How to Build a Team? Part 2. Hiring Employees.

How many entrepreneurs in the world dream of the perfect team — where everyone loves their work, knows what needs to be done, and, most importantly, does it. But finding great people who'll help take the business to the next level is incredibly hard. Not to mention keeping them.

3 STAGES OF TEAM FORMATION:

First, let's break down the stages of building a working team: 1) Selection. You need to learn how to select. Your effectiveness depends on who you bring in. 2) Onboarding. Getting them up to speed on the role. 3) Full team member. When they've internalized the mission and work independently.

WHY DO WE PICK THE WRONG PEOPLE?

When hiring someone full-time, we need a portrait of the ideal employee. Imagine you found the perfect person. What would they be like? For example: responsible, motivated, stress-resistant, honest, proactive, creative… But here's the catch: these are personality traits, not job competencies. Most employers hire for personality and fire for competency — or the other way around.

When hiring, it's important to set 2 metrics for each employee: a direct result they produce and an indirect result. Sometimes company revenue grows after a new hire — but the new hire didn't directly cause it. That could be the indirect result at work — their presence raised team energy, streamlined communication, or freed up the founder's time.

What are we paying an employee for? Few people truly know. Fundamentally, we're paying for work results. But not everyone can state what the result of the role they're hiring for actually is. For example, sales = revenue. Photographer = photographs. But what's the result for an elevator operator? For a personal assistant? Define the result before writing the job description.

TYPES OF EMPLOYEES

To identify employee types, you need to understand what achieving a result involves.

Every task consists of 4 stages: 1) Identify the problem; 2) Determine what the end result should be; 3) Build a plan from A to B (set of actions that lead to the goal); 4) Execute all necessary actions and get the result. Who will be the ideal employee?

So, the types of employees: 1) PEGASUS. People who can complete all 4 stages independently. But they're only 5% of the workforce. They're usually experienced and know everything needed to deliver results. A Pegasus will never bother you over trivialities and doesn't need motivation to start acting. These are your most valuable hires. 2) PRODUCTIVE. They handle stages 3–4 well. They need a clear task and plan, but they execute excellently. 3) PROCESS. They follow instructions well but can't build the plan themselves. 4) DEPENDENT. They need constant hand-holding at every step.

High-performing people usually stay in one place for a long time — they enjoy what they do. They rarely job-hop. Such candidates often have terrible resumes, because they rarely update them. This means screening by resume is ineffective. You need to meet people.

HOW TO FIND A PEGASUS?

4 STAGES OF HIRING

1) Define the role you're hiring for. 2) Build the employee profile based on the role. Many make the mistake of hiring people just like themselves. This only works in authoritarian management. The opposite approach works better: build a team where each member compensates for your weaknesses. 3) Attract candidates — through announcements, referrals, networking. 4) Select using the interview algorithm below.

5-MINUTE INTERVIEW ALGORITHM

There's no point in running long interviews. Research shows that regardless of interview length, you tend to select the same people.

1) At the start of the interview, say: 'This interview is just one stage. It takes 5 minutes. After the interview, we'll let you know whether you advance to the next stage. We have a large pool of applicants.' This creates a funnel system. The person knows what role they're applying for and what the selection process looks like.

2) Open their resume and look at where they worked for a long time (more than 4–5 months). Ask: 'You worked at Company X in this role, correct? You were there for this long, correct?' Now the key question: 'Every role has its own result — the product of that role. For example, a pastry chef's result is a finished pastry. What was the result of your role?' If they answer confidently and concisely — that's a sign of a results-oriented person.

5) This question will stump most productive and process-oriented people. If someone didn't answer the earlier questions, it doesn't yet mean they're not a Pegasus. But if they answered even one incorrectly — that tells you they're a different employee type. Proceed accordingly.

IMPORTANT TO REMEMBER

A good employee's goal is to become indispensable. A good manager's goal is to never allow indispensable employees. Because the moment you have someone who's indispensable, they start setting the rules — and the system becomes dependent on them. Eventually, a high-performing employee's productivity will either plateau or they'll leave, taking critical knowledge with them.

Any employee is just a function. So is a manager and the entrepreneur themselves. This mindset lets the entrepreneur 'fire themselves' from roles they're underperforming in, and hire someone better for those roles. Separate personality from professional role — otherwise you'll always be emotionally tied to individual people rather than to results.

If you hired a Pegasus who delivers outstanding results but sets their own conditions — agree to them if they're reasonable. If someone brings value and profit, why not pay them well?

A Pegasus is essentially an entrepreneur within their role, and their goal is to bring value to the company. The only difference from a business owner is that they have just one customer — their manager. But that's often the case in business too, when an entire company works for a single client. And that's a completely viable model.

A Pegasus can generate results faster than you're ready to handle. Bottlenecks will appear in other processes, problems will arise, and costs will increase. That's entirely the manager's fault for not scaling the infrastructure alongside the talent. This is why, if you want to scale, you need to account for many variables simultaneously — not just 'hire more Pegasuses.'