Evolution of our Job descriptions in the past 6 years of FR8
- Dec, 2016 – Seed fund of 6 crore
- 2+ Years of experience or
- Engineering from IIITDM or MBA from NITIE
- Dec, 2017 – Monthly burn of 30 Lakhs
- 1+ Years of experience or
- Engineering or MBA
- Dec, 2018 – 6 months of runway
- Stopped Hiring
- Long term believers stayed, others left voluntarily
- Dec, 2019 – Profitable (Ulaga tholaikatchi il muthal muraiyaga)
- 1+ Relevant work experience
- BSC, MCA
- Since Dec, 2020
- Freshers and referrals
- Diploma, BSC, MCA, B.tech
We now mostly recruit freshers from campus and laterals through referrals. Either Vasanth or myself are part of the interview process. We interview for alignment with our culture rather than skills. This was possible by our hiring and induction process detailed here:
- Write down your values: Based on our initial hiring success and failures we created FR8in code we started to closely looks for pattern in candidates that makes us hire right
- Look for patterns in interview: We look for patterns that we see in candidates that matches our code. Two of our code “We act like owners” “We are ambitious yet humble people” are comparatively easy to interview for in freshers. Freshers who have family obligations and have taken steps to fulfil them, align with our code. They are young 18-21 years old, and have a purpose in life. This combination turn out to be hidden gems. They bring in lot of passion, learn quickly, gets aligned with organisational goal and put organisation priorities over individuals
- Have a strong induction: Even after a tight hiring process, you can be sure only 80% of the time. An hour of interview is very less to evaluate attitude and it is almost impossible to evaluate learning capability. We created a shorter on the job induction program across functions.
- Set targets in the 1st month: Freshers has to be shaken up to real world as they are passing out of care free college life. Leaving honeymoon period of 3 months causes problem at later stage. We keep measurable targets within 15 days and state very clear on what behaviours are expected and what are not.
As we know, performance management does not stops in the 1st month. It’s a continuous process. In the next article will cover about how we do continuous performance management.
Jay
Jay is the Co-founder and CTO of FR8. With 18 years of experience, Jay loves working on complex problem and providing simple technical solution. He likes training and empowering team by teaching them skills they need, questions they need to ask and answers they need to figure out instead of spoon feeding the answers.
