The One Employee You Should NEVER Hire In A Startup Or Early-stage Company

Source: Medium
Photo: Kae Ng on Unsplash

It’s not what “position” but what “person”.

There is one “person” you should never hire in an early-stage company. They seem to gravitate to startups though and they seem to say all the right things to get hired.

It is my experience that they want into a startup because they have proven they cannot operate anywhere else AND they feel they can succeed in an operation where things are all over, things are uncertain and things are not watched or measured directly. In a place where performance can be hidden and disguised as activity.

A startup is a crazy place. You have ideas, you try them, you fail fast and you keep trying other things. In an environment like that, it is really, really hard to gauge when a resource is actually accomplishing something as opposed to simply being busy. Activity is not achievement much like raising capital from outside sources is not success.

In the two companies, I am associated with at the moment, I have seen this happen with both. One person in a marketing/communications role at each company fits this to the letter. In both cases, the companies had to let them go and when they did, the person was angry, resentful, and threatened all sorts of things they had no power to do.

If you are starting a company or are at an early stage, stay clear of people who cannot tell you exactly what they can do and accept that if they do not do it, they will be gone.

Keep pushing forward. You will find people who want to be in the trenches and will do anything it takes to help achieve actual results. Being busy is not being productive.

Remember, one bad apple does really spoil the bucket and there are way more bad apples out there looking to get paid for nothing than you would think. I am not sure they are bad humans, but they absolutely believe their own bullshit. Be careful and only hire the people who you know or are known to those you know until you are big enough to absorb a person such as I describe above.

Good luck all!

Thanks to Alessandro Butler