Recruiting for your startup's first hire is more than just "skillset matching."

Recruiting for your startup's first hire is more than just "skillset matching."

A bad hire when recruiting for your startup can be costly. That is time wasted, and projects get delayed while having to find a replacement. Here are some helpful ways to mitigate this.

1. Recruiting your first hires for your startup should be more than just “hard skill matching”. You should be building your ideal candidate profile.

2. While hard skills and “proven” experience are important. You should be assessing what your company’s mission and vision is. In doing so, be able to discern if candidates hold the same values and interests as you do.

For example:

a. Is it important that your ideal candidate be interested in things like reducing carbon footprint, accessibility, knowledgeable about pop culture and entertainment, or has a passion for humanitarian causes?

b. Is it important that your ideal candidate is involved in communities or certain ecosystems?

3. Ideally, this candidate would be a long-term fit and should be growing with you and your startup. It is really important to ask open-ended questions about what the candidate’s preferences are when it comes to the kind of environments, industries, or types of projects they would want to work on.

For example:

a. If the candidate is mentioning a lack of interest in an industry such as “FinTech” they probably would not be a good fit for your team if you’re a FinTech start-up.

b. Or if the candidate is leaving their previous role because a certain project they are working on is in a maintenance phase or there is no variety, it more than likely would not make sense to move them into another role where they are being subjected to the same kind of projects in another company.

4. Remember it must be a mutual fit for both parties.