As a small, rapidly growing business, sometimes it seems like we can’t hire fast enough. But it is my feeling that making the wrong hire is an even worse fate than being understaffed. In tight job markets, such as the Washington, DC area, hiring the right people can seem nearly impossible. In this blog, I’ll discuss some of the trials and tribulations of my recent hiring battles – and hopefully share some positive conclusions!!

Over the past year since starting iBelong, I have been having nightmare flashbacks to my experience in starting my first company almost ten years ago. It seems that life in a startup is nothing if not a balancing act – and the process of hiring is no exception. This includes balancing:

• Experience versus ambition
• Intelligence versus work ethic
• Short-term salary versus long-term reward

The above trade-offs are not etched in stone. Most top-performing employees will have elements from both sides of the equation. But in hiring for a start-up, I find that depending on the role, the optimal profile often leans toward the right side of the above equation (ambition, work ethic, and long-term reward).

In hiring for large businesses, like IBM and PricewaterhouseCoopers, it was my experience that there is a broader profile for a good fit. With the broad needs of a large organization, we could always make room for a “good person”. But in a small company it takes more than experience and intelligence to be a net positive to the organization. This is not to say that experience and intelligence are not required to make a start-up work. On the contrary, if we are looking for a dot net developer, we required candidates with experience and intelligence, as a necessary but not sufficient condition. In addition, we need someone with ambition and a very hard work ethic. For a large company, ambition may not necessarily be a pre-requisite for getting the job – and getting the job done.  

It is particularly hard in the local Washington DC area economy when recruiting to find the optimal balance of traits for a start-up. Candidates with experience and intelligence have a lot of employment options. And with the federal government hiring so heavily in the IT space, many candidates that are out there don’t need ambition and work ethic to make a healthy salary.

Given the cost of making a hiring correction in a small business, in terms of low employee morale, damage to customer reputation, and the cost of hiring and training a replacement, it is my opinion that small start-up businesses are better off being slightly understaffed than making the wrong hiring decisions.

So how do you find people with ambition, strong work ethic, intelligence, AND experience? Well, I would love to hear your opinions! It is my experience that there is no substitute for personal referrals. Every top performer I have had has come from a personal referral. Unfortunately, this process is very time consuming and doesn’t often yield the volume it takes to staff an entire business. But it has rarely failed me.