The Aim is to Have Stars! Not Hire Stars – An Ultimate Lesson in Hiring

Here is the crux of my learnings over the last two months of hiring stars and building a star team.

Hire stars and they always keep you second-guessing, sometimes downright threatening you to leave.

On the other hand, hire potential stars and help them become who they can be. And they’ll stick around long enough to fall in love with what you are doing!

First, you need to understand that you need to do it and then you need to ingredients to be able to actually do it

1. A pool of people that actually has potential stores looking for a job
2. The willingness to want people to grow. To contribute to their growth.
3. The wisdom to ignore micro mistakes that happen along the way when they are in the process of becoming stars.
4. An idea or a product that you are working on that great people can actually fall in love with! Don’t try this with Ponzi schemes.
5. An understanding that – alone you might light up maybe just one planet but with multiple stars working with you you can light up an entire galaxy!
6. And a little bit of luck of course.

All these are cute ideas but what about some practically doable things

1. Push them just a little bit out of their comfort zone
2. Don’t breath down their neck. Don’t micromanage. Give them the room to make mistakes and grow through the process.
3. Tell them that you think they fucked up!
   But before that make sure that they understand your intent. That you don’t want to punch them! Instead you just want to push them forward. This one’s tricky!
4. When they do good, notice, appreciate, and make sure that they know that they are appreciated!
5. Build a meritocracy – understand that great ideas don’t need rank. They only need someone who cares and has a perspective.
6. When a great idea comes, no matter from whom, make sure it doesn’t go unnoticed or unworked on
7. Cherish the people who take charge especially of the things that’s noty part of their job!
   They are your ‘Taare Zameen Par‘ and make sure that ‘Kho na jayein yeh taare zameen Par‘

At the end of the day running a start-up you may not be as attractive as Google but make sure you’re not stupid enough to let go of the few good people that you stumble upon.