Last month, I hired someone part-time. Things didn’t work out. I now realize that I should have given more feedback at the first sign so that it could have been course-corrected early. Communicating this at the end was “hard”, as admitting mistakes always tends to be.
I also realized that I don’t have infinite time for hand-holding someone, so I started looking for someone experienced that can come in full-time to scale up things.
I looked at primarily two factors: Are they investing in upskilling themselves? This serves as a good proxy for the attitude I want to have in my team. Lifelong learners. Not being afraid to admit there’s room to grow. The other being: Can they write well? I gave a few questions to evaluate on this criteria.
Today, we hired two full-time folks who start from Monday. Both are bullish on ed-techs and I consider working with them to be a safe bet in the long-term. I’m quite excited (and a bit scared) to see how I do as a full-time manager. We don’t have any pressure to grow (since we’re bootstrapped) so I believe we’re going to have a lot of fun. That’s what really matters anyway.