Planning on building the Core Team of your start-up? Here’s what you should keep in mind!

You already know by now what to look for in your perfect co-founder which I talked about in my last blog . But that is only the beginning of this entirely new and exciting journey of building your team and your organization.

The first steps are always hard, for any entrepreneur building a core team for your start-up is extremely challenging. Why you ask? Well first up, your new hires set the tone of your company culture – which means that once you have hired your initial team, you have decided the fate of your organization! No, I am not trying to scare you but that is a hard fact. If you build a team of naysayers, that’s what your organization will stand for. It’s easy to overthink your hiring decision and eventually burn yourself down. Or, you can follow a simple process to arrive at your hiring needs, let’s just jump right in:

1. Introspection is the key : The first thing you need to do before you start thinking about building your core team is to analyse your own self. Learn to be objective about what kind of skills you have and what you do not. And trust me, the “do not” part in this case is more important. Because that’s what will tell you what complementary skills you need.

2. Share your Vision : Damn right! You can’t keep the vision for your organization to yourself and think that you will anyway reach there. Teams have to work towards shared goals in order to be successful.

3. Don’t compromise and keep looking : Unlike in skill-based profiles that you can “make-do” with behavioural issues your core team can’t be built on compromises. Don’t get attracted to someone with a lower pay expectation only because of that, you need it all in your initial hires from great attitude to great accountability levels.

4 . It’s not just about immediate compensation : Employee stock ownership plan or ESOP is a great way to offer value to your core team and also gauge their intention of joining your startup

5. Don’t hire someone looking for a Job : No, I am not talking about poaching other’s employees! What I mean is don’t hire someone who is just bored in their current job or wants to change a job for pay jumps. That never works for a start-up. Keenly gauge their interest in YOUR start-up. The real trouble comes when they come from traditional, bureaucratic or even MNCs sometimes where there they expect to have defined job roles, and people to do their bidding. Now we don’t want ideators (sometimes we do) but we want doers, those who are willing to get their hands dirty!

Whoever you choose, keep a close eye on how well they align with your ideas, your vision, and the level of maturity of your business. It is not a 9-5 job, it is a passion, and the people living it need people who breathe it.

Last but not the least, keep experimenting and empowering people – people empowered in your system would move your company forward.

The author of this blog is Girish Batra, Founder and CEO of NetAmbit. Founded in 2000 with a vision to make financial services available to masses, NetAmbit diversified leveraging the years of expertise in large scale – sales and call centre operations. NetAmbit now offers offline scale up services including Managed sales, Hiring & Staffing Solutions – to many big businesses pan India.