Hiring is hard. Here are 2 ways to get stellar teammates.

There are a few things that can unquestionably affect your startup’s road to product-market fit. That you are reading this, it is likely that you are already aware of the basics, and to touch on this subject requires a whole other post altogether.

But what I wanted to write about is perhaps the most potent factor, and one that is very much under your control — hiring the right team.

The LawCanvas team being productive, and stuff. Yeah.

A few weeks ago, I was speaking to an investor about problems I had with a new hire, and he proffered an interesting sentiment. “At the early stages of your company, hiring for culture is even more important than hiring for competence,” he said, “Everyone tends differently to a learning curve, but being able to sit in the trenches together, and go through shit everyday is arguably more important than being good at what you do”.

A good question to ask yourself is this: How would they react if I missed a month’s payroll?

This gave me pause. If you’re a first-time hiring manager, the immediate things you’ll consider are probably qualifications and experience — and understandably so. It’s simply not intuitive to hire for personality over capability (at least on paper).

In fact, with so many applicants to sift through, your best bet is in hiring smart and able people who have proven themselves. So how does one assess for culture? Is an interview enough? No, I personally don’t think so.

Here are two things that have worked for me.

References

The best founders will always ask for references. It shows they take each and every hire seriously, and considers the impact hires can make not just to overall productivity, but to the morale of the team.

In a small company, every person sets the tone for culture. And that is why references are important. Find out why they left their previous companies. Then dig deeper still.

Through many of my interviews, I’ve found that even though people are mostly honest about their history, there will always be bias. And that is why you need to speak to someone from the other side. This reminds me of a quote by Guy Kawasaki about Steve Jobs’ hiring philosophy.

“A players hire A players; B players hire C players; and C players hire D players. It doesn’t take long to get to Z players. This trickle-down effect causes bozo explosions in companies.”

Testing your candidates with actual work — without remuneration.

Maybe that’s all you really need