How are startups hiring people in India? What matters – Education, Background, Aptitude…
Last few months at Vaatsalya, we have assessed ourselves on how well we have done on our people front. First off a few things about our business which will put this in context,
a. All our hospitals are in non-metro areas (semi-urban and rural), so there you have it, a tough situation to hire people to begin with
b. Most of the employees are medical professionals or people from allied fields, nurses, technicians etc
c. We are fiercly non-hierarchical in structure, no one has titles, offices and such. And we want to keep it that way. E.g The weekly meetings in the hospitals are routinely conducted by office boys, and attended by doctors, nurses and founders.
From my experience, I have found that the “drive” or the “entrepreneurial spirit” is what seperates the gems. We have a young guy working in our karwar hospital (completed 11th std), who is handling everything at the Unit, including scheduling doctor visits, hiring people. No one told him, he just went ahead and did it. He started off as an office boy in Hubli, with the first job of cleaning the place. No fancy MBA, experience, background, nothing. Just the drive to get things done! Even the paediatrician at the hospital introduces him to every one as “the boss”. Just talking to him makes my day.
And we routinely get resumes from people with Masters in Hospital Administration, MBAs, Hospital Administrators with 5+ years experience, and all we get from them is, “what will be my role?” and “What is the package you are offering?”.
Would like to hear from others what has been your experience. Is anyone doing anything outside of metros? Would like to exchange notes.
- Startups – how do you choose your people? - July 6, 2006
- Startup Mentoring Network - July 1, 2006
- Pitching your business - April 19, 2006
I can’t remember another effective coinage anyone ever came even close to – Animal, wow…!
Hats off to Paul Graham and Thank Prashant who led us to it…! Let all readers bring such (only) meaningful sites to our notice. Instead of the one with too much of mumbo jumbos and graphics.
Why only at Startups…if we can blend in an Animal in everything we do, imagine where we’ll be….!
On a lighter note of what Cram said…. People now a days dont get “veri”..they get “Va-li” (no stress on any of va or li) meaning pain for all those who dont know tamil. But i agree to what has been written in here…every word!!
Good stuff. The “animal” part does have its equivalent in Tamil (and by extension Tamil Nadu). It’s called “veri”, with a stress on the ‘r’. Sadly many IT companies and professionals in TN do not have the “veri” to make it big, to change the world. It’s all left to the startups.
Thanks Prashant. This is it, “animals” is what we need.
have you read ” How To Start a Startup” by PaulGraham . he has some very good tips on how to choose people for your start up and what quality should we be looking for in any potential hire
i am reproducing it here for everyone .
” What do I mean by good people? One of the best tricks I learned during our startup was a rule for deciding who to hire. Could you describe the person as an animal? It might be hard to translate that into another language, but I think everyone in the US knows what it means. It means someone who takes their work a little too seriously; someone who does what they do so well that they pass right through professional and cross over into obsessive.
What it means specifically depends on the job: a salesperson who just won’t take no for an answer; a hacker who will stay up till 4:00 AM rather than go to bed leaving code with a bug in it; a PR person who will cold-call New York Times reporters on their cell phones; a graphic designer who feels physical pain when something is two millimeters out of place.
Almost everyone who worked for us was an animal at what they did. The woman in charge of sales was so tenacious that I used to feel sorry for potential customers on the phone with her. You could sense them squirming on the hook, but you knew there would be no rest for them till they’d signed up.
If you think about people you know, you’ll find the animal test is easy to apply. Call the person’s image to mind and imagine the sentence “so-and-so is an animal.” If you laugh, they’re not. You don’t need or perhaps even want this quality in big companies, but you need it in a startup ”
compelete Article is available at :http://www.paulgraham.com/start.html
I hope it will help
Good Luck