and content and even proposing solutions, adapting and creatively linking learned skills will be what distances the successful.

• Solution Building / Technical Skill
  It’s crucial to have hands-on skills and expertise. Might be that the need for hard skill changed a bit based on the availability of information. But thinking of skills like method competency that are also based on deep understanding of methods and experience, you still should check for that!

• Visionary Thinking
  Not every body has to have great and futuristic ideas every day! This could even be a downside of a candidate, because you have to focuse on targets for a while to reach them. But understanding future targets that are abstract and that might even look unreachable at first, is a great attribute for candidates. But also translating that vision into concrete actions is important.

• Diligence and Structuredness
  Precision, thoroughness and a structured approach, are of course still important. Although the mechanisms to validate solutions changed due to fast iterations and ai!

• Scientific Thinking
  A fundamental understanding of empiricism, causality and correlation. Differentiating between opinion and fact and regularly questioning one's own point of view are valuable qualities, especially in the start-up sector

4. Leadership: Steering the Team Forward

Leadership qualities differentiate good candidates from great ones. Of course not every body has to be a great leader, so like mentioned earlier: Play the tetris game!

With AI and socio-economic development in mind the business world might finally change to a very fluid mesh of talented individuals working on intersecting targets, instead of teams spinning around bigger than life managers. However, pulling and aligning these talents towards achieving great goals together, remains crucial.

• Decision Making
  This is a cornerstone of effective leadership. Although the ways of decision-making changed, sometimes it’s better to decide and be brave, instead of waiting along.

• Respecting Responsibilities
  Balancing decision-making with respect for others responsibilities is crucial. It enables leaders to lead rather than micromanaging every issue or making decisions on topics they may not fully comprehend.

• Team Leadership
  This skill is critical for managing a successful team.

Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others.

Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric

Product Led People

Being Product Led does not change the aspects that you have to focuse on, it just changes the weighting. Growth Mindset, Team Fit, Collaboration and Cooperation Skills and Scientific Thinking are getting even more important in that context. People need to be uncompromising team players who act out of interest and, in case of doubt, will subordinate necessity to their own goals and specialization, to have a positive impact.

Also one more thing is added to the stack: You need generalists in your team. Focusing on a product approach and putting scalability in the centrum of your ambitions, means that the individual employees must understand the big picture instead of focusing on their specialism. This mindset is amplified by an interplay of the mentioned higher weighted skills and the generalistic mindset.

Conclusion

In the tech startup and grow-up sector, recruiting is about finding individuals who embody growth, communicate effectively, possess professional skills, and have leadership potential. Balancing this holistic approach per position is key to building a team aligned with the company's vision and culture. For product-led companies interested people with a generalistic mindset fit best, especially as special knowledge can be acquired easily by those people, when needed.