When hiring for a startup, true grit, hustle and resilience may matter more than a loaded resume.Getty Images
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Ask Women and Work
Question: I’m having trouble hiring key people for my startup. What am I doing wrong?
We asked Fatima Zaidi, founder and CEO at Quill Inc., to tackle this one:
I have a lot to say about this. We’ve grown really quickly in a very short period of time, so I almost feel like half of my time is dedicated to recruiting new people. We’ve actually had no voluntary turnover since we launched the company in 2019, and I think hiring the right people has been an important part of that.
My first piece of advice is to look for personality traits like true grit, hustle and resilience. In a startup, every day brings a new set of challenges and it’s a bit of a roller coaster. Great startup employees are constantly troubleshooting. They are a Jill or Jack of all trades, and they approach their goals analytically. I think a lot of founders fall into the trap of not realizing that a lot of people who come in with fancy resumes with bells and whistles can’t roll up their sleeves and get in the trenches and problem solve and be comfortable with uncertainty. The fancy resume doesn’t always equate to the kind of output that you need as a startup.
The other characteristic that I look for is the ability to take feedback. I don’t think it’s a bad thing to get negative feedback and criticism, and I find in Canada especially, we’re a society that is very agreeable and diplomatic and we view negative feedback as a bad thing. As part of our interview process, I do a call with a candidate called, ‘All the reasons you don’t want to work with Quill.’ We discuss the challenges, the roadblocks, the pain points they might experience working here. And one of the things we tell candidates is that we give a lot of real-time feedback so that people can level up. I think oftentimes founders glorify their business and their culture during the hiring process because they want to they want to close someone, but it’s important to set transparent expectations from the beginning. This can really help avoid turnover and ensure that both sides are walking into the partnership with eyes wide open.
Another important thing for us is culture. Our culture is very much about giving back to the community through philanthropic initiatives, and it’s something I talk about during the hiring process because it helps us to attract like-minded people that believe profitable businesses and social good can go hand in hand. I ask them what they’re doing for the community beyond the 9 to 5, because well-rounded people is is what I’m looking for.
When it comes to job postings, we try to diversify where we’re distributing our job postings so that we can maximize representation within our candidate pool. I made a mistake in the earlier days because I would try to hire exclusively through my network, thinking that if I did that, I would be able to de-risk the bad apples because ‘good people know good people.’ However, I realized that if I continued that way, my team would end up becoming very homogenous.
If you look at our team now, we are very represented, and I think one of the reasons is that not only are we posting on university portals, co-op programs and social media, we’re also posting in tech forums and on larger platforms like Indeed. There are also places like The Career Foundation and COJG (Canada-Ontario Job Grant) and other government resources which give me access to a pool of diverse candidates that I wouldn’t necessarily have through my own network.
Understanding your unconscious bias and the stereotypes that you may have as a leader and manager is crucial. If this is something you don’t have time for, you can work with recruiting firms like Bloom who specialize in diverse candidate hiring. There are tools that can help you create more gender-neutral language in job descriptions.
Overall, it’s important to make sure that the process is transparent, data-driven and fair, and for organizations to realize that when you embrace diversity, you gain much higher market share. Diversity has consistently been linked to better performance.
Submit your own questions to Ask Women and Work by e-mailing us at GWC@globeandmail.com.
This week’s must-read stories on women and work
Be honest with your boss: After working for U.S. presidents, Jen Psaki has some advice to share
Early in her career in 2006, Jen Psaki was asked by her boss, Rahm Emanuel, the tough-as-nails director of the U.S. Democratic Congressional Campaign, to call a New York Times reporter and pitch a story. She stopped in the washroom on her way back to her office and made the call only to learn Mr. Emanuel beat her to the punch.
After hanging up, she marched back into his office and told him: “Either you are the spokesperson for the campaign or I am. You decide and let me know.” As soon as she said it, she worried she had made a mistake. He was startled, but his response was mild. He nodded and said, “well, okay.”
Most advice about dealing with a boss is about being subtle, conscious of their moods, and offering advice deftly. But losing her cool had a surprising, confidence-building effect on Ms. Psaki, who went on to be President Joe Biden’s first press secretary and now is an MSNBC host.
Read how to tell the difference between being direct and being disrespectful.
At work, we constantly have opportunities to advocate for ourselves. Tap into your personal power
When we use our competence, confidence and ethical behaviour to inspire others and influence outcomes, we are using our personal power. This is both a skill and an art. Every interaction, decision and relationship in our professional lives offers us an opportunity to advocate for ourselves, shape outcomes positively and navigate the complex dynamics that define our careers.
Yet, harnessing this power requires more than just ambition; it demands a proficiency in assertive yet respectful advocacy – an optimum combination of open, honest communication and an awareness of where professional boundaries lie. If you are a professional looking to tap into your personal power to advance your career, then it will serve you well to consider three important things.
Read why boundaries and language skills are key to career advancement.
Fashion icon Jeanne Beker is ready for her close-up
Were it not for Jeanne Beker, the world’s fashion IQ would not be half as high as it is today. As the host and sometime-producer of FashionTelevision for nearly 30 years, Beker’s onscreen journalistic chutzpah have given zoomers, boomers, Gen Xers and millennials a behind-the-curtain look into high style.
From Paris to Milan, New York to Toronto, Beker’s hard-won backstage access at fashion shows – a far-from-inclusive ecosystem (she was once famously filmed getting elbowed) – enabled the show to nab candid one-on-one interviews with iconic designers and models (Karl Lagerfeld, Madonna and Linda Evangelista among them). The show launched in 1985 – long before social-media bloggers and influencers waxed on ad nauseam.
On the cusp of releasing her coming (and sixth) book, Heart on My Sleeve: Stories from a Life Well Worn, Beker opens up on her life pre- and post-FT, speaking to the culture that helped her whilst dealing with a breast-cancer diagnosis.
Hear more from Jeanne Beker on surviving in the media business and pioneering a new style of television.
In case you missed it
Channel your inner elite athlete at work with tips from Olympic mental performance consultants
If you’re tuning in to the Paris Olympics, you’re no doubt marvelling at the physical feats of the athletes: the ability to flip through the air and stick a landing, slice through the water with powerful-but-precise strokes, navigate a bike across slick pavement at speed.
There is another skill set these athletes have honed, however, that’s not immediately obvious. It’s what’s known as “the Gold Medal profile” – a set of mental performance competencies that research has shown “underpins podium performance.” According to this evidence-based framework, if you are able to master things like resilience, confidence, self-awareness, stress management, emotion regulation, teamwork and communication, you’re setting yourself up for your best possible chance at one day wearing a medal around your neck.
Because having your head in the game really does matter, many Olympic teams work with certified mental performance consultants (CMPCs), sports and performance psychology professionals who’ve been specifically trained to help athletes with the mental aspects of elite sport. Got performance anxiety? Suffered a setback? Need help finding motivation? That’s where these CMPCs come in.
Read the full article.
From the archives
Women are changing the face of the death care industry
When Mallory Greene was growing up, dinner table talk with her family often centred on funerals and end-of-life planning.
Ms. Greene, who co-founded Eirene, Canada’s first online cremation arrangement service, had a father who was a funeral director and worked in the industry for 35 years. While others might have found this an odd upbringing, to Ms. Greene, it was just a normal part of childhood.
“Take your kid to work day was at a funeral home,” she laughs.
Ms. Greene originally intended to work in the financial industry after beginning her career as part of the inaugural Wealthsimple team. But she began to feel a calling to work with bereaved families.
“I realized it was always in front of me,” she says. “My parents were always talking about the day-to-day in funeral services and what families were asking for. I realized there was a disconnect between the modern-day consumer experience versus what funeral homes were providing.”
Read the full article.
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