The theme #SSHYD for Dec 2014 was “Hiring experiences for start-ups” and it was a full house as always!
Here is a sneak peak into the happenings of the session 🙂
There were six start-up talks and two featured speakers.
1. Shravya from Svaad
– The Svaad app deals in food search customization. Shravya mentioned that hiring mobile developers and consultants did not help as they were not actively involved. They struggled with a wrong employee for six months, thereby wasting a lot of precious time and money without any results. They approached a job consultancy and this time things worked out well for them. Shravya stressed upon the need of networking for hiring interns (cheap and tech savvy). She also mentioned the importance of being very specific and clear about the requirement.
2. Amit from Skillify
– Amit says that the problem with resumes is they dont talk and so it becomes difficult to gauge the problem solving skills, the attitude and the skill set required for a start-up. Skillify has centered its focus on Tech, BPO and finance sectors and has developed a skill assessment engine for the same. He says it is extremely important to find out what motivates the candidate.
3. Arpita – YoGrad
– Arpita mentioned how a delayed hire is better than a bad hire. She also mentioned why interns can only take the role of supporting team and not the actual team itself. She stresses on the co-founders having complimentary profiles and should even consider a pilot project to understand better. Arpita also mentioned how the employees look for vision/profile of start-ups and not pay packets.
4. Aditya Vuchi – Zippr
– Aditya has two successful startups to his credit namely Mediamint and Zippr. He shared as to how potential hires were not interested in working because of lack of proper office space. This was about four years back when they were operating out of a 3bhk apartment. He shares how his second venture Zippr also had to face similar set of problems in hiring. He stressed upon how one should consider senior hires, to be able to sell them the vision, get them on-board through recommendation and to be ruthless while firing them. Aditya says it is important to check if they are ready for working for a start-up and also find out the two biggest weakness of every potential hire. This in-turn helps to gauge the maturity of the hire (if the hire is self-introspecting and aware of his/her shortcomings) and also shows if they are realistic. Aditya believes in going ahead with the gut feeling more than anything else.
5. Kaushik Srinivasan – Kanvasimpact.com
– Kaushik believes in developing the right culture at the company, while he says referral hiring can have better retention rates. He believes in having an honest conversation with the potential hires and does not hold back from firing the wrong ones.
6. Vamsi – Postrope.com
– He found it surprising how Indian start-ups are paying salary to their employees and he would never pay a single penny till the revenues start coming in. He believes in vesting options for employees and recommends hiring the first 100 employees and to know them personally. He has six start-ups to his credit and lives in Melbourne.
7. Niranjan – CountryOven
– Niranjan is a former Ranji trophy captain, has worked with Mahesh Bhupati and has been selecting teams since the sixth grade. He has successfully organized the celebrity cricket league and shared his experiences with the audience at SSHYD. He believes his cricketing experience has taught him a lot and he has successfully implemented his cricketing knowledge into the corporate world. He stresses on a good team combination. Just like a cricketing team has 6 batsmen, one all-rounder and four bowlers, he believes even a start-up needs to hire in the correct ratio. The start-up should have people with core competency as well as all-rounders. He battles for a lean team. He says that as leaders, we should learn what the employees like to do and get them onto that particular role, find out what motivates the employees and talk to them on a regular basis.
Featured speakers
1. Ram – Human Network recruiting firm
– Ram spoke about a structured job description and the need to document it. He says that a good video about the company profile helps hire good talent. He is strictly against copying job descriptions from the job portals. He stressed on the need for a network where people can refer us a potential hire from amongst their circles. This also allows you for indirect pitching and getting leads for potential hires. Ram suggests focussing on hiring from LinkedIn, small Facebook ads etc. He does not believe in delegating hiring and rather suggests us to engage ourselves. He says how even the largest of the companies face the no-show ratio problem where a potential hire applies but does not turn up. Ram urges to understand the reason behind the motivation of an employee.
2. Deepesh Rajpal
– Deepesh stresses more on hiring the good learner than the perfectionist or the expert. He says hiring is a marriage and does not believe in firing employees. Deepesh suggest hiring freshers as they tend to be more tech-savvy. He also mentioned that it is our responsibility to teach them how to get things done and organize better.
A feedback message we received from one of the speakers, Mr. Kaushik Srinivasan of www.Kanvasimpact.com.
“Hi Srikanth, thanks for the great session today. Very well organized and executed”
To sum it up all, the SSHYD December edition was a fabulous session unlike any other in the last one year. There was a marked difference in this session than the previous ones. Let me elaborate on this. The session started on-time with most of the guest speakers arriving even before the audience. The headcount was about 70-80. Although on previous occasions we have had people turning up in big numbers (110-140) today was a little different in terms of the quality of interaction and the active participation of the audience. It was an enthusiastic gathering, all eager to learn from the hiring experiences of others. The sense of excitement was to be seen to be believed. The other thing that stood out was the experiences shared by the speakers. It was a great session in terms of knowledge sharing and there was a lot to learn for the audience. The session was timed to perfection with almost all speakers finishing their talks as per schedule. Towards the fag-end of the session, we encountered a slight drizzle (The fact that Lamakaan is an open venue and so we had to do make a few changes to the event setup) which I believe was more of an icing on the cake than an interruption.
We also had two gifts for the audience. It was the “Young Turks” book authored by Shereen Bhan of “Young Turks” fame. Gopi and Rajiv Gupta were awarded the prizes for their active participation throughout the session.
All the volunteers (Hamad, Anil, Arpita, Renuka) contributed immensely to the success of the event.
Team SSHYD!
Write up by:
Srikanth Soni
Headstarter at Hyderabad