Early startup hire: 6 traits to look for in future members for your team
By: Janus Hansen
Tags: Team Building, Founders, Business, Hiring Tips, Startup Life

We focus a lot on the skills, experience, and professional proficiency of the candidates for our startups. This makes sense. We after all need people that can help our startup become a thriving business, which requires competence and ability, whether it's coding or design, marketing or sales, or anything in between.

But what we often tend to overlook, especially in the early stages of our startup, are the qualities of the person. While these may be less tangible and their value less obvious than the bullet points on their CV that lists their responsibilities and achievements, they are absolutely critical for the success of your project.

Indeed, personal qualities are arguably as important as professional qualifications, and sometimes even more so as they can help a person further leverage their existing skills and competencies.

How much will a very skilled but lazy coder get done compared to a less experienced but passionate one? What about a salesperson who gives up easily versus a salesperson with undaunted gusto and drive? People might look great on paper and say all the right things in an interview, but it’s the person they are once they are in the startup environment that counts.

There’s no way around it, if you want to build a star startup team, you’ll need people that are fit for the startup life, not just professionals with relevant technical skills.

Below are 6 traits particularly relevant for startup employees:

1. Grit

If there is one quality a person working for a startup needs, it’s grit.

It’s when the going gets tough that the wheat is separated from the chaff. There will be upsets, there will be failure, and it’s the ability to, in Paulo Coelho’s words, “fall seven times and get up eight times” that decides if a person will ultimately help the startup succeed.

Determination in the face of difficulty is not something a person learns in university or can get certified in. It’s an innate quality, and not everyone has it.

2. Passion

If a startup is like a rocket, then its fuel is the energy from its crew of employees. While a person can go through a normal routine job with a relatively low level of energy and perform well, this won’t cut it in a startup. Being part of a young project that needs to move and needs to move fast takes energy. That energy doesn’t come from sleep, coffee, or Danish pastry in the morning, but from passion.

3. Thrive in uncertainty

Eric Ries, author of the Lean Startup, defines a startup as:

“a human institution designed to create a new product or service under extreme uncertainty.”

A person might be really good at their job and deliver top results at their existing workplace, but if they are not comfortable in a company that’s venturing into the unknown and can flourish in an unstable, fast-moving environment, then the startup life is properly not for them.

People that work for startups need to be excited about confronting situations of extreme uncertainty. The future is unpredictable, the outcome is not guaranteed, and the pace of change is ever increasing. Not everyone is cut out for that.

4. Adaptability

Standard work hours, consistent responsibilities, and established processes are the luxuries offered by stable organizations. In a startup, meanwhile, pivots happen, plans change, and new problems occur. There is no shortage of new challenges and opportunities. The only consistency you can rely on is inconsistency.

In such a variable environment, you need nimble, flexible employees who are able to take on new challenges, open to learn something new, and willing to step outside the comfort zone of their strictly defined positions. While they might go to work with the focus of checking off their respective to-do list, they must be quick to grab the ball if a new task is thrown their way or to proactively take it upon themselves to get other stuff done.

5. Optimistic

Few types of companies experience as many ups and downs as startups do. This makes the ability to keep one’s head high all the more important. So look for people who can be lighthearted during the inevitable low points. Getting angry and cursing at a setback is fine, staying stuck in negativity less so. We are humans after all with a broad range of emotions, but a strong and stable optimistic disposition is absolutely necessary for people working in a business climate that fluctuates as much as a startup does.

6. Resourcefulness

But startup employees need to be more than just cheerful in the face of challenges, they also need to be able to solve these challenges, and often on their own.

In a startup, challenges are plenty and resources often few, which means that other people will not always be available to help. This makes the ability in employees to make decisions and act on their own to quickly and cleverly overcome obstacles key. They must be able to rely on themselves and problem-solve in a self-initiated manner without having to constantly ask questions.

Alright, that’s some of the key traits to look for in candidates for your startup. While you can gauge some of these by looking at the person’s experience as well as during the interview, it’s difficult to know whether someone will be the right fit for your company until you see them in the startup environment. At some point, however, they’ll have to rely on the abovementioned and other qualities needed to thrive in your startup. Pay attention to that and happy team building!

Looking for new members for your startup? Head over to the UniFounder platform to start assembling your winning team!