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Why Startups Should Hire The 'Minimally Viable' Candidate

This article is more than 10 years old.

Silicon Valley recruiter Aki Taha has worked for some of the pickiest enterprises in America. Over the past 15 years, he has been part of the talent-spotting team at Google, Dropbox and the top-tier venture capital firm of Greylock Partners. So when we shared a stage last month at a recruiting-focused conference, I asked him a sly question.

"Everyone in Silicon Valley is talking about the importance of being a lean startup," I began. There's lots of rhetoric about the importance of coming to market fast with the minimally viable product. We're told by authors like Eric Ries that the first version needn't be perfect. Better to get something in front of customers quickly and then start improving it, in a rapid run of iterations.

"Could you do the same thing in hiring?" I asked. "Could you hire the minimally viable candidate?"

I expected Taha to sputter in indignation. Most corporate talent scouts like to talk about how they never settle for anything less than perfection. In the understandable search for “A players,” these experts often portray any latitude – in any direction – as a mistake.

To my surprise, Taha didn't go that route. Instead, he spelled out a way that startups can find the star performers they crave, while still harnessing the power of the “minimally viable” thinking that helps launch products.

Taha's starting point is a critique of how many companies approach hiring. When they list valued traits and skills, they often don’t distinguish between “must have” and “nice to have.” That results in huge, unwieldy lists. Without prioritization, companies struggle to fill positions. Openings stay open too long.

Eventually, companies seize upon some candidate with the highest total in this long checklist. And then -- gulp -- comes a surprise. Their candidate does indeed have an amazing assortment of "nice to have" strengths. But he or she is missing some "must have" asset that got lost in the scrum. The hire doesn't work out ... and soon it's time to start hunting again.

To avoid such pitfalls, Taha has set up Persona, a hiring-strategy firm that helps startups pinpoint the right "must-have" traits. He emphasizes refining and prioritizing lists. The payoff begins with writing an on-target job description, and carries on from there. A realistic list of  "must haves"  will guide the interviewing team, ensuring that assessments focus on what’s most crucial to the role. "That's why they're called 'requirements,'" Taha says.

Everything else is separated into the "nice to have" category. If you can find lots of candidates with all your "must have" traits, then you can try to load up on the "nice to have" elements, too. If your "must have" traits are rare, then the smartest hire may be the extraordinary candidate who delivers all those essentials, regardless of whether he or she offers much in the "nice to have" bin.

Taha isn't dogmatic about what those "must have" traits should be. That's for founders to define. He works with companies to craft a set that makes the most sense for their culture. Companies such as Google are famous for insisting on terrific academic credentials. Other organizations want scrappy engineers who may not even have finished college, but have a proven history of writing ingenious code and constantly teaching themselves new skills.

What's essential here is keeping the "must have" list realistic and tying it closely to the jobs at hand. When I wrote The Rare Find, a book about unusual talent-spotting strategies, I was struck by how many top-flight organizations dared hire on the basis of a few prized character traits, rather than being extremely fussy about resume credentials. Assets such as resilience, quick learning, ingenuity and an eagerness to work on the frontier counted for more than grade-point averages or years of experience.

It takes courage to make such hires, because the best candidates often arrive with jagged resumes, full of both successes and stumbles. But as Taha's experience suggests, being willing to bend on the not-so-important stuff can pay off greatly.

During our  panel discussion, hosted by New Enterprise Associates and Webb Investment Network, another presenter, Quixey cofounder Liron Shapira, jumped in with his own example of finding offbeat winners. Quixey, which runs a search engine for apps, has been offering debugging challenges online to any programmers willing to test their skills. Winners get $100 via PayPal -- and a chance to be considered for engineering jobs.

Some of Quixey's most interesting hires through this process, Shapera says, are high schoolers who haven't yet started college. They hae been programming since childhood, and they possess the experience and ingenuity that he wants. As for college degrees -- that's a "nice to have" that his minimally viable candidates don’t need if they can excel in other ways.