Building a strong, cohesive team on a tight budget is crucial for startup founders. It’s essential to build a team with a purpose.

A few years ago, at my 9-to-5 job, we noticed our developers were context-switching between development, requirement gathering, stakeholder updates, and support tasks.

To eliminate this issue, we created a new position to handle the non-technical activities, allowing developers to focus on coding.

A new person who would handle customer interactions, requirement gathering, light project management, triaging support issues, and creating educational content.

We called this new position “Application Specialist” and put significant efforts into finding the right person for this new position.

Our hiring criteria:

1. We needed someone with strong communication, listening, and organizational skills.
2. We took a balanced approach, focusing on skills, attitude, adaptability, and learning abilities.

After interviewing many candidates, we hired a fresh college graduate who was multi-talented and capable of growing with the position.

This new hire allowed our developers to avoid expensive context-switching and focus on coding.

This is an example of how we identified a problem and intentionally solved it by bringing the right person.

As a startup founder, you might face similar situations. Here’s how you can apply learnings from my experience to your startup:

1. Think about the specific problem you need to address.
2. Carefully craft a job description around that problem.
3. Focus on the activities required to solve the problem without worrying about exactly how they will be performed.
4. Then, find the right person to do that job—someone with the right skills, adaptability, culture fit, and attitude. Seek problem solvers who thrive in dynamic environments and can wear multiple hats as the job evolves.

You always want your key team members to focus on high-leverage activities where they add the most value.

Before hiring a new person, review your current team and brainstorm the problem you are trying to solve.

Then, create a new position that helps you optimize the cost, effectiveness and ROI.

Remember, every hire should be a strategic decision to solve specific problems and drive your startup forward.

How do you or your team manage hiring in your startup? Share your thoughts below!

Your friend,
Vinod