4 Reasons Why You should Recruit Entrepreneurial Employees in Your Startup
As fast-growing startups are always in hunt for a great talent -even if not officially recruiting at that moment, I was analyzing what type of employees I need at each stage and what characteristics to focus on to prepare it for the next stage. One type I was very sure that I need at any moment at the startup life cycle and I won’t regret it what so ever is: entrepreneurial employees! YES 🙂
Many CEOs avoid this type of recruits as they seemed to be hard to manage! but for me, I love this type of employees for many reasons. Here are my top my top 4 reasons!
1. Entrepreneurial employees challenge everything you do or ask them to do!
Nothing better than an employee who can challenge your thoughts and make you always keen to validate what you are doing at any point in time.
2. They Take 200% ownership of whatever role or products they run.
It’s very awkward when employees argue that all what they did was your vision Mr. CEO! entrepreneurial employees never do so as they have full responsibility to make products succeed and be accountable for the results instead of pointing fingers at the end!
3. They put themselves in your shoe as founder/CEO and know what it takes to run/found a startup
Most of the hardworking entrepreneurs really do understand challenges you face as CEO after joining your company so you never need to tell them about your battles in: cash-flow and collection, fundraising, recruiting, wearing 5 hats at a time and may other endless list of CEO challenges.
4. They leave after some time!? but who do you expect to stick there forever?!
It’s true nobody will be there forever -including you Mr. CEO- so why not to get them whenever you can and give them the power to disrupt. You just need simply to retain them for some time which should bring surprising benefits to your startup.
This quick post reminds me of an exciting research published on Harvard Business Review in Jun 2013 about “Tours of Duty: The New Employer-Employee Compact” by Reid Hoffman, Ben Casnocha and Chris Yeh discussing this issue briefly with interesting examples from the winners (and learners) who succeeded (or failed) in utilizing entrepreneurial employees and how that impacted their chances for greater success.
I would conclude with a short message to CEOs and entrepreneurs reading this post:
Dear CEOs,
You don’t need 100% of your employees to be entrepreneurs, few rock-stars will always help you and other team members enjoy what you are all doing and inject fresh blood in your venture from time to time.
Dear Entrepreneurs,
if your startup is not on the right track and -in other words- failing miserably. I advice you to consider joining a company as an employee for some time, where you continue to learn and share what you’ve learned with a team who would appreciate it. Maybe with less fun but still you can put all the passion and energy you always have while running your own startup! Are you ready for the new challenge?
