We all end up in a situation when we are required to hire someone. It might be to grow your business or to replace someone who has decided to move on her career.
There is already lot of good advice on hiring best practices. However, I would like to share with you three things that i look for in a candidate before deciding to hire her.
- Passion: The first thing that I look for in a person is passion. The passion could be for any topic, not necessarily their jobs or roles in the past but for any topic. I have realized that it is much easier to help people find passion in work, if they have experienced passion elsewhere.
- Friends: The question that I ask before making any hiring decision is will he make a good friend for me and the team. The other thing that I try and find out is her circle of friends. This tells me about their social skills and ability to go along with people.
- Learning: The last thing that I look for when hiring is their openness to learning and exploring new stuff. The world we live in is changing so dramatically, that keeping up and ahead of these changes will require us all to be open to exploring, learning and occasionally failing. Have they failed at anything? Have they learnt anything new in the past few years?
If I find that the answers to all these questions are in the positive, I go ahead and hire her. Everything else can be taught.
What do you look for in people before you hire them?
This post has been adapted from my book – Your Startup Mentor
