Note: This post was originally posted on BostInno.com on April 13th, 2011 but never cross-posted on my own blog.
I find this post to be even more relevant today at HubSpot as we transform our team into the greatest engineering team I have ever seen; I hope you find it useful.
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Companies change. Products evolve. Approaches get thrown out the window. The centrifugal force alone of that kind of rapid development is enough to throw anyone off center. Throughout my experience, one guiding rule on team building in fast-moving companies has emerged: hire people, not skills.
It can be tempting when you’re first growing to hire someone specifically to fill a gap in your company’s skillset. If you hire someone for skills alone, however, they may lose balance as the company grows, when those skills are no longer as central or get placed into a different context. Each time I have built a team, personal traits – not professional skills – have been what propelled the company forward.
So, what traits matter? The answer is going to vary by company and founder, but I look for the following:
Cultural Fit (45%)
Fit is arguably the most important of any qualification. Start-ups can be very hard, and they become impossible if you don’t love the people around you. Getting the culture right is critical. No matter how stellar a candidate’s skills are, if they don’t fit well with your team, it won’t work out for anyone involved. Be careful here though: fit should not signal conformity. You do not need 12 identical personalities. You need a mix of people with differing perspectives but shared values. You need at team that is cohesive because of its differences.
Scrappiness and Drive (35%)
At Performable, we include scrappiness in the job description. We seek out people who have toppled challenges with very limited resources. This is not just about being lean. It is about the character of the team. The four most powerful words coming from a new hire are: “I’ll figure it out.” Find someone who you can trust to say that and follow through on it, and you’ve found a true asset.
This kind of drive is different than traditional ambition. Ambitious people will succeed at any task laid before them. They will personally excel, quickly rising from manager to director to vice president. A scrappy person who is driven does not rely on titles or defined responsibilities. He or she will push the company forward even when no one’s looking. Driven people move through the responsibilities on their lists, but also keep a constant eye on how the company as a whole can do things smarter and better.
Intelligence and Experience (15% and 5%, respectively)
Intelligence and experience are valuable, but a scrappy person who fits well on the team can learn fast. In a start-up, jobs are always changing. So when you think about intelligence and experience, make sure you are thinking about it in terms of a genuine hunger to learn and level of life-experience that enables the candidate to easily adapt and evolve.
Discovering these traits in candidates may come down to a gut feeling for many, but some of it can be illuminated by carefully posed questions and by getting a candidate outside of the typical interview set-up. Whenever possible change the setting, meet candidates outside of the office, at events or out for coffee. Get them talking rather than answering. Find out what it is that makes them tick.
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Great article!
In Japan jobs are set for people, not people for jobs. And japanese economy is one of the most effective in the world. I totally agree with the concept of empowering the people
Thank you for this article…I believe that hiring managers who generally over emphasize skill set are even more fixated on it in this economy due to their fear of not meeting the “needs of the business” in filling key positions. I have found that it takes much more courage to choose “scrappiness and drive” over “intelligence and experience.” I would submit that technically gifted leaders (i.e. engineers) have a particularly difficult time choosing drive over intellect. I like to think that there will be rewards for those companies with the vision and courage to hire people who may not know all the answers but will “improvise and overcome” when it counts to get the job done.
Timely post. We just went through a major hiring and I was fighting aggressively to hire people that would fit the “culture” of our firm. Sure they needed a base skill set, but everything else we could teach them. But you can teach drive, tenacity and can-do “scrappiness. “
Thank you for this article. You helped put words to some of my core beliefs about hiring. I have even shared this article with some of my recent hires to help explain why I hired them.
Having seen this approach applied at HubSpot over the last year, I’m definitely a believer. I also appreciate when this is applied to hiring internally, which I’ve seen demonstrated by David & Co. It allows someone with the right motivation and drive—but not necessarily the right experience—to grow in the company by being thrown into new situations they may not be qualified for… yet.
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