Are you Hiring a Winning Team?

Business Excellence Series Title - 3

Once an organization has set up its basic HR processes and defined the relevant organization design, the next key aspect to focus on is hiring and retaining a talented and motivated team. Keep reading to learn how a SME or start-up can ensure they hire the right talent to build a winning team.

Organizations have to keep on reviewing their HR processes required for effective functioning and delivering desired results. The dilemma of viewing HR processes as an investment or a cost needs to be addressed prudently.

The top HR priority for a start-up or an SME trying to scale up will be to ensure that it has an optimal Organization Design. You may go through complete article on Organization Design – Is it good to be Flat?

The next people related aspect of utmost importance for success of any organization is hiring a winning team. Attracting and Retaining talent is an enormous challenge for all organizations in this high mobility era, more so for start-ups and SMEs. The organizations must take systematic steps in a focused manner, to address critical issues related to talent acquisition. The article raises vital questions that need to be suitably addressed to build a winning team.

Do you have a compelling Employee Value Proposition?

The talent from best institutions mostly dreams of taking up jobs with the top 100 or 500 companies in a particular country or globally. This kind of mindset creates a huge barrier for smaller companies in attracting the best talent.

However, the good news is that the situation is changing and this young, bright talent has started looking away from big corporates to smaller entities for starting their career. This has happened as some of the start-up jobs which were perceived as high risk a few years ago, have now become premium like FreshDesk, Redbus, Inmobi, Zomato and so on.

At the initial stage, these are naturally high risk options for professionals and the expectation is of superior rewards in terms of quick learning, faster growth, opportunity to handle larger responsibilities, more empowerment, and bigger financial gains. Accordingly, every time a talented person takes a decision to join a start-up or SME, in place of options available with large corporates, they are looking for an Employee Value Proposition (EVP), that clearly addresses biggest query in his mind, that is, “What is in it for me?”

It is critical to craft out EVP of the organization, keeping in view the interests of prospective as well as existing employees. While crafting the EVP, the focus of start-ups is more on attracting talent, whereas other organizations keep equal weightage to existing employees, and try to address both aspects - attracting as well as retaining talent. EVP needs to cover all financial, non-financial, tangible and intangible benefits, which an (prospective) employee can expect in return for investing his skills and time to deliver expected results for the organization. While this could be a long list of benefits, the focus has to be decided based on the target group and their expectations, which effectively answers the key question “What is in it for me?”.

Are you hiring Complementary Skills?

Initially, start-ups will have a small team, which needs to be built up progressively as the business grows. With smaller teams, it is critical to get people with complementary skills, rather than overlapping capabilities. This helps in minimizing cost as well as conflicts by ensuring that everyone is working in their respective areas of expertise without much interference and complete ownership.

The exercise needs to start with the entrepreneur himself by identifying own areas of strength and hiring people to complement him in other areas required for the success of the business. For instance, if the entrepreneur comes from a manufacturing background, then he will prefer hiring sales and finance persons to complement him and then go for next level experts on manufacturing as the project advances. The organization has to be flat initially and then expand horizontally as well as vertically in a planned and progressive manner.

Are you looking at Soft Skills?

In most cases, the focus of organizations is on technical and functional skills of the candidates while assessing their role fit. Although these are critical aspects, studies have shown that in most situations, soft skills turn out to be even more important. The Wall Street Journal found that 92% of nearly 900 surveyed executives said soft skills were equally important or more important than technical skills, yet 89% said they have a “very or somewhat difficult” time finding employees with those soft skills. Similarly, research from Harvard university shows that 85% of job success comes from soft skills and only 15% from technical skills.

It is therefore critical for start-ups and SMEs to ensure that selection processes include assessment of soft skills like motivation, work style, communication, agility, collaboration, and initiative, along with technical and functional skills. These attributes enable employees to engage in meaningful interactions with others and display better team work, which acts as a catalyst for delivering ambitious targets.

The mindset of the team members in start-ups should align with the fact that demands in such organizations are grueling, things really move at a fast pace and challenges are thrown at every corner. It is definite that such situations may lead to frustration in employees, if they do not appreciate these aspects as an inherent part of the growth process and prepare adequately to handle them. Accordingly, these aspects need to be kept in mind during the assessment of candidates to ensure the right alignment of expectations.

Are you overselling the role?

It is important to identify “right-fit” candidates and not hire “overqualified” people, who may get quickly dissatisfied with the actual role after joining. In many cases, it has been seen that the search executives establishing initial contact with the candidate, have a tendency to oversell the job, just to attract the best talent, and provide many inflated aspects about the role, structure, expectations, and challenges. This causes an avoidable gap in the expectations of the incumbent and leads to disengagement at a very early stage after joining. Transparency is the key to getting the right people and any “sugar coating” may result in post-joining disaster.

The recruiter shared with Srinivas that he is being considered for the role of Sales Manager to oversee business of two territories and will be leading a three-member team. He went through the selection process with that in mind but after joining he was made in charge of a new territory to establish a company product there, as an individual contributor. While during the selection process of an organization having multiple openings, the final posting is decided based on the capabilities of individuals assessed during these interactions, but an expectation mismatch can demoralize the person right at joining time, which turns out to be very counterproductive.

Hiring the wrong people is the fastest way to undermine a sustainable business. - Kevin J. Donaldson

Are you identifying misfits quickly?

It is not always possible to have 100% success rate in terms of selection. It has been observed that in today’s world of where immense resources are available at the disposal of everyone, candidates are able to make very impressive CVs and also fare quite well in interviews, giving an impression of a perfect candidate for the role. However, soon after joining, it is noticed that there is a problem, either related to capability or culture fit or some much needed soft skills.

It mostly happens because the technical and functional skills are still judged by most managers in an objective manner and most of the time, it turns out to be correct. However, when it comes to soft skills or assessing cultural fit, these aspects are not done with finesse, leading to post-selection issues.

Rightly so, managers try to give time to such candidates and expect them to get aligned with the role requirements, based on feedback during the period. But if it is not working out, the same needs to be judged as quickly as possible. In such a situation, it will be in the interest of the individual as well as the organization to reach a decision of parting ways, without wasting much time. Organizations should also be prepared to offer reasonable separation packages to these candidates, as carrying them would turn out to be more costly to them. Since the person has already been uprooted from his previous job, it becomes the responsibility of the organization to help him out-place or offer an equitable separation package.

“When I find an employee who turns out to be wrong for the job, I feel it’s my fault because I made the decision to hire him.” - Akio Morita

Are you hiring friends and family?

In a start-up or SME, there is a tendency to engage friends or family members or their references, without objectively assessing their suitability, capability, and fit. Studies have shown that this becomes very counterproductive and has been one of the top reasons for failures of many ventures.

You may have a very good intention of helping a family member by involving him in your start-up venture, even by compromising on desired capabilities for the role, but with such actions, the organization culture starts building up, where relationships take precedent over capabilities.

Considering the closeness of the person with the promoter, his/her expectations may also turn out to be very different in terms of positioning, authority and other similar aspects, within the team. This situation becomes even more sensitive when feedback is needed to be shared and receptivity gets constrained due to relationships.

The larger team also views these aspects with suspicion and may sense favoritism and lack of fairness, thereby adversely impacting the work environment. When personal relationships start overshadowing professional interactions and commitments, the organization interests get severely compromised.

Conclusion

Building a winning team starts from hiring the right people for every role and then moving on to retention and high-performance delivery. The high performance delivery of ambitious outcomes from the team can only be achieved, if the initial steps of acquiring right-fit talent are executed in an effective manner. It is therefore important that all such crucial aspects of crafting a powerful EVP, giving due consideration to soft skills during the selection process, avoiding overselling and being transparent, quickly correcting mistakes by separation in a smooth manner, along with decisions on hiring relatives and family members, are carried out efficiently.

Are you ready to make these critical changes for hiring a winning team?

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