For a company, the three most important things for a founder are: finding people, finding money, and finding direction.
All three things are important, but different companies focus on them differently. Focus on the key points based on your own abilities. My own experience is that if you can catch one, it will be one. If you have money, you can use money to recruit people, and if you have direction, you can use projects to recruit people. With a good team, it is easier to make a good project and make money. At the end of the day, it’s people who do the work. When you hire the right people, talent is a company's asset. If you hire the wrong person, that person will become a liability to the company.
I worked in the first company for five years and witnessed its growth from 10 people to 500+ people, and finally back to dozens of people. I think one of the reasons for the decline was rapid expansion and hiring too many inappropriate people. So today we mainly talk about the experience of recruiting people. Divided into four major blocks:
- when to recruit;
- What kind of people to recruit;
- What kind of people cannot be recruited?
- Several misunderstandings in recruiting;
When will we hire people?
Therefore, if the work can be quantified, it is reasonable to develop a recruitment plan based on the specific workload.
For positions with a small workload, my first thought is to let people in existing positions who are not busy work part-time. For example, in many start-up companies, the early front desk, customer service, and administration are all handled by the same person.
For jobs that are light in workload but highly professional. I will first consider whether it can be outsourced. For example, the accounting of many start-up companies is relatively simple, but too professional. The cost of hiring a full-time employee yourself is high. You can consider finding an accounting agency, which may cost a few hundred yuan a month.
For those features that require a lot of work but are one-off. Outsourcing is also recommended. Mainly based on cost considerations. Just like many start-up companies, if they don’t have the money to recruit a technical team to develop apps in the early stage, it would be better to find a market with solutions. You must know that Didi also used outsourcing in the early days, and later switched to its own services when it had money. In the project verification phase, how fast and cost-saving can be achieved.
For those whose jobs are large, there are often. We are just considering recruiting people. The number of people to recruit depends on the workload. Let me give you an example, if you compare people to cups and workload to water. A cup can be filled with up to 1L of water. If the workload of this position is 5L, how many people should you hire? Calculated, it can be completed by 5 people, but in reality you need to recruit at least 6 people. Because people cannot work at full capacity. Have redundancy. Generally, it is more appropriate to arrange one person's workload to about 80%.
Of course, the workload in reality changes dynamically, and you cannot estimate it based on the workload during the busiest period. Just like a driveway, you need 8 lanes to keep it open during the busiest times, but 2 lanes are enough during the least busy times. Just make sure that most conditions are normal. For example, build a 4-lane road.
Putting this scenario into work, the organization's response should be to require team members to work more overtime when they are busy and take more vacations and rest when they are free. Many companies can use overtime time to compensate for rest, which is a more appropriate approach.
If the workload cannot be quantified, we can also recruit people based on the quantified value created, that is, how much income can be increased if I hire one more person. These two methods of judgment are the most practical.
Of course, many times there is no way to quantify it. For this kind of unquantifiable work, my experience is that you can ask questions to guide yourself in thinking about whether to recruit people. Think clearly about why, what, and how before recruiting people.
First, we need to understand why we are hiring. Generally, before we recruit people, we will first define the job responsibilities of the recruitment position. This position is designed to solve a problem or accomplish a goal.
Secondly, we need to know what kind of people to recruit. What kind of person can solve the problems we have right now. How much am I willing to pay and what results do I expect?
Finally, how to find this person. And once you find it, how do you measure the value of your work?
If the answers to the above are clear, then you can start hiring people. Otherwise, even if you recruit people, you may not be able to solve your problem. Hiring the wrong person is more costly.
What kind of people are you recruiting?
Once you understand why you are recruiting people, you can generally decide what kind of people you want to recruit. The certainty I am talking about here means that you can write down the portrait of this recruitment position like a user portrait. For details, please refer to this performance appraisal article . Quantify your candidates through multi-dimensional metrics to avoid subjective bias in the recruitment process.
For some characteristics that do not require assessment or cannot be quantified, we can use them as bonus points and write them in the job portrait. For example
- An honest and trustworthy person. How to tell if a candidate has it? Ask for details, ask about things it doesn't know, and see if he can talk nonsense.
- I like to write something. By reading the articles he writes on the Internet, you can generally understand what kind of person he is.
- A self-motivated person. People with strong drive will rely on themselves to achieve their goals when encountering difficulties. How to tell? See what difficulties he encountered and how he solved them.
- Are you full of curiosity about various things in life? People without curiosity will not take the initiative to learn about new things. On the contrary, they are curious.
After the portrait is drawn, the key is how to identify it?
The first is to prove it with facts. Obtaining the facts depends on asking for details. Through the details, you can judge whether the other party has done something;
The second one relies on subjective feelings. Whether a person's thinking logic is clear and whether his professional ability is strong will give you a clearer feeling during the communication process.
What kind of people cannot be recruited?
The most basic job of a manager is to learn to select, employ, and train people. However, we must realize that not all people can be cultivated. If these three types of people are removed, the difficulty of management will be greatly reduced.
The first type: people with unhealthy personalities.
This kind of person may have a somewhat extreme personality due to some previous experiences. For example, the following situations are
1. I feel that the whole world owes me, and others should treat me well. If you treat me badly, that's your problem.
2. I feel that if something is done wrong, it is someone else’s problem. Even if I am wrong, there is a reason.
3. Full of negative energy.
This kind of person is easy to identify as long as you have been in close contact with him for a while. It is often this kind of person who stirs up trouble in the company.
The second type: people with a non-serious attitude.
This type of person cannot solve complex problems, and when they encounter problems, they will not think that it is a problem of their own abilities. But I feel like I shouldn’t do it myself. Moreover, work attitude is the most contagious. Newcomers who come in can easily be led astray by such old people.
To identify this type of person, just look at the quality of his work. People who are not serious often make small mistakes, and they will still make them even if you remind them.
The third type: people who are unprofessional.
The so-called professionalism is the kind of person who encounters problems and finds ways to solve them. Those who cannot solve problems but only raise them and complain about them are unprofessional. Unprofessional people will not only fail to grow themselves, but will also rarely help improve the team.
Compared with identifying who is worthy of training, identifying who cannot be retained is more important to the company. You might say that in the eyes of powerful management, there is no one who can and cannot be used. Because he can see the good in everyone and magnify it. But this art of employing people is too difficult.
Several misunderstandings about recruiting people
1. When recruiting people, be careful not to ask for speed, and rather be short-term than indiscriminate.
It’s not a lot for managers to spend half their working time recruiting.
2. Recruit people because there are targets.
Especially in some companies with fixed lines, as a leader, even if there is nothing to do below, you still have to recruit people. There are not many people below, so can I still be considered a leader?
3. Because there is no one in the position, we need to recruit people.
There is no one in the position, and there is no need to recruit people. In the early days of starting a business, many positions have few tasks, such as front desk and administration. One person can work in multiple positions, which is also good for employees' personal growth. If you have the opportunity to take a job rotation, be sure to try it. We have talked about empathy before. Only by understanding the other person's work can we truly empathize.
4. I want to solve all problems by recruiting people.
The company's management problems, organizational structure problems, and project delay problems should not all be solved by recruiting people.
For example, what we see in the company is that employees are working overtime every day, so they need to recruit people. But in fact, we have to judge whether there are many periodic things. It may be the peak season in the industry, so there is a lot of work during this period. This kind of periodic work can be solved through overtime or outsourcing. If you work overtime, you can be paid overtime or take time off, which most employees can understand. If you are recruiting people, it will be difficult once the peak season is over.
If you have a lot of work for a long time, your first priority should be to improve efficiency. The more people there are in a team, the worse the effect of recruiting people to solve problems. There is a lot of work, is it really a lot? Or is there something wrong with the way everyone works and is wasting all their time? Or is it a demand management issue? Made a lot of useless functions? If you want to do everything, recruiting people will not solve the problem.
Finally, I want to explain that everyone's experience is related to their work experience. Different companies will have different playing methods. In some popular industries, what is required is speed, and recruiting people must be done vigorously without fear of making mistakes. If you hire the wrong people, you will only lose costs. If you don’t hire people or hire people slowly, the project will die.