初创公司先聘请谁？——用“细胞分裂法”招揽人才丨双语

原文作者：Roy Bahat

译者：李哲

关键词：初创公司，招聘

核心提示：在初创公司的前期招聘工作中，传统的招聘经验常常失效。那么，初创公司应该先聘请谁？本文教你用“细胞分裂法”招揽人才。

初创公司的前期招聘工作，需要突破传统的商业逻辑。

传统的招聘经验告诉我们，永远要找那些可以弥补你短板的人。“我擅长产品和技术，欠缺销售技能，那就聘请一个出色的销售人员吧！”

这种逻辑可以理解。因为创始人一开始事必躬亲，当时间不够用的时候，自然希望状况得到缓解。在这种情况下，聘请那些擅长做自己不熟悉工作的人才，不是很好的选择吗？

于是，付出时间和精力找到了自以为对的人，但结果往往事与愿违。“我销售做得比他好，但我不懂销售！”

“聘请那些掌握新技能的人才”，这一方法的问题在于：

1、创始人往往擅长做早期初创工作，所以在首批员工招聘中，可能出现逆向选择（除非你很了解他们，他们是因为你才加入；或者你很有名，他们加入公司是因为你的声誉；或者他们对你要解决的问题充满热情；或者你给他们联合创始人的职位；再或是你很走运）。

2、创始人做任何的工作，都有许多先天的优势。因为你天生了解初期所有的工作，有多重身份融于一身的强烈动力，再加上你自身优秀的综合素质。

3、你很难对一种自己从来没有实践过的技能进行评估。比如你想找一个专科医生，除了相信其他人的推荐之外，你没有别的选择。

因此，另一个可能的选择是，创始人率先去做这些工作，哪怕只用一小部分时间。那么，怎样才能做到这一点呢？

首先要释放创始人最重要的资源——时间。许多创始人不去找虚拟管家处理琐事，而优先考虑聘请销售主管，这是不明智的。因为你的时间要比其他任何人的时间都要宝贵，所以应该用一种最经济的方式把你的时间释放出来。没错，所有伟大的创始人都不得不亲自处理一些琐事。可是问题在于，让太多的创始人引以为傲的是，他们承担了其他人的责任。殊不知，他们做的，是最没有价值的工作。

其次，如果你是一个技术创始人，在初始阶段，雇一个工程师，以便于你专注于做销售，比雇一个销售人员效果更好。因为公司要想在某个领域做得出色，往往需要创始人亲自为之。因此，创始人也应该是公司第一个销售人员，第一个内容营销人员，以及其他关键领域的第一人。

我们可以称之为“细胞分裂法”——因为首先你要聘请人才来承担你正在做的工作。

一旦你试着掌握了新技能，即便一开始感觉很别扭，你会更加确定什么样的人才是合适的，公司的状况往往也会变得更好。

那么，什么时候才应该聘请掌握新技能的专家呢？

1、  你对这项技能很熟悉，对你想要的人才有清醒的认识。

2、  这是一项你永远也学不会，而团队又需要的亚技能，比如RF工程。

3、  对公司来说是必要的，但不是那么关键的技能，例如财务和人力资源。

4、  你的公司足够大、足够有影响力、足够富有，可以不借助运气就能招到优秀的人才。

用“细胞分裂法”招揽人才，即聘请那些擅长你所擅长领域的人才，然后交付给他该领域的工作，这样你就可以专注于磨炼公司需要的下一项技能。

英文原文：

Early hiring, yet another area where startups often reverse Muggle business logic. Conventional hiring wisdom says to add people who excel at important skills you lack. “I’m great at product and engineering. We need sales, though, so let’s hire a fantastic salesperson!”

It’s understandable. Founders start out doing everything. As you run out of time in your day, it’s natural to want relief. Wouldn’t it be nice to bring on a person who excels at the things you find unfamiliar? So you hire someone to do that new job — sales, marketing, community management, something. Magic!

You spend a while searching for just that special person, and then… disappointment. “I can outsell this person and I don’t even know how to sell!”

The problems with the “hire someone who brings new skills” thing are that:

1.People who are good at doing early startup stuff often (sensibly!) prefer to start companies — so there can be some adverse selection in first hires (unless you know them already and they join for you, you’re famous and they join for your reputation, they’re personally passionate about the problem you are solving, you are offering co-founder levels of ownership, or you get lucky).

2.Founders have so many innate advantages doing any job that you’ll get frustrated when you realize the (supposed) expert has no clothes. Even a portion of your time spent doing the new thing can be powerful, given your innate knowledge of everything in the startup, the intense motivation of your fused identity, and (let’s face it) your general founder greatsomeness.

3.It’s hard to assess a skill you’ve never practiced (it’s like getting a specialist doctor, you pretty much have no choice but to trust the referrals of others).

So, maybe you should do the job, at first, instead. Even if it’s only with a part of your time. How might you do that?

Solve the problem of freeing up the startup’s single most valuable resource — your time. Many founders will look for a head of sales before they’ll hire a virtual admin to handle minutia. That seems silly: your time is more valuable to the company than anyone else’s, so you should free it up in the least expensive way possible. Yes, all great founders have to handle some of the scut themselves — everyone is in the boat together. But too many founders pride themselves on shouldering the load for everyone else by doing the least valuable work.

If you’re a technical founder, hiring an engineer so you can focus on sales might be better than hiring a salesperson (at first). The founder often has to do a new job herself for the company to be great at it. The founder has to be the first salesperson, the first content marketer, the first X in many essential areas. (There is, of course, the risk of spreading yourself thin at the expense of doing your One Thing with excellence — as with all things startup, exceptions are the rule and you have to use your judgment.)

Call this the cell division approach — because you first hire people to take on some of what you are already doing.

Once you’ve tried to learn the new skill, even if it feels awkward at first, you’ll more confidently hire a better fit for the job. The company will — more often than not — be better off.

To upgrade yourself, find an advisor who can coach you (or maybe one of your investors can do this, as we do from time to time in areas we feel we know well). Get a project-based contractor so you can stub your toe leading the work before you make a permanent hire, even if their work is mediocre.

When should you, eventually, hire the expert in some new skill?

• When you’ve already been doing it and now have a confident feel for exactly what you want.
• When it’s a crazyodd subspecialty (e.g., RF engineering) that you just know you can never learn, and you need to have on the team.
• When it’s actually not that critical a skill to the company, even if it is necessary (why startups outsource finance and HR in the early days).
• When you get big, famous, or rich enough to hire someone extraordinary without needing luck.

Consider hiring by cell division — bringing in a next person good at the same things you are good at, and handing her some of your work in that area — so that you can focus on practicing the next skill the company needs.

生成海报

免责声明：本网站内容主要来自原创、合作伙伴供稿和第三方自媒体作者投稿，凡在本网站出现的信息，均仅供参考。本网站将尽力确保所提供信息的准确性及可靠性，但不保证有关资料的准确性及可靠性，读者在使用前请进一步核实，并对任何自主决定的行为负责。本网站对有关资料所引致的错误、不确或遗漏，概不负任何法律责任。任何单位或个人认为本网站中的网页或链接内容可能涉嫌侵犯其知识产权或存在不实内容时，应及时向本网站提出书面权利通知或不实情况说明，并提供身份证明、权属证明及详细侵权或不实情况证明。本网站在收到上述法律文件后，将会依法尽快联系相关文章源头核实，沟通删除相关内容或断开相关链接。