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9 CRUCIAL QUESTIONS TO SPOT THE PURPLE SQUIRREL FOR START-UPS
9 CRUCIAL QUESTIONS TO SPOT THE PURPLE SQUIRREL FOR START-UPS

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"Do you want to sell sugared water for the rest of your life, or do you want to come with me and change the world?" Asked Apple Inc’s Steve Jobs from John Sculley, a renowned marketer. Later, Sculley joined Apple as CMO (Chief Marketing Officer) and contributed to the robust growth of the company. Asking the right questions is a rare skill, and it can help you find the talent you need to grow the business, or inspire the right talent to join hands with you.  

 

Building a team with the right talent makes all the difference for any business, especially for start-ups. As a young business of the 21st century, start-ups are highly focused on achieving their goals at a breakneck pace, and the individual responsibility of every employee is high. Therefore, one must go beyond the professional sphere and understand a candidate inside-out before hiring him or her. Here, we at PERSOLKELLY recommend asking the nine most crucial questions to a candidate if you are a start-up:

 

Tell us something outside your resume?

Get ready to experience some surprise here because today's youth are not afraid to speak about the quirks of their lives and you need to be open minded. It will allow you to instantly access a part of the candidate’s life that matters a lot. Putting the pieces together will help you understand the candidate's overall personality and if the candidate is a like-minded person with the rest of your team. 

 

What challenges have you faced in work previously?

This behavioral question will further help you expand the horizon of your understanding of the candidate’s caliber on-ground. How we define challenges is secret access to our pet peeves, the skills that we lack or need to improve, and so on. Employment at a start-up can be challenging in many ways. But how an employee looks at challenges will define the character of both the employee and the business. 

 

Tell us something you are proud of?

Our pride drives us to do better what we do, whether it is fun or not. If the candidate mentions some of his/her professional achievements its natural that his/her work take up most of the waking hours, which is true in most cases. Sometimes, candidates place peace of mind as a sense of achievement, which can be high quality to bring the team together because the important aspect for the candidate is to remain in peaceful environment. However, it may prompt you to ask what happens in lack of a calm environment that the person thrives to achieve and depends on to work smoothly. 

 

Who is an ideal leader and why?

Pay close attention to the adjectives the candidate uses to describe leadership qualities and if the candidate uses “he” or “she” or simply chooses to be neutral on the gender aspect. There are chances that the candidate will combine gender with the ability to be a leader. For example, women are wonderful leaders because (the why part) of some quality that only women have. There is no right or wrong answer to this, but it will allow you to see how the candidate will perceive the existing leadership team in the start-up.

 

Your views on chaos and the rapidly changing work environment?

The start-up environment is full of unexpected changes, rapid movements, sudden change of direction and more. If a candidate finds it hard to adjust to the changes, it can be demotivating for the candidate as well as for the team overall. It is perfectly OK to be not OK with quick changes, but as a start-up, this can be challenging to manage an employee that needs constant moral guidance to step up and move in the desired direction. 

 

Who was your favorite and least favorite boss, and why?

While the earlier question (ques. 4) gives you a picture of ideal leadership quality, mostly textbook definitions, this will help you understand the candidate’s response to the real-case scenarios. A team is an integration of a set of attributes distributed across the leader(s) and the team members. You must focus on how the member can complement the existing leader(s) and vice-versa, opportunities for the candidate to flourish, and how s/he will fit into the company's overall growth plan. 

 

Talk about something that did not work for you, and how did it impact you?

For long, failure has been a synonym for hopelessness, endings, and negativity, but it is an essential step towards success in the start-up ecosystem. Therefore, as an interviewer, you must analyze the impact of any failure or adverse event on the candidate. It will also give a fair idea of how the candidate will respond to any grim situation that may arise during his/her employment with your company. 

 

How will this company help you get close to your goals?

A peek into the personal growth plan and vision for self allows the interviewer to quickly know the expectations of the candidate from job s/he wish to seek. Does the job help the person get close to his/her long-term goal or short-term? Is the candidate vision-driven or reward-driven, or both? It will also help ascertain the longevity of the candidate’s relationship with the company.

 

Is there anything you want to talk about?

While most interviewers skip this one but it is the most important question. It allows the candidate to feel empowered for sharing his/her opinion and helps you understand how well the candidate can seize impromptu opportunities. It can often lead to the essential aspects of a candidate’s work or personal life or to the facts that are enough to decide to hire the candidate. 

 

Conclusion 

While these questions can give you an excellent start to the interview, the best way to identify suitable candidates is to follow your intuition and logic. Questions can be standard but, specific answers can simply make the next “standard” question irrelevant to ask. Therefore, as an interviewer, you need to be open-minded and flexible with your question shooting skills. Paying attention to the candidate's body language is yet another important focus area. You must have the knack to spot any difference in the body and verbal language if any. 

We at PERSOLKELLY India have over two decades of experience matching the right candidate to the right opportunity and have built a center of excellence for Start-up hiring over the last few years. Our recruiter-on-demand program can help you spot the elusive purple squirrel by asking all the right questions. 

 

This article was originally published on PERSOLKELLY blog here


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