What is the role of the only HR person in a startup? #TopFiveLessons

(This is a guest post by Nisha Nair. Bio at the end of the article.)

 

If you drop me, your business is sure to crack. Having me onboard is an underrated growth hack!

Who am I?

Ahem, I am the HR Department!

Typically, startups begin without an HR department. The organization is small, and hiring someone to manage just a few employees isn’t the priority. But, as the organization grows, the business needs HR. And, often, that starts with an HR department of one.”

But, what is the role of HR in startups? Is that even necessary? 🤔🤔

As the sole startup HR, my role wasn’t crystal clear to many people within the organization. Nonetheless, what I do as an HR permeates across the whole business. Being the only startup HR in the initial few years of my career, I’ve played a key role in building the organization, hiring, and managing talent.

I’ve learned a lot along the journey and would love to share my two cents as the sole startup HR! Without further ado, here are my top 5 learnings while working as the only HR for startups.

 

 

  1. The solo startup HR can run a sprint or a marathon but can’t sprint a marathon

“You can run a sprint or you can run a marathon, but you can’t sprint a marathon.” This quote by Ryan Holmes (Chairman and Co-founder of Hootsuite) hits home when it comes to recruiting in a startup. As recruiters, we are often told to hire with our blinders on, at a breakneck speed sprinting through positions without really taking a pit stop and thinking it through. The temptation to jump the gun and close positions is high, but it is important for the startup HR to be the “bad” person and slow down the hiring process by using a structured interview approach instead.

By far, all through my career I have been a part of the core team (when the team strength was just about 10-15 people).

Startups in the 0-10 stage (when they are finding product-market fit and scaling the team & product) are an excellent platform for learning and growing. However, this stage also brings many uncertainties – layoffs, roles change, pivoting your product model, etc. The higher the uncertainty, the higher the risk, and therefore, the higher the attrition rate. 

Being in a continuous pressure point is not for all. Perseverance is not a long race in startups. To persevere in a startup, you’ve got to brace yourself for many short races one after the other!

Also, when it comes to hiring in startups, every hiring mandate needs to start with defining what we need, much before we actually start looking for the right candidate. The best time to reach a consensus on a role and what skills it might require is before hiring and not while reviewing candidates.

Before a role is launched, the startup HR needs to answer specific vital questions – the role’s business needs, higher objectives, goals & skills/competencies. 

I think it’s possible to design an interview process that provides a clear assessment of a candidate’s skills, aptitude, and potential for culture addition. 

Therefore, a startup HR must view recruitment as a marathon, and sprinting through a marathon is absolutely futile. 


Challenge the status quo even if it’s one against many

It’s the job of a recruiter to ask strategic, well-thought-out questions to the hiring manager, whether it’s the CEO or any other person in a position of power. Challenging the status quo definitely feels uncomfortable initially, but it’s way better to feel uncomfortable pushing for better than feeling uncomfortable settling for less.

I understood pretty early in my career that sourcing is the key to building a great recruiting team. 

Hiring a team of TA (talent acquisition) professionals at the beginning is a great idea, but usually, we tend to cut corners in startups. Hence, I settled for good vendors and interns instead. We vetted the vendors and the interns personally. The startup HR must ensure that a happy marriage between the sourcing vendor and the organization happens most seamlessly.  

I started my career as the sole startup HR, fresh out of B-school, and hence challenging the status quo was daunting initially. Unfortunately, the harsh truth here is that some founders don’t prioritize HR as much as they prioritize other functions, which is also why you’ll find startups hiring their HR folks much later.

A lot of times, HR, as a function, is treated as a sidekick of a blockbuster film (read company) with other superstars (read Sales, Finance, Operations, and the likes). I realized that to be taken seriously as an HR, you’ve got to be data-driven and really push your ideas backed by solid data, even if it means ruffling a few feathers along the way. And since then, being data-driven has been one of my core strengths. 

Usually, when a company grows, the founders want the HR team to go berserk, hiring. This hurried approach often leads to bad hiring decisions. Hence, my goal as a solo startup HR has always been to talk from a data standpoint — converting data into information and presenting it as an insight to the founders to enable better decision-making.

After all, in the words of D Edwards Deming, “In God we trust, all others must bring data!”

 

Being in a continuous pressure point is not for all. Perseverance is not a long race in startups. To persevere in a startup, you’ve got to brace yourself for many short races one after the other!

 

2. Culture matters a lot, actually!

 

I genuinely believe that every organization has a personality of its own, and culture is a massive part of its personality. 

Culture, or the beliefs and values that shape an organization, can indeed be challenging to manage when an organization scales from 10 to 1,000 employees, especially in a short duration of time. Many organizations define their culture in terms of clear, observable behaviors. The onboarding programs often teach employees about the culture – knowledge, skills, and attitudes are needed to produce each behavior.

But learning is a continuous process, and unfortunately, culture-training can slow down after the onboarding day in many companies. Organization resources, during hyper-growth, are heavily directed toward the core, revenue-generating functions such as sales and marketing. Thus, startups tend to relegate culture training to the back seat and see it only as a support function rather than making it to be the primary focus.

As the sole HR in a startup, I’d say that the onus to build a great culture lies, not just with the HR, but also with the founders and the employees. Building a great culture is not the responsibility of the startup HR alone. Instead, collectively working towards building a great culture must be an organizational goal.

The startup HR’s role in culture-building includes getting all the employees on board, aligning and educating them on the cultural aspects (values, expectations, experiences and philosophy) of the organization. They say it takes a village to raise a child. Similarly, building a healthy organizational culture requires collective efforts from all in the startup.

The startup HR needs to help founders drive culture-building

I’ve inherently felt that it’s the job of the startup HR to nurture the leadership within the organization – the next in the line to head the team. And matters related to culture need to be a goal not just for startup HR but for the entire organization. 

Many best practices have been bureaucratized to the point where we throw away effective, simple strategies. These include:

  • formal 1-1 meetings versus informal, quick 1-1 meetings
  • once in a year 360-degree appraisal/feedback structure versus immediate, instantaneous candid feedback
  • once-in-a-year employee happiness surveys versus daily 1-1 conversations/surveys on.

Therefore, managers play a critical role in scaling culture. Employees often look up to their managers for guidance and approval and model their behavior. Amid all the chaos that comes along with hypergrowth, managers tend to forget that they have a potent behavior-shaping tool at hand called “recognition”.

Immediately recognizing people for positive behavior goes a long way and can make a lasting impact on institutionalizing target behaviors. And hence relaying or handing over the baton to the managers to take culture forward is the right way to go ahead. Often, you find founders of the organization lamenting about culture dilution. In my experience, one of the primary factors why culture gets diluted is because of the relationship that a manager shares with the direct reports. 

The relationship managers and team leads have with their direct reports will, in turn, impact the relationships with their direct reports. The ripple effect will go a long way towards creating or destroying a positive culture. If the core values or culture built at the initial stage with those 20 or 25 folks were strong, then the ripple effect would happen & the culture won’t get diluted. 

Culture is one of the most important aspects to be considered while building a fantastic organization. And the startup HR would do well if they emphasize the fact that culture-building requires efforts from everyone in the organization, especially the managers. Founders generally do not have the luxury of time to focus specifically on culture-building and this is where the startup HR can step in to guide them in the right direction.

Simon Sinek, author and inspirational speaker, was clearly onto something when he said, “Corporate culture matters. How management chooses to treat its people impacts everything, for better or for worse”. Improving communication within the team, setting expectations clearly, and building a feedback culture go a long way to ensure a great culture. 

 

Building a great culture is not the responsibility of the startup HR alone. Instead, collectively working towards building a great culture must be an organizational goal.

 

Why you must focus on culture in your startup from Day 1 | Freshteam

 

3. Layoffs – a learning experience for the employee being laid off, a more significant learning experience for the sole startup HR

 

The vision of the organization changes, the product changes, merger/ buyout, cost reduction, funding does not come through – whatever be the reason, sometimes, the management needs to let go of some of its employees. But, embracing this change with empathy and utmost respect for those who leave the organization makes a lot of difference.  

I’ve seen employees being laid off reasonably early in my career. As an HR, it was gut-wrenching, to say the least, and very painful to be the bearer of bad news. However, it had to be done. I had just started my career, and within three months of my joining, we had to let go of 15 employees. 

The startup evidently overhired and realized that they had made a mistake and wanted to rectify it. It was one of the toughest challenges that I faced as the only startup HR. I was young and naive and did precisely what I was told to do – let go of 15 employees with utmost respect and empathy. 

As destiny would have it, this happened again after a year, but at this point, I wanted to handle it differently. We were working with vendors already. So, we sent out the resumes of the employees being laid off to the vendors. Our founders and investors reached out to other startups in the ecosystem that were hiring then. We got resumes made, wrote recommendations – all of this before breaking the bad news to them. This helped a great deal.

Good funding, a great team & an excellent culture is the checklist that most companies aim for. However, this goes south as restructuring often leads to layoffs.

 

The solo startup HR must help reassess values of the organization

Success is a lousy teacher – when things go well, you don’t really see the ambiguity in your value system, the chinks in the armor. Layoffs expose the same chinks, and you realize that some of your values were mere ink on paper.

When we laid off a few employees, we realized we needed to reassess our values. Transparency, for example, was one value that we held dearly (much like many other organizations) but clearly (pun intended), we weren’t as transparent as transparent gets. It’s not easy to open up on salaries, funding, layoffs, monthly numbers, and the likes. 

Hence, we felt that we’d do better if we dropped “Transparency” and instead included “Straightforwardness” as one of our values. Although these two values overlap in some ways, transparency is being honest irrespective of the consequences. At times, we, as an organization, had to withhold sensitive or confidential information. Hence, straightforwardness suited our value system better.

As a founder or a startup HR, you wouldn’t want to depend on an extreme event such as a layoff to dig deeper and reassess the organization’s values, vision, mission, and culture. It makes sense to do it daily right from day 1 of your startup, but, in my experience, such pivotal historical moments often are the ones that would help you shape the culture

Founders have a tunnel vision – eager to reach the $0-1M milestone, waiting to raise that next round of funding, product-market fit, etc. Extreme events like a layoff often force you to delve deeper. While it may seem utopian to think about your startup culture right from day 1, the seeds towards building a great culture are inadvertently sown right at the beginning. 

 

Success is a lousy teacher – when things go well, you don’t really see the ambiguity in your value system, the chinks in the armor. Layoffs expose the same chinks, and you realize that some of your values were mere ink on paper.

 

4. Startup HR & Founders, listen up: Tech isn’t risky. Being stagnant is

Are you someone who is seemingly open to technology as long as nothing is altered or is different?! Well, you’re not alone!

I have had a tough time convincing people in positions of power to invest in something as simple as an ATS (Applicant Tracking System), and this was in an organization with a total strength of 500+ employees. Phew!

We had just raised money. We were growing and wanted to have more people on board as we grew. When the organization grows, you need new systems; existing approaches start to show cracks and feel ineffective after a point. 

While I did use a basic ATS system, many tasks had to be done manually. By now, we had also structured our hiring processes & the ATS that we were using wasn’t helping us reach our goals. It took me a fair bit of convincing to buy a better ATS system to help me process and hire better. 

How should the solo startup HR get a buy-in from the founders for new tech?

How did I manage to get the founders onboard?

Of course, you can rant about how the old ATS is manual and ancient and how the new ATS system could help you hire better, but I think what worked in my case is the classic FOMO (Internet slang meaning: fear of missing out). Yes, you read it right! 

The “Fear Of Missing Out” on good candidates is something that founders wouldn’t want to risk. So, a mix of FOMO and data worked like a charm for me! To all founders and startup HR folks reading this, invest in that ATS system that helps you fasten your recruitment process! You cannot always rely on something that has worked in the past. 

Being open to new technologies and tools is the way forward. I firmly believe that there’s a strong correlation between regressive organizations and attrition rates. The more regressive and resistant to change an organization is, the higher is the attrition rate.

I cannot emphasize enough the importance of being open to change and, subsequently, to tech. It’s people, processes, and technology (in that order), for a reason, after all.

 

To all founders and startup HR folks reading this, invest in that ATS system that helps you fasten your recruitment process! You cannot always rely on something that has worked in the past.

 

How Freshteam can help you solve some of your HR challenges

 

5. The solo startup HR needs to keep a beginner’s mindset

“In the beginner’s mind, there are many possibilities. In the expert’s mind, there are few.” I totally swear by this quote by the late Shunryu Suzuki, a Sōtō Zen monk and teacher, and have inadvertently incorporated this thought all through my career.

To not assume knowledge, be open to new ideas, be inquisitive, and keep an extra dose of resilience for the bad days are the trappings of a solid sole startup HR. Initially, I often sought advice from fellow HR practitioners & industry experts. Often, their experiences and thoughts clouded my own, and I realized that it’s imperative to make your own decisions and not be averse to making mistakes to become a credible HR. 


The solo startup HR’s note to self should be: “Do your own thing too!”

Emulating ‘best practices’ blindly isn’t always the right thing. I have come to realize that sometimes, you need to do your own thing, come up with practices that serve you or your organization right, and while doing so, you may accidentally stumble upon a future best practice!

While it’s essential to connect with your peers in the industry and to know the best industry practices / current trends in HR, it is equally important to think, experiment, and reflect while you make decisions as the solo startup HR. I’ve often had to convince the founders/management team to take risks and experiment with people and people-related policies. 

The key here is to look at HR-related policies and processes as a Product Manager. As a product manager, once you make the product, you seek constant feedback from your sales team, customer success, and most importantly, your customers. 

I do the same with HR. I take feedback regularly from the team & often, those data points become my source of arguments. We brought in new policies/processes and checked in with the team often to understand if the policies worked for us or not, and that became my point of contention. 

As the only startup HR, don’t be afraid to scrap policies that don’t serve the company well. That is as important as introducing policies that fit well. You can’t push boundaries & experiment if you don’t have a beginner’s mindset. 

After all, a master is a beginner who keeps beginning. So, if you’re a startup still contemplating the need for HR for your business, my advice to you would be this. Invest in a good HR resource and have some patience (you’re running a marathon, remember!) because the immediate return on investment won’t be growth in terms of revenue but in the growth of your people! 

 

While it’s essential to connect with your peers in the industry and to know the best industry practices / current trends in HR, it is equally important to think, experiment, and reflect while you make decisions as the solo startup HR.

 

Automate a lot of your HR tasks with Freshteam and focus on strategy and execution!

 


About Nisha:

Nisha Nair is passionate about people, processes and technology, and has helped build some fantastic organizations within the startup ecosystem.
Her specialties include:
– talent acquisition
– helping companies scale their HR Processes
– culture curating and designing processes and programs for the overall development of employees
When she isn’t helping clients / organizations find gold candidates, she is busy doing some intriguing artwork, reading or watching an interesting Netflix documentary!
You can shoot her a message on LinkedIn @ Nisha Nair or drop her an email at nisha.nair2712@gmail.com