> One big difference is that the company didn’t approach recruiting from a purely skills-based perspective. “Honestly, we placed a high price on ‘hilarious’ and hired wonderful people, I think partially because we were willing to work with people who were awesome culture fits even if they had a steep learning curve ahead of them.”
I don't like the reference to "culture fit" since this is so nebulous and often abused, but the comment about skills-based hiring is really important for startups.
Lack of a willingness to develop employees is one of the big reasons startups complain about a "talent shortage." Far too many companies focus on people who can do X, Y and Z today because they've been doing those things for n years, and they completely filter out smart, motivated people who, if given an opportunity and a good environment, could be developed into fantastic employees.
This has an underestimated impact on employee retention. Unless your company is a rocket ship, the person you hire on a perfect skills fit may start to feel like he or she is stagnating relatively quickly.
Growth is crucial to employee satisfaction and companies should consider the saying "a man's reach should exceed his grasp" when filling positions. Hire intelligent, conscientious people who have to grow to fit a role and chances are they'll be far more engaged and loyal than the employees who don't have to grow to do the job.
The catch, I suspect, lies in knowing how much runway you have to develop someone. The person needs a month to learn a language and framework? Sure, that's workable. Needs a year? Maybe not.
The real question is whether that person can produce usable work output while they're learning. The framework that takes a year to learn because it's composed of 12 parts that would each take a month to master is still equivalent to the other framework that takes a month to master, because your employee can be producing useful work output within a month either way. If your 12-part framework is useless until fully mastered, then you should probably pick a different framework.
I don't like the reference to "culture fit" since this is so nebulous and often abused, but the comment about skills-based hiring is really important for startups.
Lack of a willingness to develop employees is one of the big reasons startups complain about a "talent shortage." Far too many companies focus on people who can do X, Y and Z today because they've been doing those things for n years, and they completely filter out smart, motivated people who, if given an opportunity and a good environment, could be developed into fantastic employees.
This has an underestimated impact on employee retention. Unless your company is a rocket ship, the person you hire on a perfect skills fit may start to feel like he or she is stagnating relatively quickly.
Growth is crucial to employee satisfaction and companies should consider the saying "a man's reach should exceed his grasp" when filling positions. Hire intelligent, conscientious people who have to grow to fit a role and chances are they'll be far more engaged and loyal than the employees who don't have to grow to do the job.