Loading ...How are startups hiring people in India? What matters - Education, Background, Aptitude…
Last few months at Vaatsalya, we have assessed ourselves on how well we have done on our people front. First off a few things about our business which will put this in context,
a. All our hospitals are in non-metro areas (semi-urban and rural), so there you have it, a tough situation to hire people to begin with
b. Most of the employees are medical professionals or people from allied fields, nurses, technicians etc
c. We are fiercly non-hierarchical in structure, no one has titles, offices and such. And we want to keep it that way. E.g The weekly meetings in the hospitals are routinely conducted by office boys, and attended by doctors, nurses and founders.
From my experience, I have found that the “drive” or the “entrepreneurial spirit” is what seperates the gems. We have a young guy working in our karwar hospital (completed 11th std), who is handling everything at the Unit, including scheduling doctor visits, hiring people. No one told him, he just went ahead and did it. He started off as an office boy in Hubli, with the first job of cleaning the place. No fancy MBA, experience, background, nothing. Just the drive to get things done! Even the paediatrician at the hospital introduces him to every one as “the boss”. Just talking to him makes my day.
And we routinely get resumes from people with Masters in Hospital Administration, MBAs, Hospital Administrators with 5+ years experience, and all we get from them is, “what will be my role?” and “What is the package you are offering?”.
Would like to hear from others what has been your experience. Is anyone doing anything outside of metros? Would like to exchange notes.
have you read ” How To Start a Startup” by PaulGraham . he has some very good tips on how to choose people for your start up and what quality should we be looking for in any potential hire
i am reproducing it here for everyone .
” What do I mean by good people? One of the best tricks I learned during our startup was a rule for deciding who to hire. Could you describe the person as an animal? It might be hard to translate that into another language, but I think everyone in the US knows what it means. It means someone who takes their work a little too seriously; someone who does what they do so well that they pass right through professional and cross over into obsessive.
What it means specifically depends on the job: a salesperson who just won’t take no for an answer; a hacker who will stay up till 4:00 AM rather than go to bed leaving code with a bug in it; a PR person who will cold-call New York Times reporters on their cell phones; a graphic designer who feels physical pain when something is two millimeters out of place.
Almost everyone who worked for us was an animal at what they did. The woman in charge of sales was so tenacious that I used to feel sorry for potential customers on the phone with her. You could sense them squirming on the hook, but you knew there would be no rest for them till they’d signed up.
If you think about people you know, you’ll find the animal test is easy to apply. Call the person’s image to mind and imagine the sentence “so-and-so is an animal.” If you laugh, they’re not. You don’t need or perhaps even want this quality in big companies, but you need it in a startup ”
compelete Article is available at :http://www.paulgraham.com/start.html
I hope it will help
Good Luck
Thanks Prashant. This is it, “animals” is what we need.
Good stuff. The “animal” part does have its equivalent in Tamil (and by extension Tamil Nadu). It’s called “veri”, with a stress on the ‘r’. Sadly many IT companies and professionals in TN do not have the “veri” to make it big, to change the world. It’s all left to the startups.
On a lighter note of what Cram said…. People now a days dont get “veri”..they get “Va-li” (no stress on any of va or li) meaning pain for all those who dont know tamil. But i agree to what has been written in here…every word!!
I can’t remember another effective coinage anyone ever came even close to - Animal, wow…!
Hats off to Paul Graham and Thank Prashant who led us to it…! Let all readers bring such (only) meaningful sites to our notice. Instead of the one with too much of mumbo jumbos and graphics.
Why only at Startups…if we can blend in an Animal in everything we do, imagine where we’ll be….!
Its an interesting article but may not be relevant in India. The drive factor in the workforce in India is different as people have a more holistic living sense. You need people who can drive teams rather than self.
Ashwin,
I just finished reading a book “Maverick” by Ricardo Semler. It is based on his experiences in running a company in tough economy of Brazil with a unique HR style. If you have not read it you may want to. Vaatsalya sounds very interesting and I look forward to a better than “Maverick” written by you someday.
Hi Ashwin,
I have known of Doctors as having egos, demanding respect and privileges from others. (And personally I am perfectly willing to give them all these
)
So how does this aspect work out in Vaatsalya? Wouldn’t this create issues?
Cheers,
Sreekanth.
Ashwin,
You reminded me of my JobsAhead days which was a very much startup, very much entrepreneurial and internet venture to top it all. To find the right kind of talent I had to almost break all conventional wisdom and look for drive, keenness, capability to chase & chase…. While early days went practising, soon it became a habit…and I got some real rainmakers.
One guy who came for interview from Indore was so terrible with communications that I expressed inability to hire quite explicitly. He was just so keen that he suggested to work as an associate without salary support. I put him on commissions and after some 10 months was forced to hire him, he being one of the top 3 performers in the region. This hiring faced reasonable resistance for apparant lack of conventional skills. A year down this guy picked National best Relationship Manager award. I have never ever felt that happy. He currently heads a region for a top Bank and the winning streak continues….he still fails conventional hiring tests…..
I recently engaged some young professionals from Muzaffarnagar on some semi-urban project….going looks good….
I am doing some work with young professionals/ students in semi-urban space….do let me know if I can be of any use…