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Show Notes
00:00:14:01 - 00:00:15:19
Mudassir
Lesya, welcome to the show. How you doing today?
00:00:15:20 - 00:00:18:06
Lesya
Hi. Am in this year. I'm great, thank you. How are.
00:00:18:06 - 00:00:23:04
Mudassir
You? Amazing. Amazing. I've been looking forward to this.Pretty good out for quite some time. So thank you for the time. I appreciateit.
00:00:23:05 - 00:00:25:08
Lesya
Yeah. Excited to be here. Excited to chat.
00:00:25:08 - 00:00:44:00
Mudassir
Awesome. But one of the thing that I've learned is, thepretty years we are a time of efforts. So every single thing that has happenedin our paths one way or another, we just ended up here like where we are doing.But I want to know who is less. Yeah. And how did you end up in New Yorkbuilding a recruitment business, early stage companies and doing this amazingbook?
00:00:44:02 - 00:01:18:01
Lesya
Big story. I'll try to make it short. So I was born in asmall town in Ukraine. Vinita So I moved to the states of California first whenI was still way before I started my company. So I was still part of arecruiting agency, Ukrainian one that I was so willing to grow in in the U.S.One of my clients back then invited me to join their startup in San Francisco.
00:01:18:02 - 00:01:40:18
Lesya
I moved to San Francisco. I spent some time there. I gotextremely inspired, hired by my friends, founders who were building something,you know, importing something that is positively changing things in the world.And I started thinking like, wow, like, that's exactly what I want to like. Iwant to influence something in a positive way in the world.
00:01:40:19 - 00:02:06:04
Lesya
Now, what's the best way to do that? And then I realized, sorecruiting is something that I do the best. It's something that I love and it'ssomething that I can, you know, use into making a positive change. Because backthen, so that was five years ago. I actually celebrated my companies birthday afew days ago. So five years ago it was huge demand for talent.
00:02:06:04 - 00:02:29:03
Lesya
Everyone was fighting for, you know, not even just aplayers, but basically, you know, any talent was huge competition on themarket. And so I thought like, well, I can do recruiting really well. I'llcreate big leverage of working was me. You know, everyone will want to hiretalent from my recruiting company and I'll get to choose which companies towork with.
00:02:29:07 - 00:03:06:11
Lesya
I'll be working with the companies only was the companiesthat are making positive change in the world. That was, you know, my way tochange the money first culture to the impact, first to push businesses to beimpact driven. First, because everyone needs talent. And you know, if there isthis like thing to be impact driven in order to get the best talent on themarket, like that's the thing that will push the companies to be impact driven,then, you know, recruiting blew even more.
00:03:06:13 - 00:03:40:17
Lesya
I moved to New York. You know, that was not like workrelated, but more like social related. I enjoyed staying here. And I and andthen, you know, once a year economic crisis happened, economic downturn happened.So recruiting was no longer, you know, that it needed on the market. But still,because I've always focused on identifying a players and attracting them tocompanies like we still held great positions.
00:03:40:17 - 00:03:45:21
Lesya
So even in this economic downturn was still, you know, holdgreat positions in the recruiting market.
00:03:45:22 - 00:04:00:07
Mudassir
Amazing. Amazing. What a story. I think you think you were,you know, showing that before we talk about hiring and and all the things Iwant to know, why are you doing this? Like, of all the things that you could bedoing, why pick only the the purpose Driven couple?
00:04:00:11 - 00:04:27:19
Lesya
That's amazing. Question That's actually one of the mostoften questions that I ask my candidates. So I think is is very important one.So yeah, so I've been always into recruiting in some way. So when I was 12, I,I was doing like I made my first money. When I was 12, I was doing networkmarketing. There was a cosmetic company called Fabric Leak.
00:04:28:00 - 00:04:57:19
Lesya
So I hired, you know, recruiters, my first hundred people inthat network marketing. That's like, you know, a pyramid type of thing wassuper exciting for me as a kid to do. So I was like selling cosmetics throughthis like MLM type of thing. So I was always into building teams and gettingpeople involved into some idea, into some activity.
00:04:57:21 - 00:05:28:08
Lesya
So and when I first started my first job, like by then Ialready knew I wanted to do something people related. So I, I started as anTHEY manager and then moved, you know, more specifically, more deeper intorecruiting, specifically in the tech companies. So my first tech recruitingexperience was when I was 17 was, you know, very growing company back inUkraine.
00:05:28:10 - 00:06:07:01
Lesya
And I've been always in recruiting Like that's that'sdefinitely one of my biggest passions, too, because it combines two mainthings. It combines my passion to learn about people on a much deeper level,about their skills and talents and my passion to match things, to match people,to match people and the opportunities. Right. And then again, like once I was putin a San Francisco mission driven tech environment, I got inspired to was thisImpact Energy.
00:06:07:07 - 00:06:17:16
Lesya
And so I combined my passion for recruiting and mywillingness to make a positive change in the world. And that's how I got intoimpact driven recruiting.
00:06:17:16 - 00:06:26:04
Mudassir
Amazing. Amazing. I want to start us off with one of thebiggest question in this entire startup ecosystem and which is why hiring theright person matters so much.
00:06:26:04 - 00:07:00:13
Lesya
Yeah, I mean, first of all, I would say that not everyoneneeds a players, right? So not every company, not every job has to be abouteight players. But for those that do need like that's the game changer. Sohiring eight players is a game changer because eight players are two threetimes more productive than the players. Eight players can create things that noone else can.
00:07:00:15 - 00:07:17:07
Lesya
Eight players can take your company to absolutely new level,right? So there are very few eight players in the market. And it's veryimportant in theory, you know, helpful to get those into your team to the rightrole.
00:07:17:08 - 00:07:34:17
Mudassir
How do you define enabler like in your definition? I mean,all the things that you mentioned, like, okay, they need to be like they'remore productive, you know, for example, or they are more talented. All thesethings are kind of subjective to a very high degree. I think they're allsubjective. So how do you define that? Okay, so you are another player.
00:07:34:17 - 00:07:37:06
Mudassir
I'm a big player. Like, how do you do that?
00:07:37:08 - 00:08:09:04
Lesya
So there are many ways to approach the definition. So one ofthe simplest way to look at it is so this is the quote from Jeff Smart, theauthor of the book Who, which is and probably one of the main book about hiringa players. So he says that any player is someone who has 90% chance to be inthe top 10% performers.
00:08:09:06 - 00:08:34:18
Lesya
So another important thing about like defining who playersare, it's it's about personal qualities. It's not about experience. It's noteven about skills. It's about personal qualities that are the hardest tochange. So usually just it's people like they either have it or don't. It'svery hard to change, and I am happy to go deeper into specific qualities if youwant me to.
00:08:35:00 - 00:08:36:16
Mudassir
Yeah, yeah, please, please continue.
00:08:36:18 - 00:09:16:17
Lesya
Awesome. So we've done actually our own research among allthe people that, you know, other companies that we trust, that whose opinionwithdraws, other successful companies who they think are eight players in theirteam. So we interview those people. So it's not just like book knowledge, butit's also our own practical research. So the qualities that we're the mostcommon among these people are extremely high sense of ownership on the thesepeople treat everything as their own.
00:09:16:20 - 00:09:44:03
Lesya
They treat your company as their own, the treat the projectas their own, the treat the team. These people have the highest managementskills, self management. They are the most organized. These people attractother players. These people can, you know, get someone excited about the idea,can interest other people about specific thing. These people have very highstandard of quality.
00:09:44:05 - 00:10:13:20
Lesya
So it's not perfect perfectionism as it is, but it's likevery high standards of quality for everything they do. These people have veryhigh integrity. They care a lot about the company. They work for the people,they work with the values those people have. These people are very curious.These people are extremely eager to grow in all the ways possible.
00:10:13:22 - 00:10:36:17
Lesya
And you can see that that's like one of the preview ideasthat I can give if we get to talk about profiles of these people like publicprofiles. So one of the best ways to identify a potential a player is to lookat their profile and how many promotions they have. So promotion is very oftenan indicator of people's growth.
00:10:36:18 - 00:10:39:10
Lesya
Right? And so these people are the most eager to grow.
00:10:39:10 - 00:10:58:02
Mudassir
So one of the one of the things that comes to my mind is likenow that you have defined who way players are and all that stuff, I think thesepeople are like pretty hard to find, like pretty hard to find. So like, I'llgive you some example. You know, it might also be your career. I have hired,like I think around five white people or something like that on, on various,you know, levels and all that.
00:10:58:06 - 00:11:15:18
Mudassir
If you do one post, if you do one job post and it's likeobviously remote nowadays it kind of goes global. There's like thousands ofapplicants applying on that one particular job post, Right? How do you actuallyfigure it out? Like, okay, who should I hire out of those? But like, what's thescreening process you have in mind?
00:11:15:18 - 00:11:18:06
Mudassir
How can you, how can you do that?
00:11:18:08 - 00:11:52:12
Lesya
Yeah. And first of all, I would say that even now when thereis so much talent on the market for some roles, you wouldn't get the thousandapplications right? So it all depends on very specific aspects of, you know,the role of the company. So but anyway in general, yes. So once you have a lotof applicants, it's one thing to get so many applicants, it's another thing tofilter for them.
00:11:52:12 - 00:12:19:15
Lesya
And to find the best fit. And the best fit is not just aboutand they play it right. So I think you should look at it in a much more complexway. So first of all, define for sure that you need an A player for this role,for this company. Then apply those filters as well. Right. So but also, besideslooking for any player, you should apply filters for the role.
00:12:19:15 - 00:13:08:19
Lesya
You should apply filters for the company's culture, forvalues. So in all of these complex so hiring process is like the process itselfis one thing. And then like defining specific things to check, that's anotherthing. So as for the process, what I would normally suggest to look at is thenumber of interviews, are the type of interviews, the number of people tointerview a candidate are the list of things to check, the way to check themand to interpret candidates answers, to analyze those, and the way to make adecision based on all of that.
00:13:08:23 - 00:13:34:19
Lesya
So if we go to specific parts of it, if you look at numberof interviews, I would say do not less than three, not more than seven. Sosomewhere between three and seven, depending on the company, on the importanceand urgency of the role, define what's the best number then specific people. Sotry to invite people from the team.
00:13:34:19 - 00:14:12:07
Lesya
So if your hiring manager yourself, don't rely just on yourown judgment. Who is the best candidate? Invite other experts. Invite peoplewho will be interacting with this candidate or the soon to be hired person themost for culture fit, for values, fit, and things like that. Entourage Youinclude some sort of professional skills. Check whether it's a technicalperson, try to do a technical interview or it's or are you hiring for abusiness role?
00:14:12:10 - 00:14:41:13
Lesya
Try to check their specific business skills. I try toeducate the people who are interviewing the candidate. So if you're founder ora leader who needs to design this hiring process would define which specificthings you want to get from your interviews, specific feedback, specificopinion on the candidate, and to educate them how to get that information fromthe candidate.
00:14:41:13 - 00:15:15:22
Lesya
How you interpret that. That is a very important step thatwe often miss right? And so try to define like whether you need the test taskor look at the work sample or any other way to check the professional skills.Don't forget about very important aspect of upselling to a candidate during theinterviews. Very often interviewers think that is just like one way street andwe're just interviewing the candidate.
00:15:15:22 - 00:15:41:14
Lesya
We just need to get information from the candidate and keepforgetting about upselling. But the top candidate, the players have so manyopportunity just even now in these, you know, more difficult economicsituation, they still have a lot of options. And it's also a job. INTERVIEWERTo upsell to a candidate during an interview.
00:15:41:16 - 00:16:03:14
Mudassir
Okay. Okay. So that that's that's interesting. So butanother thing, you know, just somewhat of a follow up on the same question. Soif you were to hire, I don't know, a senior person, but not as senior as likemaybe a C-level exec or something like that, where would you go and post like,do you think LinkedIn job posting is to like still, like have some quality toit?
00:16:03:14 - 00:16:19:13
Mudassir
Because I think a lot of people like a lot of people wouldapply to to the link the thing and just makes the whole screening process alittle bit more complex. But they're like not, not the right fit for the forthat particular also, is it any other cloud from do you guys use, do you guyshave a talent pool or something like that?
00:16:19:13 - 00:16:20:18
Mudassir
Like how do you guys do that?
00:16:20:20 - 00:16:54:10
Lesya
Yeah, that's a great question. So I would say that there isno like magic flag for one size fits all. So you need to work at a specificcompany. Our their product, their business, their stage, their market andspecific role before deciding about the platforms where to advertise. So ifit's a technical role, there are a lot of technical communities or even likenot the technical, but like any professional.
00:16:54:12 - 00:17:29:07
Lesya
No, any specific role has its professional communities whereyou can also advertise and the smaller the community, the more tailored thecommunity is the best results, the best applicants you will get from there. Andthen yeah, like overall, if you look, if you want to define, you know, the mostuniversal platform where to advertise, I would say LinkedIn jobs would fit thatdefinition for sure.
00:17:29:08 - 00:17:37:11
Lesya
But don't limit yourselves to just LinkedIn jobs. You theometer more specific. Advertisement.
00:17:37:15 - 00:18:01:03
Mudassir
Okay. Yeah. Okay. So one thing I want to ask you is and thisis strictly coming from a person who has been in the startup world for quitesome time. So they are not not the corporate at all. So yeah, I think mostfounders out there, they're like not good at hiding that. They like kind ofsecond mark, second hiring a lot because they end up hiring the the wrongpeople at the wrong time on their own position or something like that.
00:18:01:07 - 00:18:27:04
Mudassir
So but in most early stage companies I think they do hidingin-house, right? Like most of the early stage startups, they do hiring, headingin-house, and they're the ones that are making the most mistakes as a So whendo you think a startup founder, like whoever the company is, they should decidelike, okay, this is a time to bring in somebody like you guys, somebody like aplayer, somebody who is specialized in recruitment.
00:18:27:06 - 00:18:38:12
Mudassir
So when is the right time to start working with you guys? Isit like way too early after after any pre-seed seed series stages or something?What's the right time to start working with you?
00:18:38:13 - 00:19:15:11
Lesya
Great question. Again, I would approach it in a, you know,complex way, right? So first of all, define like those aspects to analyze aboutit. So first, like who do you need for which role do you have your expertise tohire, your own expertise to hire this person? Do you have the access to theright network? And I mean, not just like one two candidates, but white networkto have a big enough funnel of top candidates?
00:19:15:13 - 00:19:51:03
Lesya
If you have that, awesome, do it yourself. If you don't havethe role as critical and you don't have at least one of those parts covered towhat very well, you either don't have the skills to define who is the right fitor you don't have the access to big enough pool of great candidates. Try tofind an external or an internal expert, and then here to how to define who youneed an external recruiting expert or an internal one.
00:19:51:05 - 00:20:15:13
Lesya
One of the easiest way to look at it Do you need this role?Just once you hire, you know, it's important role. You hire this person, youforget about such hiring or you will have more of similar roles or other roleslike the hiring will continue and you want to optimize your budget and you havesomeone in the team who will continue hiring.
00:20:15:13 - 00:20:42:01
Lesya
So if you plan on having a lot of hires that you don't haveeither your own expertise or your own access to the network with candidateshigher in internal recruiter, if it's one important role or two importantroles, it will be cheaper for you to just get an external recruiting expertinvolved who will cover this needs right away.
00:20:42:03 - 00:20:49:20
Lesya
Right now. And, you know, just leave all that pain from yourshoulders away.
00:20:49:22 - 00:21:09:09
Mudassir
Right. Okay. So following up on that, why most founderswould just go out and hire somebody who was just cheap, Like if if there's likethree people that they can hire for a potential CTO position, why they end uppicking most of the times, why they end up picking the one that's like chargingthem the lowest.
00:21:09:11 - 00:21:45:20
Lesya
That's a good question. I mean, I think we have a naturaltendency to and it's great like founders are focused on optimizing budget,right? So we often try to look how to optimize budget also in the way of hiringa candidate who is asking for less money. But it's not always the best move,right? So sometimes the difference is not that big in terms of the money thatthe candidate is asking for, but the impact of a candidate on the company'sbusiness is huge.
00:21:46:01 - 00:22:09:13
Lesya
So it's important to define the ratio of the value that thecandidate can bring to a company and the budget that the company will spend ona candidate. And that's like where the art comes so on. So that to yourquestion like which specific expertise sometimes founders miss, is specificallythat like defining what what's the goods ratio?
00:22:09:15 - 00:22:31:19
Mudassir
Okay, okay. Yeah. On the same point, pretty much So a lot ofearly startups, like many of those early stage startups, they struggle to findlike eight players and the contest that you can have or the videos that you canhave is like most early stage founders would need like one or two two people atthat, at that like senior saying, you know, leadership role or something.
00:22:31:19 - 00:22:54:07
Mudassir
Either like maybe somebody is looking for a co-founder,somebody is looking for an early CTO, CPO, that kind of world. So but theydon't have that much amount of cash available. They probably have days, I don'tknow, pre-seed or something. They that maybe seed one, they don't have thatlevel of cash. So what strategies do you think startups on budget can actuallyuse to attract the the talent to attract the great talent?
00:22:54:10 - 00:23:25:07
Lesya
Many things. So first of all, a financial way is not theonly way to attract top talent, right? So it's actually not the best way. Sogetting someone excited about your company, about your business, about yourproduct is you do that not was money, right? You do that with mission, you dothat with vision. And that's the best way you can attract top talent.
00:23:25:07 - 00:24:14:01
Lesya
Of course, there is a limit, like you need to pay enough tocompete with other companies who are fighting for this top talent. But youshouldn't compete just with somebody. Yeah. So again, getting access to talk tothe right number of candidates to have big enough funnel gets you more options.So it increases chances that someone will click with you will click was yourmission will click was your vision and will want to join your company even ifit makes cutting their salary.
00:24:14:03 - 00:24:33:16
Mudassir
Okay idea. Yeah. Okay. So how do you think the competitionpackage should be structured for such companies like so suppose that they endup hiring somebody who was a very hard charge person then you obviously cannotafford them. So, you know, how would you suggest some some founders tostructure the competition package? Like how would you do that?
00:24:33:18 - 00:25:09:01
Lesya
Yeah, So it again depends on the role. So some roles haveits nature of three different components in the pay structure. So for example,sales roles usually consists from first startup consists from three components.So base salary, it's on target bonus and it's the stock options, right? So fora role like an engineer, for example, it's usually a base salary, sometimesalso a bonus, sometimes also stock option.
00:25:09:02 - 00:25:15:08
Lesya
And then like the amount of this you can play with withspecific candidate on specific stage of a company.
00:25:15:10 - 00:25:35:04
Mudassir
One thing that you know that that you've mentioned I think acouple of times is like people needs to be like the candidates needs to be, youknow, aligned with the values, the needs to be cultural fit or something tothat. I think there are not many tests out there, not many interviews that youcan go with somebody in order to figure out like what's their right personalityis that you can do like as much as you can.
00:25:35:06 - 00:25:56:05
Mudassir
But obviously the cost of hiring goes up and up. And in myopinion, again, this is like strictly in my opinion. I think once you havehired somebody, you can do a couple of months of like trial PR or somethinglike that. That is when you can actually see like what's working the personwould actually feel like. But because, you know, you just cannot say like,okay, yeah, I just have a couple of hours of interview with Lesley.
00:25:56:05 - 00:26:12:18
Mudassir
And then I actually now you know what side personality isbecause I believe people tend to be at their finest, you know, when you justlike meeting them for a short time and the real personalities like behind the curtainor something like that. So how do you actually find out, like who's the best?Like, what's the customer really looks like?
00:26:12:18 - 00:26:15:07
Mudassir
Is that person that customer or not? So how do you do that?
00:26:15:09 - 00:26:47:23
Lesya
I absolutely agree with you on that. I mean, first of all, Isee recruiting as a bet, right? So you can not be 100% sure that someone willbe 100% fit at the moment when you make them an offer. Right. There are just somany variables. There are so many components of this thing of the right fit.It's very hard to see that during even like ten interviews, which is a crazything to do.
00:26:48:04 - 00:27:15:18
Lesya
But even if you do ten interviews, so in 10 hours, in 20hours, it's impossible to really know that someone is 100% fit, but you canincrease the chances. So the reason to do a recruiting right is to increaseyour chances to hire someone as the right fit as much as possible. And by doingthe right action during the recruiting process, you can increase those chancesthe most.
00:27:15:20 - 00:27:46:09
Lesya
And that and then there are a few critical parts of it. Sofirst, you need enough experience, not just, you know, the number of years, butthe the number of cases you've seen different companies, different people,different situations fit, not fit, not fit, right. So that experience helps youdefine the right things to check the right hiring process and interpret thoseresults to make the right decision.
00:27:46:11 - 00:28:22:09
Lesya
But then absolutely true. The very final, you know, vision,if someone is the right fit or not, will come with time when the person isworking. So I wouldn't try to think about, you know, the goal of being 100%sure that someone is the right fit at the moment of make your offer rather thanincreasing chances of someone being the right fit as much as possible andimplying applying the right action is to increase those chances.
00:28:22:09 - 00:28:35:10
Mudassir
Okay, that that's helpful. In your opinion, what are the redflags when you're hiring somebody for a leadership role like senior leadershipor talking about C-level execs or co-founders or CEO or something like that?
00:28:35:12 - 00:28:39:15
Lesya
Well, where do I start? So many possible red flags.
00:28:39:17 - 00:28:41:22
Mudassir
Give us all of them.
00:28:42:00 - 00:29:24:03
Lesya
And they experience in the culture bad right in thepersonality. So someone obviously like huge red flag, someone trying to pretendto be someone else, one not like having experienced one, not someone notshowing their their experience of being leader to their team on practice.Right. So they're very often people would, you know, talk either from theperspective I, I, I or from the perspective like my team, my team.
00:29:24:03 - 00:29:57:10
Lesya
So like one of the most important thing for a leader to beable to take ownership, to create the system for their team to be successful.So the leaders should know the leaders we're looking for was the culture fitwith our clients? Companies would be the people who have the sense of ownershipand knowing what exactly they've done to get to a success level.
00:29:57:14 - 00:30:08:14
Lesya
But also, you know, be appreciative of their team and andnot just talking about the success as their own success.
00:30:08:14 - 00:30:24:16
Mudassir
Yeah, I totally agree to all of them. I think. Okay, sowe've been you hire a star quality leaders. How do you paired them up with withthe founding team So you already know like what the founder looks like andthen, you know, what's the cultural do they have? And based off of that, youactually go and find somebody for them.
00:30:24:21 - 00:30:29:04
Mudassir
So how do you do that sort of a matchmaking thing?
00:30:29:06 - 00:31:13:12
Lesya
So we approach every hire from a very strategic level first.So we dig deeper into what that company is that we're looking to people for,what their business is, what their product was, their team was their culture,what are their values, who would work personality wise and all these things.And sometimes our clients ask us to bring someone who would, on the one handfit the culture, but on the other hand, you know, improve it, extend it, justhelp it flourish even more, and bring another new aspect of of a culture to it.
00:31:13:14 - 00:31:44:06
Lesya
So we defined that was a client at the very beginning,whether we want someone to purely fit in or someone to fit in and extend it inthe better way. Yeah. And then, you know, it takes like a few sessions with aclient to calibrate at the very beginning, just, you know, on the discussionlevel. Then we look for potential candidates on the client.
00:31:44:11 - 00:32:14:04
Lesya
If you profile show to a client those profiles to calibrateon their background and their experience just on the profile level. Then weinterview people and we calibrate on specific candidates who we interviewed,who our clients interviewed. We discuss their opinions, we collaborate on that.And if we see that something comes up that we should pay attention to and tolook for different think.
00:32:14:04 - 00:32:24:01
Lesya
And again, as we apply it in the further search and the nextcandidate that we show would have that thing that we calibrated for.
00:32:24:02 - 00:32:35:17
Mudassir
Okay. Do you think all these big companies like Facebook,Google, all of these, you know, Amazon, they all have like eight players. Doyou think every hire that they have made is like an airplane?
00:32:35:19 - 00:32:39:01
Lesya
No, I don't.
00:32:39:02 - 00:32:58:04
Mudassir
But people have but people have this this sort of brandingwith their name. Like, you know, you go to LinkedIn and they're like, ex-googleX, Amazon X employee 1,000,100 or something like that. But they had this sortof a badge with them. So is, is it more about like, do they have like the rightquality, like are the best in the game?
00:32:58:06 - 00:32:59:21
Mudassir
Like what exactly is it about them?
00:32:59:23 - 00:33:26:08
Lesya
I think Google and Facebook stopped hiring top talent andeven probably having that image on the market, you know, a long time ago now.Right. So it's impossible to be that big and to keep hiring only eight players.They're not so many players on the market. So it's impossible for a company toget to this size and to keep hiring.
00:33:26:10 - 00:33:45:07
Lesya
I think those companies, when they were probably up until, Idon't know, a few hundreds or even a thousand, they probably, I would say, youknow, kept hiring only eight players. But after that, they keep hiring also aplayers, but not.
00:33:45:07 - 00:34:04:13
Mudassir
Exclusively. Okay. That that makes sense. So I reallyappreciate all the questions. So what we do is we have a decent bit of acommunity. People are kind enough to send in their questions. So every singletime some guest is coming over to the podcast, we ask them, okay, so, you know,like Leslie is coming tomorrow, any question that you have for them, for him orher?
00:34:04:19 - 00:34:24:21
Mudassir
So yeah, people just sending the question, they're likereally kind enough to do that. So we do have quite a big, you know, a big listof those, but we just try to find out the best of the best ones. Okay. So in noparticular order like neither. The question that we have from the audience, thefirst one is coming from a founder who just bootstrapped a company likerecently, and he's like, I'm a first name founder.
00:34:24:23 - 00:34:44:03
Mudassir
We started out with, you know, started a company and I needa technical partner for myself. So he's I just so he's either in marketing thatin sales or something like that, but he is building US house products. I needsomebody on the technical side. So and his question is, should I go out andhire the contractor or should I go out and hire a full time person?
00:34:44:05 - 00:35:03:06
Mudassir
Most people hired a, you know, co-founder without knowing,working with each other for a long period of time. And they just end up hiringa co-founder because like the first employee that they need to hire, this islike, yeah, take 10%, 20% equity and just come with me. So so yeah, what shouldI do? That's his question.
00:35:03:08 - 00:35:43:00
Lesya
So there are of course, pluses and minuses of each way, eachapproach, the process of hiring someone as a contractor would be testing thewaters, would be, you know, less of a commitment from the founder side. Butalso but the cons of it is less of a commitment from the candidate's side,right? So most likely the candidate will have a thing on a side, or at leasttheir heart will not be fully in.
00:35:43:02 - 00:36:13:09
Lesya
And that might be a challenge as well. So yeah, I would saysome sometimes like the the financial aspect here comes as well. So, you know,on the contrabass you can basically commit with less overall financialcommitment, have less financial commitment, but, but you would also get less,right? So I would say that it's case by case and somewhere there is, you know,the best middle ground.
00:36:13:09 - 00:36:52:12
Lesya
So if you have someone who you feel like this person's goingto be a really good fit for this technical co-founder role, try to get themfull time. Was full commitment from your side, from a candidate's side. If youhave someone who you feel like might become, you know, great co-founder,probably go test the waters. But with the intention to do it fast enough and tomake the progress and to get fast to the point where this person joins you.
00:36:52:14 - 00:37:37:18
Lesya
You know, it wasn't full focus because I don't believe in,to me, building a company a long time on the side, maybe for some time, for ashort time, but for a long time, it just doesn't work. Another thing, it's verygood idea to invite someone who, as a co-founder, who you knew for a while. Soif you need to find a co-founder and you don't know at the moment, anyone triedto spend enough time treated as, you know, your most important hire spent much moretime, was this person that you would otherwise was, you know, candidates.
00:37:37:18 - 00:37:38:16
Lesya
You just.
00:37:38:16 - 00:37:55:12
Mudassir
Roll. Okay, I totally agree to that as well. Where do youthink startup hiring processes typically go wrong that they end up hidingmisaligned people? I don't want to say a bad hire or something like that. Iwouldn't say misaligned. So. So yeah. What do you think about that.
00:37:55:14 - 00:38:37:23
Lesya
So a few different parts one part. Often it's just not torole fit from either on specific skills or experience, perspective orpersonality. So there is also a match between the role and the personality, notjust personality with the personality of the people like culture wise, but alsothe role wise. So another so for example, personalities for sales roles andpersonalities for engineering crawls are very different personalities, andthese seem to be obvious to most people.
00:38:38:01 - 00:39:00:06
Lesya
But there are also but if you look at other so for example,within sales, right? So you have in the art, you have an account executivestill completely different personalities that you need for those roles. So veryimportant you think of that if you hire someone was a sales would becomeaccount executive personnel due to in the role or vice versa no success.
00:39:00:08 - 00:39:40:13
Lesya
So this is big part then our culture fit miss hire anotherhuge and then also now companies type which includes companies stage companiestype of product. So for example if you're looking for a technical CTO for notvery technical product, don't go for people who enjoy working on, you know,very deep tech. Those people will get bored. Those people will, you know, justbe not the right personality fit with this type of product, Right.
00:39:40:15 - 00:39:51:09
Lesya
And vice versa. Right? So if you are building deep TEDproduct, don't hire a six year old would work well for, you know, an easy apptype of product.
00:39:51:10 - 00:40:08:11
Mudassir
Okay, that's helpful. So how do you attract top talent as abootstrap startup? I think you already covered that. But yeah, if there's likeany tips and tricks for people who are just bootstrapping their startup don'thave a pile of cash like venture capital of Internet, so how can they actuallyattract the top top talent?
00:40:08:16 - 00:40:42:12
Lesya
Yeah. So one of the things that helps the most is growingyour network and getting people excited to join your company more for themission and for your vision. Then for the money. Define your mission veryclear. Define your vision. Check if you are excited yourself about this and ifyou are, get excited. Get those people excited. So work on your sales pitch to candidates.
00:40:42:18 - 00:41:14:04
Lesya
That's like one of the best things can do. If you don't haveenough funding, spend time. You know how learning how to get candidates excitedor get someone else's help to get excited. But that's like, don't miss thisstep. So help having someone speak about your product, about your business inaddition to your speech is great. But don't think that like you know, you willoutsource selling to candidate your company.
00:41:14:06 - 00:41:22:00
Mudassir
What common founders mindset or behaviors propel a player?Tell us during the interview. Because I've seen that a lot.
00:41:22:02 - 00:42:05:18
Lesya
And that's so I think two opposite things always repel. Soone being overconfident and one being not confident enough in your mission,your vision, not excited enough to both things for sure. Repel, I think was thesecond one straightforward, but the first one being overconfident that oftenmakes the founder behave in the way that, like all everyone should want us andjust, you know, start like losing the sight of just reality.
00:42:05:18 - 00:42:21:22
Mudassir
Yeah, Yeah. I think it is more mostly just like, likethere's, like a line out there. People are dying to work with us or somethinglike that and then kind of become somewhat of an insulting to a person thatthey are actually into doing this. Like, you know, just keep telling them thesame thing over and over again.
00:42:22:00 - 00:42:51:22
Lesya
Yes. One of the things about a players, which is likeabsolutely always the case, a players want to work with a players and that'sthat's one of the main reasons why you should hire a players to leadershiproles, because a players hire eight players, be players, hire see players andsee players hire the people you probably don't want in the company right?
00:42:52:00 - 00:43:04:23
Lesya
So try to hire only eight players, do leadership roles, butalso, you know, be in the player yourself. Show that you can do that, get themexcited to work with you.
00:43:05:01 - 00:43:14:13
Mudassir
Okay? Okay. So I appreciate that said, the next one is whowas your best hire and who was your worst hire?
00:43:14:15 - 00:43:52:13
Lesya
that's a great question. So hard to pick one best hirebecause so I, I treat growing my team as, you know, my first goal because onceI have, you know, the best recruiters in my team or the best people on my team,they'll just recruiters right? I can do so many amazing things for my clients.So I need the very best eight players in my team in order to hire eight playersfor my clients.
00:43:52:14 - 00:44:21:21
Lesya
So that's the thing that I at first apply, you know, in myown life. Right? And so it's very hard. And so I respect and I admire my teammembers so much, it's hard to pick, you know, which of those hires is my besthire. So as a category would absolutely pick, you know, specific people wereall my team as my best hires, as my worst hire.
00:44:21:23 - 00:44:50:22
Lesya
I've done quite a few actually. Also hard to pick one. Soyeah, so I would say that some of the most memorable worst hires that come tomy heart are the wrong hires in a different ways, right? So how I've done, youknow, growing my experience, like I would figure out some at some sets ofaspects what what the right to hire is.
00:44:51:00 - 00:45:19:12
Lesya
And then I think, okay, I figured it. That's how I approach.I'll look this, this and these things and that's that best hire. And then I,you know, do the hire and then someone doesn't work out and then I look, well,I missed this specific aspect and then I, you know, what's the next hire? Iinclude this aspect into my hiring process and then I don't make the samemistake like in the same category.
00:45:19:15 - 00:45:45:08
Lesya
And I might miss another aspect. So that's how my, you know,recruiting experience since I was 17 just grew, you know, to the point where Iam now, we have a 100% success rate in the company. So once they started witheight players, I feel like I had, you know, recruiting figured pretty well. Soup until then I was like, You're making so many mistakes.
00:45:45:13 - 00:46:10:23
Lesya
But when I started the company, I felt like I had so muchknowledge into how to make the right hire that in my company, eight playersthat is five years old now we have a 100% success rate, meaning that everysingle person that we've hired for our clients past that trial period, as youand I figured out, only Ben, you can for sure figure out that someone is a goodfit, right?
00:46:11:01 - 00:46:22:11
Lesya
So those people passed trial period. Most of them got promoted.Most of them made a huge impact on the company. So that's how I definesuccessful recruiting.
00:46:22:15 - 00:46:27:18
Mudassir
Okay. What are the companies that you work with? Like if youcan just name top five or something like that?
00:46:27:20 - 00:47:02:16
Lesya
Yeah. So we worked with companies with big well-known nameslike We Send Grandma, we Mind Valley, Unstoppable, Domains Brief, but also somany amazing growing startups. So some of them out of Ukraine operating on aglobal market like it used to be called property made. Now the companies calledNew Homes Made So amazing company that has grew so much over the past like 15times over the past year.
00:47:02:18 - 00:47:37:11
Lesya
So yeah, another startup that we enjoy working was that weclosed the role just recently, Deus Robotics. So they make robots forwarehouses and other amazing example. So we enjoy helping startups the mostbecause those are the companies who's come, whose culture resonates with us themost. And usually like statistically, those are the companies that are the mostfocused on making positive social impact.
00:47:37:13 - 00:47:59:19
Lesya
So one of our clients, for example, called Esper Bionics. Sothey make hand presses this hand for people with disabilities with arms. Sothat's like amazingly huge impact on people's lives and like among our clientsstart ups are the companies who make the most social impact.
00:47:59:23 - 00:48:12:18
Mudassir
That's this quite a big of a clientele that you have there.One question that you mentioned Ukraine, and I had a lot of friends in Ukraineand they really start to see what's happening there. So yeah, it used to have alot of friends that
00:48:12:18 - 00:48:40:17
Mudassir
one thing is like, you know, I think it's like ten years agoor something like that, a lot of tech companies started to outsource, peopleoutsource or start working with with teams and and like Eastern Europe and thenin in Asia or something like that. So the question that I have in mind for youis, do you think now that, like people are going distributed and like they havedistributed teams like all over the world, is culture becoming somewhat of agimmick now or like how hard is it to maintain culture now in the company?
00:48:40:18 - 00:49:28:11
Lesya
So hiring remotely definitely brings somewhat the challengeto maintain the culture. But I would say like I'm a big believer in the remote.I've been remote first from day one in my company. I plan on continue doing soprobably for the rest of the year. So my company, some of the best results thatour clients have both in hiring and business, I would say our the remote firstcompany is so but yes, so it does give you great benefits because you can findtop talent anywhere in the world, regardless of where they are.
00:49:28:13 - 00:49:58:17
Lesya
You can keep you can give people. Was the company mucheasier because you know they can travel right? They can move. And you can alsosave money by hiring people from locations with lower cost of living. That'sall great benefits. The challenges for sure. One of the challenge is culture,but but that's something that is fixable. What's the right amount of efforts?
00:49:58:17 - 00:50:40:09
Lesya
Right? So before I started my company, I was part of astartup waste bag startup and talk about and I part of my role was building oneculture and two teams. So the company had the U.S. team and the Ukrainian team.And so my role was, you know, building one culture in these two teams and mebeing born in Ukraine and having experience with the U.S. businesses, like Icould apply those skills and experience into that role very well.
00:50:40:13 - 00:51:12:22
Lesya
So the things that I was doing for that, the main thingswhere first of all, like on conceptual level identifying those culturaldifferences and openly talk about those, openly share, create experiencesaround them. So for them and like on different levels, on one level, on thediscussions level. So we had from cultures, right? So we would talk about, youknow, what it means to be born in this place or the other.
00:51:12:22 - 00:51:41:01
Lesya
And our U.S. team was very diverse as well. So it wasn't justlike, you know, American and Ukrainian, right? So there were like a lot ofcultural aspects into those meetings. Amazingly, what people loved it. So wewere doing also a lot of like discussions and using in our day to dayprocesses, knowing and educating our hiring managers, our leaders in thecompanies about those differences and helping them.
00:51:41:03 - 00:52:09:21
Lesya
Well, you know, consider those differences while making somedecisions. So finding someone who can combine cultures, who can integratecultures in the team is another important thing to do if you want to build oneculture in the remote team. But it's, you know, it's a great tool that helpsyou mitigate the risks and use all the benefits of hiring.
00:52:09:23 - 00:52:26:07
Mudassir
Awesome, Awesome. Thank you, Lecia. Appreciate theappreciate the candor and all that. So we do have one small ritual on thepodcast. So what we do is we ask all that question, the guests a question forour next guest without telling you the next guest going to be. So we got aquestion for you, and we're obviously going to take some questions for our nextguest.
00:52:26:07 - 00:52:36:15
Mudassir
But, you know, after the recording, most likely. So thequestion that the last guest left for you without knowing who you're going tobe, if you go back 12 months, what will you tell yourself? Like what's lyingahead of.
00:52:36:17 - 00:52:37:15
Lesya
How many years.
00:52:37:17 - 00:52:39:11
Mudassir
12 months, just just a year ago?
00:52:39:13 - 00:53:34:14
Lesya
Okay. So the first thing that comes to my head is aboutcombining my life as a company owner, as an entrepreneur, and my life as a mom.So basically. Right, Exactly. A year ago, I became a mom for the first time.And so there were a couple of things that I imagined would be differently. Andso, yeah, so one of the things I thought, you know, I would be like it would bedifficult to combine my mom's job and my entrepreneurial job on a logisticallevel, right on the practical level, but it's not actually the case.
00:53:34:14 - 00:54:06:02
Lesya
So what is more important, I think is like on the combining,it's on an emotional level and how to find time for everything and how to find,you know, peace inside me, like to combine all those things. And so I would saythat I would probably start preparing the world, you know, for combiningmotherhood, combining parenting and business earlier.
00:54:06:04 - 00:54:33:19
Lesya
I'm working on it now. I want to grow the culture of likehaving kids in, joining the work meetings, having, you know, people from thefamily or not people or even like your pads, like joining your meetings andhaving this like family style in the business for people who it's works for.But I think like the world is not like fully ready for that yet.
00:54:33:21 - 00:54:37:14
Lesya
So that's like one of the things I think I would startworking on earlier.
00:54:37:18 - 00:54:43:08
Mudassir
Awesome, Awesome. So thank you so much. Appreciate the time.And I really do love talking to you.
00:54:43:10 - 00:54:48:15
Lesya
I love to. Thank you so much for so interesting questionsand and lovely conversation. Appreciate it.
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