Building great startup teams is high stakes - just one misaligned hire can slow down growth and limit the cultural “magic” that many of us join startups to be part of.

In our work with early stage startups - we’ve developed a framework for helping to identify and define what “soft skills” or “intangible qualities” will lead to alignment for a unique team. With this understanding and shared language, we’re then able to center, find, and evaluate based on these qualities to ensure that we’re bringing in the right folks to build the foundation of the company with.

1. Identify what you want

2. Define it in real terms

3. Build a rubric for evaluation with examples

4. Create questions and tests to gain signaling

Let’s walk through this method with an example:

1. Identify what you want

Communication - this is the lifeblood of our organization and is what we’ve noticed our best hires have brought to the table in spades, and where our mediocre or missed hires really haven’t excelled.

2. Define it in real terms

What does “good communication” look like in your organization? Is it timely? Concise? Positive? Strategic? Documentation heavy? Written? Verbal? Energetic? Truthful?

Let’s go with “truthful” and “concise” as our main focuses here.

3. Build a rubric for evaluation with examples

A great example of “truthful” for us is someone who speaks up with what they know to be true despite knowing there will be consequences. An example of not bringing this quality would be agreeing to a group consensus despite having strong indicators that it’s not the right path.

On a sliding scale, we might also add some middle ground around truth telling with a strategic lens when thinking externally vs. internally.

4. Create questions and tests to gain signaling

We find the best results when we approach the topic both indirectly to gain their more candid values of this concept, and then approaching more directly to both give an opportunity to learn a bit more specifically, but also to signal this value and it’s importance to your organization.

Indirectly: “When leading cross-functional meetings, what are your goals with respect to making big decisions? What’s a “win” for you there?”

Directly: “Can you share a time that you’ve had to share bad news internally?” OR “Please share your experience in speaking up at a time you knew there would be consequences to the internal momentum as a result of what you were sharing.”

These questions help us identify what the underlying alignment is between working style, values and culture between our organizations and potential teammates. If instead we over index towards the hard skills needed in a role today, it’s likely that as the role shifts over time (one of the few things we actually do know is that this will happen) - that the person might not be suited for the new evolution of their responsibilities and impact. 

Additionally, if we’re not sure what qualities we’re looking for in a new hire, we’re very unlikely to hire folks that don’t have a “known” background to us that we’ve already come to trust. Building diverse teams cannot happen without understanding exactly what we’re looking for in teammates, and not leaving a large section of the “scorecard” up to a gut feeling, or how “fun” an interview was.

Startup’s are built on people, and we’re committed to helping leaders identify and define the core qualities that will impact the organization, and then inviting them individually to join us!