How do you now scale this culture of this thought process this way of working within the organization? Are you hiding a certain kind of people? Are you putting some systems and checks and balances in place? Are you building some sort of you know, SOP platform where you know, you're this kind of consulting is to be provided, these kind of value added services is to be provided. Because a lot of times what people face as challenges in small businesses, when you're starting out is while you believe in a lot of those things, you have to now find people who can scale that for you because your time is limited. It's a finite resource, right?
Vedansh Gupta: So basically what we do both now conifers and an article, we only hire people who are around my age, I think we are one of the youngest companies in the industry as well. So I think average, like you could see a mean working age and our companies around 30 years of age, who actually run the center division. So, we have a lot of young people involved and whenever a colleague comes up to me with a problem, I just asked him to start thinking on the logic behind it, because suppose you get the logic behind, then you start thinking a little bit more logical. So I'm not saying don't think by heart, but I'm saying you should understand the logic. Once my colleague started understanding that thought form that you know, you should have logic involved in everything that you ask or everything that you say for. Then they started thinking along the same lines. I think a lot of the times what happen noticed in other SMEs as people just tell their colleagues to you need to do this work or you need to get this work done. They never tell them why they asking them to get that work done. So unless you constant and they don't appreciate questions, I mean, I've seen my superiors, they never appreciate questions from their colleagues. I like if my colleagues question me, I mean, a lot of the times, I've given away discounts to a lot of customers and my colleagues have actually come up to me and said, why have you given a discount, we shouldn't have given a discount, we would have fared well within without giving a discount. And I had to actually explain why I actually gave it to them and then they started understanding the rationale behind and they start implementing that. And again, I believe you should bring about transparency even within your colleague, so a lot of my colleagues know pretty much everything that we do. They know us purchasing path, they know our selling path, they know the challenges we face internally. So, when your employee or your colleague or your teammate knows that, then they get a better picture on how to carry on the business independently, I mean, I don't even interfere in anyone's business. So we have about 15 team members on day and I don't interfere anyone's business.
Sahil: Is it fair to say that when you started out the mean, which is mean age was actually fairly close to 25? Was it that young?
Vedansh Gupta: It was about 26-27.
Sahil: Okay, I think that's something that a lot of young entrepreneurs will have to figure out is, is bank on young talent. Because if you get people from the industry who have like 7, 10, 12 years of the industry, they're going to think like the industry things, then you're not going to be able to make them think in a new or a different way because they're going to be primed to think that way. I think that's crucial when you're starting something new, even though it might be something that's been done for ages.
Vedansh Gupta: So one thing that I would actually like to tell everyone that's listening is never hire from the industry, never ever hire from the industry. It never works and if suppose someone's leaving a job from the industry, and he's joining you, you can be rest assured he's going to leave you and join the next panel is going to give him a 10% raise on his paycheck. So I never hire anyone from the industry.
Sahil: So, in our company we are, there are a few product groups that are trying to enter, where, you know, obviously it's a closed market that only a few players, the only few buyers and there's only a few sellers. And therefore, for us the thought process was that we need to hire somebody from that industry so that they already have all the contacts it will fast forward our entire process. And actually hiding something from that industry has been a pain maybe struggling at it for the last, I don't know 10 months. We are also now after having burned our fingers, we are going with your thought process that they're going to start building the team from the ground up, hiring young talent, teaching them and then having them go in the field and, do the hard selling, which is obviously a much, much, much harder way to do it and it takes a lot longer, but in the long run probably is going to be better fruit than having somebody join, then the leaves and hire somebody else and then they leave again.
[00:20:15 – 00:24:24
Vedansh Gupta: Just to add on, Sahil actually, you know the other benefit about not hiring people from the industry and if they're. So, one question I really like asking people before I get them on board is if they actually like the paper industry if they would actually be interested in selling paper. So, I think the recent recruit was from the plastics industry, and he said, plastic is not sustainable and I did not like it and that's why I wanted to shift industries. But one thing I can actually tell you that what a plus point you can give an employee when he shifts the industry is that you're giving him a chance to learn again, and you're stimulating his brain, you're stimulating his ability to learn, when you hire someone from the industry, they're pretty much mundane, because they've been doing that same thing day in, day out day in, day out. So they get kind of in routine and they meet the same people, they're doing the same clients, they're doing the same nine to five and the energy is very low. But when you hire someone from outside, you will see a boost in energy. And you'll see your morale in the company overall will be quite high.
Sahil: But doesn't the training time on hiring somebody, isn't that so much longer because they need to learn about the industry, they need to learn about the customers and the suppliers and takes us so much longer to train them.
Vedansh Gupta: It does take much longer, but then imagine this, right. So they're going to be making so many mistakes, and every mistake that they make and either tells you that your SOP wasn't in place, or that you have something new to learn. It's just that own bed that will actually paid by itself somewhere downstream for hiring someone outside because the more you learn about your own industry through people is unfathomable. Like I never knew tissues used in the garment industry, for example, like to manufacture comments and this is what my employees started teaching me, because they made a mistake of offering a price to a trader and then they asked them what the end application was and then we found out that, after that they asked him what the end application is and then we found out that he's selling to the garment industry. And that's something that's a whole new industry for us to explore within our own field.
Siddharth: If I unpack that a little more, right, specially selling and marketing sort of roles can be taught very quickly, if you have the right sort of systems and processes in place, as you pointed out Vedansh, is your recipe really working or not. I think that's also mindset that you go in with that I'm going to put in the processes and systems in place from day one and keep evolving it. I think the fire balance that you need to maintain probably is for highly technical roles, you probably still have to go in industry and maybe get a guy or two from the industry who can lend that sort of knowledge to the overall organization. But I completely agree when it comes to selling and marketing, especially for a young organization. You can risk and take a bet on people who are not from the industry.
Vedansh Gupta: Yes. But like we're not in a very technical industry, I mean tissues fairly simple compared to most industries. So we have never had that difficulty per se, but even if so, I still believe that if you keep looking out for the right people, and if the person has like, say, for example, what I look for in a salesperson, when we interviews that I look out that our sales guys should be good engineers, they should have some kind of engineering background, because I believe in technical commercial sales. So, once you have any kind of engineering background, it's a little bit easier. I'm not saying it's easy, or it's hard, but it's a little bit easier compared to someone without a technical background, to grasp the technicalities. So, suppose you're in coding, for example, maybe you're doing search engine optimization, but you're looking for someone to develop a CRM, maybe you can look at the search engine optimization there instead of a guy who's actually developed a CRM in the past, because his thought process in the past would be that it goes from a to b, b to c, c to d, but the search engine optimization guy, the SEO guy for example, he would say it can also go from A to D, if I just modify the code a bit.
Sahil: Tell me what how are you finding this talent, where are you finding this talent? What kind of background do you potentially look at? I know you said engineering but India outside, tell me where you're finding this talent.
[00:24:24 – 00:29:51]
Vedansh Gupta: So we generally work through HR recruiters. I've tried LinkedIn, I've tried monster.com, I've tried indeed, but I've never got pool is too large to actually segregate them down to, so we normally give the job to an HR recruiter, but till now everyone I've hired is often interviewing literally about 50 to 60 people. So, I interview 50 to 60 people in the first round, and then you keep downward, you keep bifurcating it down, and then you get the right person at the end of the day.
Sahil: Is there a method you have for your interviewing and your screening?
Vedansh Gupta: My first is I do a phone interview. So at that time, I just want to understand why he wants to leave his job. The first question that I asked generally is, why are you leaving your job? Why do you want it to leave it? If a person says he wants to grow, then my first question is; why can't you grow within the company? Why are you looking to grow externally? If I'm satisfied with that, then I asked them for a second interview, where I get them some technical questions from my industry. If they able to answer that, then it goes to a third and then I'm happy when I meet them in person, then I get them in. But a lot of it is, if I'm connected with them. And if I actually feel that, like sometimes I asked them, how would they behave with another team member? So suppose a team member is not being good with a customer, right? So suppose he's being very rude, and he's being very agnostic and you know that your colleague is not doing a good job, what would you do? So, if the interview he just tells me that he's going to report the colleague to me, then I wouldn't actually bother interviewing him further. Because that's not building up a healthy organization that's just going to be ratting someone out. A better way would be that he actually talks to them, understand why he's being rude towards that particular customer and see if he can add value, he or she can add value and making things better. So I just give them small interpersonal questions here and there. just to understand the mindset where they're coming from.
Sahil: So to get a cultural fit as well.
Vedansh Gupta: Yeah, it's very important. I mean, after I interviewed them actually have them speak to different colleagues in different departments within my company. So, if they can actually come in, when I'm not in office, so they don't feel that I'm actually monitoring them, but they can actually come in and meet different people in the office, and they get an idea of the working culture and everything beforehand. Only after that I actually try and get them in.
Sahil: So this is a lot more detailed recruitment policy than most companies have, because most people especially from what I've seen older people, they tend to go by their gut, no have one interview do I like employers hired on the spot, but this seems to be a lot more methodical then you're going by your gut. And this is something I guess you have also gotten with practice. You must have hired some wrong people and then…
Vedansh Gupta: Yeah, so I've gone through, I've hired people who are much older than me. I couldn't manage them because of the age gap and because the culture that we come from, so I couldn't ever impose my views on them. Then I've hired people where I haven't checked their backgrounds completely. So I had some legal issues downstream up to understanding everything, I felt this is the best way forward. Because I interview so many people before I select a single person, I don't want that person because it ill fate in the organization. So each and every post should take about three months to fulfill.
Sahil: Okay, you take your time with filling those.
Vedansh Gupta: If I'm not satisfied getting someone on board, I just don't want to get them in and have a name patch associated with it.
Siddharth: And now that you have 15 people, have you been able to go back and sort of figure out a pattern on what kind of people really work out in your organization. Is there apart from education, is there certain kind that works for you? Have you been able to figure that out?
Vedansh Gupta: So, mostly people who help one another actually tend to work out. Now everyone doesn't like to help another person out, no matter how good or bad It sounds, like sometimes I don't like helping people out. But most of the times, people who actually help one another, tend to stick around in organization more. So, if you see our office system currently, say the accountant is sick right, the main accountant is sick, even a salesperson can actually do she can probably enter his stuff entirely, but she can probably make the invoice or something. So she's willing to get into that job role and do it. So she's willing to cover up so that he doesn't face the brunt of it. So what I've actually seen, as long as you're a team member you can do with an organization but that's the reason why I actually interview so many people and I have a very stringent way of getting people in. Like no HR recruiter likes working with us because we keep asking for so many profiles that they kind of get sick of it.
Siddharth: Here, the way you interview sounds a lot like this book called ‘The A method of hiring’. I don't know if you've read it. But what you've described is basically exactly what that book talks about not going by a gut, having a method to how you hire. Vedansh, I've been to your house, I've seen that you read quite a bit. And obviously, you're a very thoughtful person in your business from what I'm learning today. Are there any books or blogs or videos or anything that you would recommend to people as a great way to learn?
Vedansh Gupta: So hopefully, I'm just hooked on to Robin Sharma. I told you the same thing actually. So, I'm really, really hooked on to his ways and his methods and all of that. He has something called as ‘the 5am Club’. It's a great book to read. It's not just about getting up at 5am but he actually puts his hand…
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