Regardless of how big your budget and project scope are, each team member’s expertise and experience will play a crucial role in the success of your startup. And while we all dream of working only with the best, know that not every assignment and position demands for the finest and brightest.
A wise entrepreneur knows how to choose the right people that best fit their team and brand. So much so, this hiring talent helps determine your chances to optimize and reduce costs while also upping your likelihood of guaranteed small business success. If you’re about to build a startup or are in the middle of pooling applicants, consider asking the following questions when screening talent.
How accomplished are you in your expertise?
Think about seasoned talents as consultants and mentors. Not only can you expect these people to ace a task, but you can also count on them to help you arrive at sound decisions along the way. Startup success doesn’t happen overnight, and you’re bound to ask yourself more and more questions as you continue taking on your journey.
Ask yourself if the people you’re about to onboard are those you’re willing to take advice from. Can you trust them? If so, why? Furthermore, if you’re about to hire someone to spearhead a department you know very little about, you’re going to need that someone to not just do a great job in checking off to-do lists, but also inform you what these to-do lists are.
Minor errors accumulate almost instantaneously and you could be losing a good amount of cash if you’re not careful. This is why it’s a clever idea to hire experienced industry players, as they’re more likely to come up with advisable solutions. In addition, working only with veteran team players on the onset of your startup can prove to be more cost-efficient over time.
Nonetheless, if you’re looking to fill a role you have great knowledge on, perhaps choosing a less experienced applicant with the most potential to excel is suggested. The art of human resources can be political and complex. Listen to your gut, but don’t overspend when it isn’t necessary.
Are you exploring or building?
A triumphant tech startup is an agency that’s validated a business model that bridges a gap for consumers who merit from the solution. As with many things in science, validation is proven through experimentation and exploration. In the beginning stages of a startup, entrepreneurs usually decide to follow one of two or a fusion of both strategies to find out which is more sustainable.
The first approach to validation calls for combining manual work with customizable tools to establish a solution that quickly accomplishes a task. For instance, you could easily create a website landing page and an app prototype using some of today’s innovative and advanced no-code tools like bubble.io.
Although an expert team player can help you design your strategy and assess your validation tests in a way that lets you gain valuable foresight, you don’t always need a tenured professional to create a straightforward prototype. This is a scenario where spending more money in a mentor can help you in areas where you aren’t experienced, especially if you can’t afford the cost of employing a tenured professional to do the job.
In fact, depending on the business model, idea, and industry, going this route can help you minimize initial costs until you find a design strategy that’ll help justify and authenticate your app concept.
On the end of the stick, a prototype doesn’t necessarily have to function optimally and look spectacular as long as it gathers user insights and solves the problem. In fact, many brave tech leaders skip launching a prototype and immediately create a solid product instead. This is riskier because many business-minded developers simply bet on the idea and build what they can in the hopes of it taking off. Still, there isn’t technically wrong with this, granted that one has sufficient data to back them up.
In this scenario, working with practiced professionals presents a higher chance of being cost-efficient in that they already know what works and what doesn’t. Needless to say, going this route spares you from the costs of continuous testing. When you choose this route but with less experienced team members, your chances of accumulating technical debt are higher.
This is why working with a creative team of developers is integral. When screening applicants, determine if they’re still exploring what methods work well for them or if they’re ready to build.
How complicated is your product?
Imagine trailblazing your app of an idea only to find out that it’s buggy and easily hackable. Like financial and healthcare apps, some products demand premium specialization and expertise to ensure no trace of compromise ensues.
To conclude, incompetence will always be overtaken by experience as this gives you peace of mind, regardless of which stage you are in your startup. Nonetheless, based on your idea, strengths, weaknesses, and product difficulty, there is enough room in the beginning stages of your startup that allows you to work with industry neophytes to help you assess your ideas.
Are you building a tech team that’s out to create an app? We can help you! Give us a call, and we’ll sprinkle some of our IT magic.
