Recruiting Hearts

One of the great rewards of joining a new and exciting startup is collaborating as a passionate team to achieve an inspiring vision and make a difference. It is the anthesis of the concept of “quiet quitting,” “just a job,” or “being a cog in the wheel.” The challenge for a startup leader is building a team culture like that, and one key is recruiting hearts.

Compared to larger, more established companies where the strength of a well-established brand, the security of a stable and hopefully steadily growing business, and the clarity of well-developed products, market positioning, and business processes, startups are chaotic. Startups are breaking new ground, inventing on the fly, and incessantly solving emerging problems. And the dream is that investing one’s passion in a startup can turn one’s extraordinary efforts into wealth far beyond the typical relatively below-market salary that may be available. The counterbalance is the ever-present risk of failure and company collapse.

Given that startups are facing a continuing stream of challenges, as a startup leader, you want to recruit a team committed to doing whatever it takes to solve the problems. While a certain amount of work-life balance is essential to avoid burnout, a startup is not generally a good environment for someone who wants to clock out at the end of the workday. Until the startup reaches a mature stage, there are unlikely to be well-developed steady processes to rely on. So it is crucial to attract team members who will thrive in an environment that requires creativity, flexibility, and commitment to go above and beyond the minimum to move the startup’s ball down the field. This process starts during recruiting and continues as you lead the team.

So what is it that attracts people to contribute their passion to a startup, with all of its demands and challenges?

I believe that those who will thrive in a startup are those who live to make an impact on the people around them. Those who get a charge from making things in some corner of the world remarkably better. Those who want to pour their energy and passion into solving hard problems and creating something new and better. For the startup founder, beyond just recruiting people with the necessary technical or functional skills needed for the particular startup, you must find ways to recruit people’s hearts – and then, along with others like them who want and choose to give their all, to forge them into the high-performing team you need to really build a startup success.

Thoughts on Recruiting Hearts

Having personally recruited well over 100 people into startups, here are some of the things I have learned. When recruiting someone’s heart for a startup, you cannot just follow the standard recruiting methods of collecting and reviewing resumes, making a job offer, and plugging in your new hire. Instead, you must think much more broadly and much sooner. To recruit hearts:

• The first step starts at the very conception of the business. Start by founding a company to accomplish an inspiring mission that your team can care about (e.g., saving lives, saving the planet, transforming something important, etc.). Set out to build a company whose mission is significant enough to be worth someone committing their heart to.
  
• Recruit individuals by seeking to learn what makes someone’s heart sing – and work with them to try to make that part of their day-to-day work life. It won’t always be perfect – and there will be less-than-fun aspects of any job as well as hard days sometimes, but fulfilling work in collaboration with great people who are also fulfilled in their own unique ways is worth a lot. When one’s work makes one’s heart sing, it encourages pouring in with passion instead of feeling like it is just a job.
  
• Along the journey, pay attention so you can find opportunities to be appreciative and acknowledge the special things each person contributes. Offer authentic thank yous. This is what makes an engaged team and feels like the antithesis of a cog that is taken for granted

• When you can, adjust the compensation mix to map the things the team member values most. The only way to know someone’s preferences is to take the time to ask, which I try to start at the very beginning when they first join the team and then check in a year or two later what I might be able to adjust their compensation mix to meet their preferences. Some appreciate schedule flexibility, and some want to be more of a potential great outcome (equity), while some need more near-term cash because of their responsibilities and obligations. What you are offering is to engage personally with each to, whenever possible, do the opposite of a big company approach with a customized arrangement while the company is small and more flexible than a bigger organization may be.
  
• Seek to understand each person’s long-term career goals and ambitions, so you can keep an eye out for ways to provide personal career growth opportunities. One of the great things about startups is that there are often problems that need to be solved that do not have a dedicated team yet. That makes it possible for individuals to contribute outside the scope of what they were hired to do and allow them to experiment with solving different types of problems and gain confidence and competencies along the way. I find that team members deeply appreciate it when their leaders go out of their way to develop them with new opportunities to become more versatile team members – and those investments pay dividends in solving today’s problems and when the next startup comes around.

Ultimately, those who thrive in startups are usually seeking to have an impact, grow, and be part of a smaller, more nimble startup team. For them, there is joy in going above and beyond. When they fully engage at a heart level and are seen and appreciated for the unique contributions that only they can make, hopefully, they will generously give their hearts to achieving the mission alongside their equally committed colleagues.