Right? Especially nowadays.

Especially nowadays, I mean we should use that opportunity. So that's what we did despite the fact that it was tricky. And the person said okay, deliver a message to that young applicant that I we have more experienced and etc. But eventually the interesting thing is that exactly that more experienced one was the one which was not the right fit and that the second one which we hired is one of the most prospective ones, one of the best employees currently. So that is quite interesting situation which happened it to us.

What was the position?

It was position targeted to work with existing customers and so.

Okay, because this is very interesting. I actually had this experience myself, hiring 2 developers programming in the exact same language and one was super senior, another one was just the beginner in his career and guess who wrote the whole app from the scratch? Not the senior one. So it always admires me if the person is more motivated and more committed they achieve much more. But what was the case in your company? When did you start noticing that there is a difference and the gap is increasing?

It's again so strange with the hiring, I would say, I mean we were starting to notice it quite soon I mean that is an interesting thing that in a couple of weeks you start to feel either there is going to be a fit or something goes wrong. And that's exactly the case and again sometimes I'm questioning myself. Would it be possible somehow to avoid this situation, maybe we were having too few interviews? Maybe we would need some extra testing or whatever? But you know I was working in a big bank where costs were not an issue, and we're spending a lot of money on hiring mid-level managers, with all possible testing, etc, and I remember my manager was telling me that our success ratio is fifty-fifty, even with those tests, I mean basically when it concerns mid-level management which is a kind of complex position, it's not some technical skills, it's those interpersonal skills, etc. You hire a manager, it's a tricky thing. That success ratio is fifty-fifty with all the testings and all the possible things, so it just proves that it's even not a question of some particulate test, I mean sure, probably test, the more you will do, you'll do testing better probably. But it's good to have a certain number of crucial tests, but still, the complexity is there. And the other aspect is still interesting that despite that fact when you start to work with a person you will realize that fit quite soon. I mean you will realize that just when the person will start working, after a week or 2 you will have that feeling is it a fit or not, or is something going a little bit to bad direction. Or maybe it will be in a way that okay, a person is still okay, maybe the skill level is not that high as what we're expecting or what the impression was but the person is still okay so there might be different things but nothing is better than a few weeks of direct experience of working with a person.

I agree, but what were the first signs that you start noticing?

That probably the person is not a fast learner, that the person is trying to learn, but asking the same things again and again. And not able really to catch up and it's very important that the person would be able to pick with learning, at the same time to be self-disciplined to be able to track where they're good or bad, where they should improve themselves. So really to be the one who is navigating himself or herself for this initial period. The support is needed and so the support is always there, but that capability to learn is very important. In principle, you are starting to feel okay if that person is feeling comfortable in that position or if will it require never-ending mentorship and supervision. So if it will require that supervision constantly well, that's not a good sign, so probably those things. In principle I like it, in startups, it is quite widely spreading, this notion. There are 2 types of people in the work - those which are pianos and those which are kind of your ammunition. And you need both of those types of people in your team basically, you can't count only on the ammunition. But it a little bit sounds like a cynical comparison. But in principle, it is quite correct from the perspective that it very much depends on the position. Sometimes you need people in some positions, you need people who are just good at doing some particular thing and they feel comfortable in doing that particular thing. But in some positions, you need people who are very much self-disciplined, who know the problem, and who are looking for the solution. They might need support but you feel the capability of those persons to navigate themselves in this space, this business, in the environment, to deal with the problems to find all solutions. To look for new problems. Why some things are not working, etc. So when I deal with people I try to define what exactly I expect from the person. I'm looking at how quickly that person is capable to learn and eventually I'm trying to feel is that person is feeling okay in that position, is he really in the right place? From the company perspective and his perspective, if he feels bad if it's not the work which is not okay for him. Then again, it will be a problem. It's a question of time. So probably that's the thing.

But I'm just thinking,  you mentioned a few times capability to learn - is it related to exactly how the person is feeling? Whether they are motivated or feeling that they are at the good environment and just then they thrive and and grow in the career? What do you think about this? What is the capability of learning?

Capability of learning it's also a personal thing. I would split your question into two, one thing is that the more mature the person as personality is, the more he knows what he wants in life. He knows things in which he's good or she's good and where he/she should improve. So it's very difficult to deal with people who are a little bit lost, who are still looking for themselves.They do not know what they want to do in life so we try different things. We all went through that, it's great, but I mean big organizations are very good for that. But when we talk about startup, when we talk about a team of 10 people, where everybody is very much important where each person brings its own vibes, its own skills and everybody depends on each other, I mean it's not the best place both for that person to look for himself and both for the team members to be those mentors who help somebody to find himself. It's very nice and very convenient to work with mature professionals who know what they want and they have both professional skills and those interpersonal skills polished. So from that perspective now the second part of your question was about feeling comfortable and it is important but and it should be like that. It's absolutely we spend too much time at work for that place to be just the place to earn money. Sometimes brits are saying, people from great Britain as I heard " I'm working in order to live". Of course it's not everybody. Yeah, there are a lot of people who are working just to be able afterwards to live, to spend the time on hobbies, to spend the time with a family, on vacation and etc., but it's a little bit sad situation in that case, because I think that we really spend too much time at work just to earn money and then afterwards to be able to live the remaining time which is there because probably not so much time is there after we spend more than half of our conscious life at work, while driving towards work and backwards. So it should be a place where we might realize ourselves, find people to work with, to share experiences with, to learn, to grow and etc. So that's a must. That's a must and especially in startups, in the small teams where it's very dynamic, where it's lots of challenges which is a great part of being in the startup but it's very important to be with the right team.

I think so too. I believe that we spend a lot of time and if we don't see any purpose in that, then it's meaningless, then it's just earning money and people are not able to realize themselves, feel important and to have the purpose in their life. But the situation when you start noticing that the person is not very much even eager to learn and not only just incapable to learn. Did you try to do something about it? Did you try to talk to them?

Yeah, I should remark here. In principle, in these situations it's not only in the person, it's very much on the manager too. I remember me studying MBA and I was very much curious each time. We were studying different cases and the manager was always the guilty one. And that was funny because usually, we're like okay, that one is guilty. I mean there was some kind of a problem and then we were looking okay where is the problem, where is the core of a problem? And we found that it was always in some kind of secondary, in some technical person who was making mistakes but eventually I remember that each time the manager was the one who was the core of a problem. I am also in the same situation here. It's a two-way street. The person was trying to do their best but sometimes that's what happens there is no fit, that the particular position and particular person is not the right fit and then it's very difficult. It's stressful for a person and it's not a good result for the organization and then it's the duty of a manager to solve it as soon as possible and it's a task for both. It's a difficult decision and the manager's duty to solve it. It's a hard talk situation to split with a person, to explain it, to manage the emotional part of that situation. But poor is that manager who is not able to do that. I mean that's a must and that's what we did. I mean we had a very nice and honest conversation with a person and we proposed our support from that perspective, that it was clear that there is no fit between the person and the position, and we split it in a very positive way and I'm very glad about that. And it's a responsibility also on the manager from the perspective that if you wouldn't have hired, maybe the person would find another job which would have been a win-win for that person. So I mean it's also on our side that we somehow decided that there will be a fit. And we hired the person, we created this notion that it should be okay. Of course, the person also decided to join us but the decision was mutual. We also decided it so in that case, that's how we view that. Those types of situations should be solved quickly and less painful for both sides probably.

And what did you learn out of this situation?

A few things. One thing is of one of the easiest lessons is that some people naturally are better at presenting themselves than others; I'm the guy who also assumes, I have a skill that allows me when I was looking for a job to proceed with interviews in a quite good way, I mean for some people it is easier but for some, it is not so easy. Some people are more stressed during that process some are less stressed and stress is affecting the result of each interview even though it's clear that interview it's just a process of hiring. It's not the most important thing -  how you will be dealing with your duties is when you will be in a position. So interview has nothing to do with that. It's hiring. It's a part of the hiring process. So that's one thing - we should try to distinguish. Let's try to understand the person - some might be better at their presentation, some might be worse. Let's try to take away the stress out of our interviews and let's try to understand what that person is like exactly, what skills he has, etc, and interpersonal skills, etc. But as mentioned it's quite a simple thing and I think it's maybe important for some younger startups. They definitely will find out that during their work experience. The other thing is that nothing is better than the actual practice and a few weeks of work is much better than any kind of interview or test in my opinion. Because when you deal with a person for a week or two, you can try to be better than you are for a few hours, but it's very difficult to be better than you are for a few weeks. I think that we as managers have quite sensitive radars while trying to feel person so it will pop up and eventually it's much easier to understand whether the actual person is a fit or not while having actual practical experience with him. Regarding homework - homework is also a good thing, but again, for me, it's always interesting to find the way how a person thinks, not so much what exactly he does but more of how he deals with a problem, how he splits the problem into components and then tries to solve it. So about the homework, it's very good from the perspective that it's about how, not what, you are very much interested in how, much more than what exactly that person will present? Just that in some positions it's quite tricky, it's not so easy to appoint homework. Although exact homework is quite different from what the person will be doing on daily basis.

I agree, but it's still very interesting to compare candidates in general. Because I had many examples but one could be when we were hiring digital marketing person and we asked all the selected candidates to conduct homework, to prepare a task and they could choose any format that they wanted. And of course we asked for the strategy and the numbers how they could be allocated according to each of the channel during the upcoming year and a few candidates actually came up not with Excel table, presenting all the numbers, but with their presentation, PPT file, presenting nice visuals and nice text. You can assess that the person is more creative than the numbers person, right? And in digital marketing we needed numbers then. So it's quite good selection process. It cannot say 100% whether the person will be delivering in that position. But at least you can see the way they are thinking about this.

Yeah, exactly. That's about HOW they're doing it. The very interesting part. The majority of the benefit comes from understanding how they are thinking, and how they look at the problem but my experience is that in all those homework, I mean usually 90% of cases, my expectation was higher than the actual result which we got. Maybe because I had too many expectations, but when you present some homework you still think, you still have some kind of imagination. What I would do in that place, how would I imagine that, and that would contradict the actual result that they present? So again, kind of tricky but it does not anyhow delete the benefit of that. It's a benefit there to see how the person thinks in practice, with this practical task received.

Yeah, well it is tricky because once I had a candidate, a copywriter, and the task was to create an article in English - the candidate asked a friend for help so we hired them and they didn't perform at all, because it was too complicated. So it is quite tricky and of course, it does require a lot of openness from both sides, and when you mentioned this fifty- fifty percent rate of success on hiring. How to be so open-minded and to allow these situations that you hire and it could be that after two weeks you see that there is no match. And yeah, maybe we just split up. How do not regret and not be so tensed up? Because you're kind of investing a lot of time, onboarding in the team and with all the tasks. So how not feel so stressed about the hire and the decision made?

That situation on fifty-fifty was exactly in the bank where I worked and that was quite illustrative. In our case, it's not so black and white. In a way, we still try to understand the person and each one is very individual. So eventually, it's in a way that you have a person, who is not necessarily fitting some ideal vision, but who said that the vision is correct? It's still a person, who has maybe some places he lacks some things but in some places, he is exceeding some things which maybe I didn't have in my vision. So still, it's in a way that, as in this comparison of a soup - you eventually try it and either you like it or not; is it always in a way as I predicted? No, it's not, but that's a complex thing to build a team and each person is very much individual and eventually, you have some kind of result which performing in some individual way. So in my case, what I mean is that we're still a very effective team; now is that team a result of my imagination? No. I think it's a result of the fact that we were growing, we hired people. We somehow avoided those who would be ineffective or those who were not a perfect fit we separated from them quite quickly and we tried to do it in the best possible ways, by minimizing any damage, emotional. But at the same time, those who were the right fit will have the right fit in some individual way. And that is again a very interesting thing, let's say you're hiring a marketing manager, but then you see that he's very important for building the team spirit and you were not expecting, you were not having this checkbox, that you need strong spirit and that person should bring that vibe to the team. No, but eventually that's what it is So you know that's a very interesting journey, to build a company and to grow together with a company.

Great. And to finalise - what would be your advice for other startup founders, having your experience in mind? What is the key takeaway the podcast listeners coud take?

If I may provide some of my personal experience advice, I would say if you start a company, start it with the people who you trust, with whom you have a good vibe. It should not be only professional skills. You should really understand each other, you will go through different times. Good times, bad times and there should be glue between you and your teammates. Emotional glue in order to go through all of those times successfully. There is a very correct proverb for that - we hire for attitude, we train for skills. Golden words I would say. It's always about attitude, always about that and skills are important but it's secondary. At the same time if you're a young company it's better to have mature team members not from age perspective, but from this professional and personal perspective. It would be great if person who has experienced life, who went through good times, through bad times, stressful times, then it's much easier with such a person to build a company because he knows how to deal with his own stress. He knows how to deal with other person's stress, he's not panicking. He knows what he wants in life, what are his priorities and etc. That's very important thing I think. And we as CEO's, we will always have this responsibility to be a pillar for our company, the strongest one. Everybody will be looking at us. How the CEO is behaving, and how he's dealing with stress and problems and etc. But it's good if our team members will be also those strong ones where from time to time we might also look at them and have that support and see that they are in the same way strong, not that we are in some kind of kindergarten, the oldest one, the most experienced and all are just doing what we are asking. I mean it should be team work and it's very nice when people are just professionals with different roles. I mean CEO's in technological company, it's even difficult to say who is more important from perspective. It's a role in which person is performing, I mean he is leading the company. It's some responsibilities which you have, but there are other very important responsibilities. It's good if you deal with professionals and with experienced persons.

I totally agree. I think that in a startup, especially in a smaller one, all the team members are the key people -  from customer support to the CEO, right? Because one could not exist without another one. So it's very important. Great. Thank you Linas so much for your time and for sharing, and thank you to all the listeners. For more podcasts, please visit http://jobrely.com.

Yeah, thank you very much for having me.