Okay, and for how long did all these lies last? When did you notice that this is only a lie?

I think it took one or two weeks. To understand that. And we splitted the ways. So from that on, we understood that sometimes you cannot just rely on your instict and judgement, and we started to explore the ways how to make hiring process more predictable. First of all, I understood that in the interview you can only get 30 % of information. Another 30 % you can get from CV and some external sources, some job experience and so on. And then 15% or something you can get from various kinds of intelect and psychological tests, and then you need to opinions from your teammates or collegues, because different people see different things, and then still will all these steps there is a place for a mistake. Because there's always room for mistake, and sometimes a person who wants to join the company, he/she can lie to himself/herself. And then when you lie to yourself it's very easy to tell that to others. If the person is not sincere, you can understand that, but if the person is not sure of what he wants to do, no matter how hard you work there's a place for an error. But we try a lot to eliminate as much as possible.

But still, I believe it's inevitable, right? Sometimes you cannot just check everything and you miss some kind of information. And what other cases have you had? So this one was very extraordinary I believe. If you have 1000 people in a team, maybe some other, like skills mismatch or cultural mismatch?

I hired in my life 100 or more people, just by myself or maybe even more. I cannot count it. So many mistakes were made on the way. But the main mistake is always when you are in a hurry. The most common mistake, when you are in a hurry, you see all pros and cons. Even if you are 100% sure that the person is a fit, there is still 30% of possibility that you are not right. But if you have doubts, it's like 70% of possibility that it's a bad decision. When you are in a hurry, you lower down your standard and then you say, "okay but I have only these options right now and I really need to hire somebody", so the probability that you are making a mistake is 70%. So basically if you feel that something is wrong, it's enough not to hire, you are not judging person that he's somehow bad, he still can go and find work somewhere else, maybe in other teams and not in your company. But if there is a feeling that it's not a match, I think there's a very big probability that it's not.

How to control yourself? Well, we're working at startups, we are always in a hurry and always desperate, right? How to know that, "well, I need to calm down, to look for more candidates" , if you don't have time, if you need a person to join the team as soon as possible?

What we are experimenting with right now is a bar raiser. It's a concept described in the book "Working Backwards". It's introduced by Amazon and I think it's very good if you invite somebody who is from another team, but that person has the experience of hiring great people and is able to distinguish and read people well, and then he should have a veto right. Basically to say no, it's not a match for our team, and it's not the person who wants to hire, but somebody else. If you have that opportunity you can limit the number of mistakes you make - that somebody who doesn't have interest in hiring, but who is guarding you against the cultural not fits.

This is interesting. But how is that other person, if especially from another team, from another area, for example, from the marketing team and you're hiring a developer? How could you trust that their decision is better than yours?

So you need to find the right person, basically and I heard stories when there is a startup and you invite your friend, maybe from other team or even from other company. He can check and see - what do you think, if it's a right CTO for me or not? So you can rely basically not only on your skills but maybe on your friends as well. If you are a small company. If you are bigger, then probably you can find internal people who has this good judgment.

Okay, this is great. For how long have you been experimenting with this?

Maybe 4 years, but the thing is that we do it, and sometimes we stop doing it and sometimes start again. So right now, we're in a phase where we're strict with that and don't repeat mistakes. We said, let's make it obligatory.

Nice. I've never heard about this before, so it's a very nice thing to try at least and to see what kind of results you can get. And at the same time, you're not so much in a hurry because you're following the processes. So you can make the decision more openly. Okay, great, maybe some other cases and situations hiring hundred people? When was maybe not the most personal situation you had, but something that was complicated to deal with after, maybe when you found out that there is a mismatch?

So hiring is easy. Firing is much more difficult. And then so it's better to hire right. And then you don't need to fire. Because it's always very hard to separate from a team member. It's always personal and it's never a pleasant experience. So that's why hiring is such an important thing, you can avoid a lot of pain if you do it right. And still, you will do a lot of mistakes, but the amount of energy you need to invest in hiring - you understand that only after you need to fire somebody. So in my experience, it's very hard, but you need to do it to progress. Because sometimes you like a person and have a friendly relationship, but still you need to weigh different things and make this hard decision to separate or demote your teammates if they're not able to do the job well. The company needs to grow and the customers need to be served well. It's always hard, it's never easy.

Yeah, it's only business, right? But when it comes to people then everything is personal. Do you have any strategy on firing people? How do you approach these type of situations?

The strategy is being open to yourself and not lying to yourself. Because it's never a yes or no, I believe in people that they can progress and they can change and they can get new skills and try again. People are changing and they are getting experience and especially when the company is growing fast. For example, it was 100 people company and you see one year forward it's 1000, or it was 5 person startup and then you have 30. And it's a bit different skills to run a team with 5 persons and to run a team of 150. You need to get new skills and if you're just starting, that means you need to learn a lot on the way somebody can do it, learn super fast and somebody needs more time. And the company cannot wait. So my judgment is always open to yourself, don't like to yourself. To say, "okay let's wait a little bit and everything will change, he/she can learn". But then, in reality, it's a conversation with yourself. And it's not easy. My main takeaway is that you need to find out if you're lying to yourself or not.

But still, when talking about the strategy - how do you behave in these situations? Are you trying to show the person that they're not doing well, and maybe another company or another role would be a better fit? Or do you just say straightforward, because it's just business? Or it's case by case?

Okay, so my personal view is always be open to another person because you respect him/her. If you are not open, you cannot expect a change. So first of all, you should tell what are your expectations and it's a hard conversation and then either you see some change or not, and then you talk again. But in general, it's very important to value what a person did and then to understand this is a human being with feelings and with a lot of possibilities. Maybe they will be very successful somewhere else, on a different team or in a different role so you have no right to judge the person on his abilities, but you have a right to choose your team. So this is my choice, I have a right as a manager to choose my team and to choose with whom I am working but that doesn't mean that I have a right to choose the other person's destiny, he can create destiny on his own.

Exactly, very well said. You cannot get disappointed and angry with that person, right? It's just not working.

Yeah, and I think sports in general is a good comparison. If you see it in professional sports, like football or basketball, players are changing teams, but they are making exceptional careers. That doesn't mean that if somebody was not accepted to one team that he/she won't be successful in another. It depends on the player, if he made a judgment, if he learned something from that story.

And Hostinger is a global company, correct? Do you have offices elsewhere, not only in Lithuania?

Yeah, we have about 600 people working all around the world.

Nice. So do you see the difference between the countries or the regions in terms of hiring or firing people?

I think it's a very interesting topic, in reality, there are some differences, but these differences are minor, I would say because in general there are different kinds of people everywhere. So for example, with our colleagues from Indonesia, I had a conversation some time ago, and he said, "But look, Arnas, your people, in the Lithuanian office, we cannot compare ourselves to them, so why?" But then you realized, that they used to accept everybody, who applied; but we select 1 of 100, we select and if the person has the right attitude, if he's a fit if he will like our company, and so on. If you just lower your standard, you can very easily say that okay, there are no people. But if for example in the same Indonesia, if you really working hard to select your teammates, you can find amazing talented people everywhere, all around the world.

Yeah, true and the environment itself? Has it ever triggered you or dealing with some kind of the situations, or actions or maybe people behavior? Because different mentality, just different environments you have to be in, right?

Okay, so I had a very good story about that. Same from a conversation with our Indonesian country manager, he said, "Arnas, you cannot demand from us to work like Europeans, it's Asia, and we cannot work so fast", I said, look, but you don't need to be like Europeans, Europe is slow, everybody is like rich and fat, they are not in a hurry. You can work like an Asian, like Japanese. And he started to laugh instantly. There are of course cultural things, but at the same time, if you want to perform and work efficiently, I think it's universal around the world. It's a business language. It's a business mindset. It's a results-oriented mindset. It's modern management practices and these are universal. And it doesn't have anything to do with culture, because to my understanding, culture is the music you listen to, the food you eat, and what you do in your spare time. But if you go to work, you want to deliver results; certain ways are effective, and certain which are not. Life is changing and companies are evolving, and management practices are evolving, we have a lot of science about human beings, psychology, and so on, you apply the newest inventions and it works. And if you apply something from the old times, like feudalism ruling, it's not so effective.

So do you believe that for example, management or business innovations are so widely spread, globally adapted that you cannot feel the diversity anymore at work?

I think there is diversity and for example, the United States or Silicon Valley. In the same Silicon Valley, you can find the super companies that are taking over the world and the biggest companies in the world. For example, Tesla and Google and Amazon, and Netflix, and at the same time, you can find very old-school corporates which have a super bad culture, they are not able to hire good people. And in the same time, you can find amazing companies in Israel in Lithuania, Vilnius, Estonia, in Indonesia, like unicorns. So I think it's more about the company, not about the country. It doesn't matter - you want to be successful or not, this is the question. You want to achieve something in your life, or you want to spend time, get a salary and that's it. So geography doesn't matter anymore. It's a matter of mindset - do you want some results, do you want to achieve something, or just go with the flow?

Okay, great. And you mentioned today that you had many failures. What would you advise to other hiring managers and recruiters when they fail? How to not get disappointed with yourself, and still stay strong and hope that the next hire will be successful?

Okay, so I think failure is just learning. I think the best thing you can do is not to repeat the same failure. If you make a failure, make sure to understand where you failed. So for example, if we hired somebody, invested a lot of time and after a year he quit. So basically it's both ways you can separate and you invest a lot of time in hiring and then in training and the person quits. So then you need to ask the question always, to reflect, so where did I make a mistake? I go with this question to my people, team, and to hiring managers and ask where did we make mistake, and how we couldn't see that? If you reflect, every time I think you are better and better. You don't repeat the same mistake. You will do another mistake but with experience, I think you are just getting a better understanding and your success rate is increasing with time.

Okay, great. So thank you Arnas so much for your time and for sharing your story. And thank you to all the listeners, for more podcasts, please visit jobrely.com

Thanks Indre for invitation, happy to be here.