You may think it’s easy to reverse course after a hiring mistake at your startup. Simply terminate the bad hire and move forward—no harm done.

Here’s the reality: A bad hire can have long-term, detrimental effects on your startup.

So, what’s the real cost of a bad hire?

The cost of the wrong hire

When it comes to financials, the U.S. Department of Labor’s estimate is simple—a bad hire will cost you, on average, at least 30 percent of the individual’s first-year expected earnings.

The cost to your team’s morale, however, is harder to quantify.

Depending on the rank of the bad hire, your operations can take months to recover. Your data may be muddled as a result of mishandling, and their direct reports may be on the verge of leaving themselves, if they have not already. Trust in your leadership may be permanently damaged.

Needless to say, hiring is not something you should take lightly, especially at a startup. In fact, 14 percent of startups fail due to not having the right team.

We’ve compiled five common hiring mistakes that startups tend to make and how you can adjust your hiring practices to ensure your new hires are in it for the long haul:

  1. Focusing only on culture fit
  2. Alternatively, not focusing enough on culture fit
  3. Hiring too quickly (or on a whim)
  4. Only focusing on getting candidates in the door and not what happens after that
  5. Lacking clear and measurable outcomes in the job description

If you bring intentionality into your hiring practices, your startup’s recruitment process will evolve into a well-oiled machine—no bait and switch necessary.

Mistake #1: Focusing only on culture fit

An emphasis on “culture” often leads startups to become a caricature of themselves.

Ping-pong tables, frequent happy hours, and pizza parties are all well and good. If you carry a “work hard, play hard” mentality to your operations, it’s not wrong to look for alignment in potential new hires.

You’re only human—of course, you will have an affinity toward individuals you generally “like.” But be cautious of hiring someone simply because you’re personally aligned with them, separate from whether or not they are qualified for the job you need to fill.

How to avoid this hiring mistake: Diversify your interviewing team. If you are the CEO, you can and should be as involved as you want, but make sure there are multiple touchpoints for new hires so that one individual’s personal bias does not overwhelm a candidate’s actual background and experience.

Mistake #2: Not focusing enough on culture fit

Stay with us here—we promise we’re not crazy.

As we said, culture fit should not be the only thing you consider as you hire. But, let’s say you do have a “work hard, play hard” value system deeply integrated into your culture. If you disregard culture fit and hire someone who is all business and more stringent in their workplace interactions, you will quickly see this person’s department suffer from severe culture misalignment.

Their team will likely get whiplash from the deviations, and it will severely impact morale. You may also see this person siloed, as their interactions with others on the team will be strained.

How to avoid this hiring mistake: Ask for references and try to dig for how their professional relationships tend to exist. Even if they list references who are sure to speak highly of their outcomes, you can still uncover truths about how a potential hire operates culturally.

Mistake #3: Hiring too quickly (or on a whim)

One of the most common hiring mistakes at a startup is seeing a gap in skills internally and immediately rushing to fill that gap with a full-time hire.

Many founders suffer from “shiny object syndrome” (we say this with love). Wanting to fill your C-suite immediately, or hire for the latest trending position on LinkedIn, is tempting, and we get that.

But hiring on a whim puts you at risk for a sunk cost if you fail to think through whether that position will set you up for success in the long term.

How to avoid this hiring mistake: When you feel the pang of a skills gap, take some time to suss out whether this skill is only needed for the short term or is something you will need for multiple projects going forward. Bring your team into this thought process as well.

Just because other startups are making this same hire doesn’t mean you need it, too. You may have a different customer persona or audience or be B2B instead of B2C—there are so many components to a new position opening up. Identify your goals and evaluate what makes sense for you.

You might also consider outsourcing certain roles if the skills gap is for a single, short-term project. To put it simply, look before you leap! Not every skills gap should result in a full-time hire.

Mistake #4: Only focusing on getting candidates in the door (and not what happens after)

The words “recruitment,” “hiring,” and “onboarding” often go hand in hand and are used interchangeably. The truth is, these are three totally different practices.

If you have ironed out your hiring practices to make filling seats a seamless operation, that’s great. But that does not equate to a seamless onboarding experience for your new hire.

Too often, we hear stories about new startup hires who are handed a laptop, given a pat on the back, and expected to dive in headfirst to an entirely new culture and ecosystem.

Startup growth is enormously exciting, and the speed and efficiency of your hiring process should reflect that. But don’t discount what happens after the offer letter is signed—make sure your onboarding is just as optimized, intentional, and informative.

How to avoid this hiring mistake: Work with an expert to design an onboarding process that makes sense for your startup and culture.

Related: 5 Ways to Strengthen Onboarding at Your Startup

Mistake #5: Lacking clear and measurable outcomes for new hires

Let’s take marketing as an example. When you decide to make your first marketing hire, there are two different frames of mind you can have.

Mindframe A: Most startups have marketing, so we need marketing. Let’s hire someone to “do marketing.”

Mindframe B: We need to increase our visibility and inbound leads. Let’s hire someone who knows how to operate within a set budget to bring more awareness to our brand and product and who can help sales generate more leads.

See the difference?

Your job descriptions shouldn’t be arbitrary. It’s likely that the roles of your early hires will evolve over time, but that doesn’t mean you should bring people in without having a set expectation of what they will accomplish.

It’s a waste of time because you will drive yourself crazy trying to measure their performance. It’s also a waste of their time because they will have no idea where to start when they are brought in, where they stand, or what their path for growth looks like.

How to avoid this hiring mistake: Outline exactly what you expect the new position to accomplish in their first 30, 60, and 90 days. You might even ask candidates this during the interview process. When you discuss these timelines, the outcomes discussed should be measurable—i.e.,talk to three customers, bring followers up to 1,000, or increase website traffic by 20 percent.

Before You Go

No matter how robust your screening process is, one or two misalignments might still work their way into your organization. The important thing is not to let their impact fester and to remove the “wound” before the infection spreads.

Startup founders are experiencing many things for the first time, including hiring; this will be a continual process of learning.

In the meantime, if you want to offload the recruiting and hiring process, Viaduct can help. Whether you are looking for full-time or contingent staff, Viaduct specializes in the placement of startup professionals that can bring your vision to life. Learn more about working with our team of recruiting experts here.

Related: 6 Ways to Attract and Hire Best-Fit Startup Talent

This blog was authored by Talent Consultant Sarah Garcia.  

Founders and early startup employees know the feeling all too well.

An exciting project or campaign begins to take shape. Action items build, and then, suddenly, your task list is a mile long. You put your head down and your blinders up to get through the list. All of a sudden, the creative energy you’d normally apply to work on the business is being spent working in the business.

This is where outsourcing comes in.

No one knows or understands your product or service better than you and your team, and outsourcing can be met with understandable wariness.

But if you are reading this blog, it means you and your team are spread thin, you know you need help, but are not quite ready to bring on full-time help. It’s a critical place to be.

By outsourcing, you can rid yourself of repetitive or administrative tasks, keep your work model lean, reduce mistakes, free up your creative energy, and ultimately, scale properly.

Pros and Cons of Outsourcing

Outsourcing is an extremely valuable tool accessible to founders and early startups. But just like most things, outsourcing has benefits and downsides to consider as you build your strategy.

Here are some upsides of outsourcing to consider:

Related: How to Recognize, Address, and Prevent Burnout at Your Startup

Like any business investment, there are risks associated with outsourcing. Keep the following downsides in mind:

Three Business Functions Your Startup Should Outsource
So what do you outsource first? Here’s what we recommend.

Financials

Tasks like payroll, accounting, and financial modeling and reporting should be outsourced to a firm or individual until your growth makes your financial structure more complex. At the start, your finances should be relatively straightforward to outsource.

In addition to taking this task off your plate, an additional benefit is the expertise a knowledgeable financial organizer can provide. They can take an objective approach to your financials, giving you accurate predictions for your growth and best practices for how to proceed.

Customer Service

As your product or service scales, you’ll experience a sharp increase in your customer service requests. Think refunds, exchanges, questions, concerns… you know how it goes. At the same time, customers have increasingly high expectations for how reachable their vendors and sellers should be.

The risk you run by attending to all customer service requests yourself is a bad Google review, poor word of mouth spreading, and your reputation destroyed by one small request left unchecked.

In fact, 94 percent of consumers say a bad review has convinced them to avoid a business.

Outsourcing your customer service to a trusted team can free you up to improve the product or service and keep your customers happy.

Recruiting

Even if you are not ready to hire full-time employees at a steady pace, you should still consider a long-term, established partnership with a recruiting agency with a deep understanding of your culture and a large pool of qualified candidates.

The process of finding, vetting, interviewing, and onboarding candidates is a huge commitment that few founders or HR teams can dedicate enough time to. Whether the positions you are looking to fill are full-time, part-time, fractional, or contingent, the right recruiting agency can bring you qualified candidates quickly, and familiarize them with your product or service and culture.

Need help?

Viaduct works with nationwide venture capital firms to design and integrate recruiting strategies for young, high-growth companies. They can help you build a qualified team that aligns with your organization’s mission.

If you’re reading this blog, you have probably reached the point in your founder journey when you’re ready to start hiring.

First of all – congratulations! It’s an amazing milestone, and you should be proud. At the same time, you might be feeling overwhelmed by all the work that needs to be delegated, and where to start.

Expanding your team beyond just you is an exciting place to be, but it’s important to make strategic hires that will set you and your company up for success.

You’re in the right place. We’ll cover the two main pieces of your recruiting process:

Three key first hires for a startup

A systems person

The first key hire you should consider is a systems person. This individual will build out the systems to make your startup scalable, developing your standard operations procedures (SOPs,) key performance indicators (KPIs,) and more. Some titles you might consider for this individual:

In a nutshell, this person should be focused on the design and implementation of policies that promote growth and oversee operations to keep businesses on track.

What they’ll do

A salesperson

The next key hire you should make is your evangelist: your business development extraordinaire. The kind of one-in-a-million magnetic individual who could sell water to the ocean. This individual will be dedicated to spreading the word about your product or service, getting your name and solution into all the right rooms and in front of all the right people.

Some examples of titles might be:

In other words, this person will shift your vision from a singular product or service to an established organization.

WeWork describes it this way: “By helping to fund the continued existence of the business, business development at early-stage startups is fundamentally about creating long-term value for the organization.”

What they’ll do

Related: 10 Interview Questions to Ask Sales Executive Candidates

A product (or service) person

Your final key hire should be your product person—the individual who will dedicate themselves to knowing your product, service, or solution inside and out.

Here are some examples of titles for this individual:

This person should not only inherit your vision for the product, but they should also begin to build their own vision based on customer use and feedback. They should know your customers better than anyone at the company, ensuring the product evolves to meet customer demand and needs. Their day-to-day responsibilities might look like:

Where to find hires for your startup

So, you know who you’re going to be looking for. Where do you find these candidates?

Working at a startup is not for the faint of heart, and you can’t just hire anyone. Where are some potential “watering holes” to find the right candidates?

Related: The 5 Soft Skills You Need to Succeed in a Startup Environment

Related: How Startups Can Hire Talent Quickly

Slack communities

Slack communities are growing in popularity, especially in the startup community, as a way to share ideas, innovations, best practices, and most importantly, recruit and job search.

Taskable listed the first 10 Slack communities you should consider joining as a startup founder here.

Social media

Social media, particularly LinkedIn, is a wonderful way to attract talent to your organization. You don’t even need to set up a dedicated business page before you, as a founder, can post to your personal account regarding your product, vision, and growth. This will build a community organically of people who will already have an understanding of who you are and what you do when you’re ready to hire.

Related: 6 Ways to Attract and Hire Best-Fit Startup Talent

Work with a talent acquisition and advisory firm

Building a qualified team that aligns with your organization’s mission and culture is essential for growth and success. Working with an agency can help speed up the hiring process and their market knowledge can help find higher-quality, specialized candidates who have the specific skills you need.

Viaduct is a one-stop talent solution that gives your most important resource—people—the attention they deserve. Viaduct offers contingent staffing, direct placement, and executive recruiting for whatever commitment or stage you’re at with your hiring. Contact our team today to learn more.

Hiring is an extraordinarily exciting marker to reach in your progress as a founder, so it’s important to take this step seriously. The team you assemble at the start will truly pave the way for your company’s direction and success.

Related: Common Recruiting Scaleup Mistakes Made by Startups

This blog was written by Viaduct’s Tom Hausler.

Economists put the chance of a recession in 2023 at 63 percent. In response, 72 percent of leaders are starting to prepare and look for ways to safeguard their business, reprioritize how they make decisions, and lead through disruption. It’s been found that cutting jobs and operating costs alone makes it more difficult for a business to survive a recession. Resilient companies invest and grow, and one of the primary ways to invest during times of economic uncertainty is through talent management and having a strategic approach to hiring, retaining, and utilizing talent. However, developing and implementing a strategy that effectively uses your organization’s talent resources while navigating change and evolving goals is not an easy task.

Related: Creating Successful Talent Strategies to Achieve Business Results

72 percent of HR leaders are somewhat or extremely concerned about losing talent over the next 12 months. Retaining talent at a startup is especially critical because every employee makes essential contributions. Given current talent shortages, startup leaders know the value of top talent and are focused on retaining their best people. Here’s how:   

Offer flexible work options: 70 percent of CEOs strongly or somewhat agree that flexible work—including remote—is increasingly critical to reducing employee turnover during an economic downturn. Half of Americans want to work from home in 2023. The happiest people have a healthy work-life balance and can split their focus between work and personal and get value and satisfaction from both. Employee happiness plays a significant role in employee turnover. 75 percent of unsatisfied workers are looking to leave their current positions, so offering flexible work is a successful solution to increase retention.

Focus on employee well-being: Since the pandemic’s start, employees have been dealing with uncertainty. 59 percent of CEOs strongly or somewhat agree that during an economic downturn, there’s an even greater need for firms to focus on well-being—including childcare and mental health. Fear of a recession is now contributing to lay-off anxiety, financial stress, and disappointment over hiring and raise freezes. During times of uncertainty, it’s essential to keep the lines of communication open and foster a culture of recognition. Initiatives like expanding caregiver benefits for children and elder care and providing access to a 24/7 mental health support line are ways to prioritize your workers’ well-being.  

Invest in learning: In times of uncertainty, it’s important to connect learning initiatives to organizational goals and use them to generate high performance. In addition to 30-50 percent higher engagement and retention rates,Deloitte research has found that organizations with a strong learning culture are:   

Attract laid-off or unhappy talent: 57 percent of CEOs strongly or somewhat agree that with other companies reducing their headcount, an economic downturn presents an opportunity to attract and retain talent. Your more established competitors may lay off workers or become lax and lose talent when employee engagement and morale drop. A recession can be the best time to procure talent your startup could not previously attract.

Final thoughts

With a low unemployment rate and strong labor market making it easier for workers to find a job quickly, bringing laid-off workers back could be more challenging than the last recession in 2008. To minimize the effects on your startup, focus on employee retention. For every leadership decision made, weigh all cost management options in relation to the impact on talent.

This blog was written by Senior Talent Management and Organizational Transformation Consultant Andrew Nash.

Burnout has become something of a buzzword over the course of the last few years. The term is used most often in the context of the workplace, characterized by feelings of exhaustion, cynicism, and reduced efficacy.

Workers everywhere have cited increased tendencies towards burnout: An Indeed survey showed 52 percent of workers feeling burned out, and 67 percent saying the feeling has worsened over the course of the pandemic.

These tendencies, however, tend to get worse in a startup environment. This is usually because in a startup, the amount of effort workers put in directly translates to the overall output of the business.

The pressures of a startup do not discriminate, affecting the young, old, c-level, and individual contributors. Although burnout is not a medical condition, its repercussions can manifest in the physical body: Think headaches, stomachaches/intestinal issues, fatigue, frequent illness, and changes in appetite/sleep.

Needless to say, burnout is serious, and it’s important for leadership to be able to recognize, address, and prevent burnout as part of their integrated day-to-day operation.

How to recognize burnout: What does burnout look like?

Your team might not always feel comfortable admitting that burnout has crept up on them. Startup employees are notoriously tough, and their dedication to their output might make it hard to decipher between “normal” work stress and something more serious.

The Brink, a publication by Boston University, says that burnout usually manifests in three ways:

  1. Energy depletion and exhaustion
  2. Depersonalization and cynicism
  3. Reduced efficacy

Energy depletion might look like one of your most lively employees not speaking up as much, showing up late or constantly tired, and citing trouble getting out of bed in the morning or dreading the week ahead on a Sunday night. It’s also an exhaustion that doesn’t go away after a vacation, no matter how long.

Depersonalization usually looks like a drastic shift of interest in their workload, totally detached from a pile-up of projects, and doubt that any of it will ever get done to their normal standard due to the sheer size of it.

Finally, reduced efficacy often looks like a lack of focus and a significant change in their normal output. Tasks they may have enjoyed may begin to seem like a source of fatigue and frustration, taking much more concentration than they used to.

In summary, when your high performers begin to disassociate from their workload for no apparent reason and struggle to engage with the rest of the team, this is often the first sign of burnout.

How to address burnout: What can leadership do about burnout?

Unfortunately, the nature of a startup often requires your team to wear many hats, and as much as you might want to reduce the workload, it’s simply not realistic. Offering more vacation time is not a solution either—employees might feel even more stressed coming back to a larger workload, or spend their vacation working because there is simply no stopping the startup train and it’s easier to stay caught up.

So, what can you do to address your burned-out team?

First, recognize that the acknowledgement of burnout is a top-down initiative. Leadership must be willing to accept that burnout is real, and needs to be addressed.

Next, make prioritization your number one priority. Often, at a startup, everything can feel like a priority, and your team might not know where to even begin. Make it your mission to lay out exactly what the top priorities are, structuring their workload so they know exactly what is critical, and what can be backlogged. The ability to structure a workload can restore a great deal of control in your team’s mind and day.

Finally, examine how your culture supports your team’s well-being. Does your benefit package actually address what’s most important to your team, or do you assume that the weekly pizza parties and happy hours are covering your bases? Does your team really thrive fully remote, or would the option of a more collaborative space increase their potency? This should be an ongoing examination, with feedback from your team driving the majority of your decision-making.

How to prevent burnout before it happens

In a perfect world, we would all be able to recognize and attend to our own exhaustion, and it would never have the chance to manifest. Unfortunately, it’s not always easy to have that level of self-awareness. Here are ways to prevent burnout.

Encourage workers to take regular breaks and vacations: It’s important to take time away from work to rest and recharge. This can include taking a lunch break, going for a walk, or taking a vacation. Studies have shown that employees who take regular vacations are more productive and less likely to burn out.

Check-in with your employees: In addition to making sure your policies surrounding vacation time and work-life balance fit the needs of your individual team, the best thing you can do to prevent burnout is to engage in regular, meaningful 1:1s with your employees.

In these meetings, whether weekly, bi-weekly, or whatever works best for your team, don’t just check in on their projects and ask for status updates. Ask questions that speak to:

When these insights are shared with you, the key is to really listen and respond.

Set realistic goals and expectations: Startups often have a lot of ideas and projects in the works, but it’s important to prioritize and focus on the most important tasks. Employees should also be aware of their limitations and not take on more than they can handle.

Lead by example: It is also important for the management team to lead by example and promote a healthy work-life balance. You should ensure that employees have the support and resources they need to manage their stress and overall wellness. This can include providing mental health resources, flexible working hours, and encouraging employees to take time off when they need it.

This way, your employees will be supported in their workload, and you will be able to prevent burnout before it starts.


This blog was written by Viaduct’s Director of Recruiting and Business Operations Tom Hausler.

When it comes to onboarding for new team members, startups face a particular set of challenges:

Since you clicked to read this blog, chances are you’re acutely familiar with these challenges.

Here’s why we believe onboarding matters so much: As a startup, you likely don’t have the resources to manage high turnover, and reducing turnover starts with onboarding.

Below are five ways to optimize your onboarding process so that you can improve employee retention and position your team for growth.

1 – Complete logistics in between the accepted offer and their first day

Although it’s nearly impossible to avoid, starting a new job with a flood of paperwork and getting set up on new systems can quickly deplete your new team member’s energy levels as soon as they arrive.

One way to avoid this drain on time and energy is to use the interim time between the day the job offer is accepted and the start date to eliminate as many logistical tasks as possible.

This includes any paperwork on the employee’s end that they can complete virtually, but it also includes logistical preparation on your end. Get their desk and hardware set up. Recruit IT to set up any logins or intranet connections. Add them as users to your tech stack.

The idea is to make their first day as seamless as possible so that their main focus that day is assimilating. 

2 – Arrange first-week meet and greets with everyone on the team

It seems like no matter how old we get, we’ll always have those first-day jitters. This can be especially true in a startup environment, where teams are typically close-knit and rapport can be tricky to keep up with if you are not already familiar with it.

Coordinated meet and greets can make relationship building a little less intimidating for your newest team member.

For in-person environments, a first-week team lunch or happy hour is a great way to engage with your newest team member. In addition, giving them an office tour on their first day can produce quick and organic introductions to break the ice.

If your team is remote, there are still ways to get your newest team member comfortable with the rest of the company. One way is to arrange 10-minute meetings with each team and prepare some fun icebreaker questions to get them talking. With the individual’s immediate team, consider a longer lunch to establish a better sense of familiarity.

It can be arranged by team, or even as one-on-ones, but making it a top-down initiative is a great way to take the pressure off your new team member to make his or her own introductions.

3 – Prepare a 90-day plan

When your startup team is already spread thin, it can be tempting to ask your newest team member to dive right in and begin to offload some of the tasks from the endless pile of work to keep things moving.

Instead of introducing the entire scope of the role all at once, allocate portions of the role into the first 30, 60, and 90 days on the job. This can also be set up as a checklist to make the expectation even more clear.

As a new employee, it can be confusing or upsetting to find yourself with “nothing to do” while everyone around you is buried with work, but it’s hard to jump on a merry-go-round that is already spinning very quickly.

By providing a three-month runway for your new employees, you can establish a clear outline for what they can be working on if and when they have downtime.

4 – Assign a task or two to begin to establish expectations

Startup employees are typically go-getters who like to feel useful and genuinely want to hit the ground running. One way to give them a huge confidence boost is to assign them a project within the scope of their role that can get them comfortable with the pace and process of your company.

Even if it’s small, it’s an opportunity to mutually observe working styles.

5 – Establish a cadence to provide and collect feedback

Finally, make sure you are meeting with your new team member on a predetermined, regular schedule. This is an opportunity to touch base about questions they might have, address any confusion, and help ensure they don’t feel lost in the fold.

As your onboarding practices are tried and tested, be sure to document as much as possible. Collect feedback regularly on what makes your new hires the most confident and comfortable as a member of your team.

These practices will be the foundation of your team as you grow. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain by investing in intentional onboarding.

When you think of a startup environment, there are a few images that might come to mind: A tiny basement with boxes as desks, a group of friends gathered around a kitchen counter, or laptops crammed around a small table at a coffee shop.

The reality of startup environments is that the “startup” stage can last three to five years, long past the early days of Jeff Bezos in his garage, or Steve Jobs in his parents’ home.

Joining an organization at the startup stage requires a unique set of skills that are what we consider “soft”: non-technical skills that describe how you work and interact with others.

So, if you are considering applying at a startup and you meet all the hard skill requirements, take a look at these five soft skills and consider if you’ve got what it takes to succeed.

1. You need the confidence to take risks.

Contrary to larger corporations or more well-established organizations, you will rarely find a set of Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) when you join a startup. This is because not enough time has gone by to determine what should be standard in the operation—your job will be to help figure that out.

Part of figuring that out will require some risk-taking. Under good leadership, you will be given the freedom to try out new ways of doing things. Eventually, you’ll be part of building out those SOPs for future hires.

The only way to truly know what should be standardized is to take a few scary leaps so you can see what really works.

2. You need a growth mindset.

According to Joseph Garvey, people with a growth mindset believe that intelligence, skills, learning, and creativity can all grow with time and experience.

This mindset is in direct contradiction with a fixed mindset, which says that qualities and skills are fixed, and therefore cannot change.

Why is one better than the other in a startup environment? Here are two reasons:

In a startup environment, you will receive lots of feedback.

If you struggle to separate feedback from criticism, you may take a defensive approach to leadership, and impede progress. A growth mindset sees feedback as something positive—an opportunity for a better sense of self-awareness and an opportunity to improve.

In a startup environment, you will wear many hats.

The role you are hired for vs. the roles you take on might vary in a startup environment. It’s normal and to be expected—it’s not always clear what roles are needed and how work should be delegated in the early stages of a team’s growth.

Having a growth mindset will allow you to open yourself up to expanding your repertoire of skills, even those that feel far outside your area of expertise.

3. You need resilience.

As we went over earlier, startups are constantly experimenting with new approaches to their operations. This is a necessity. Along with experimentation, however, comes failure. Things won’t always work, because they are not supposed to always work.

As a result of this cycle of experimentation and failure, resilience becomes a key skill that startup employees must have. You’ll need the ability to see failure as redirection in order to find eventual success.

4. You need the ability to over-communicate.

Startup environments are notoriously fast paced, and often the “office” environment takes on many different forms and contexts. Communication follows suit.

While you’ll need the ability to master self-directed and proactive work, you’ll also learn how important it is to over-communicate. Don’t assume your team knows your motives, outcomes, or expectations for the projects you take on. Make room for transparency in your work so that your colleagues can easily jump in where needed, as well as learn from the results of your decision-making and execution.

5. You’ll need curiosity over judgment.

Have you ever heard the saying, “Be curious, not judgmental?”

You’ll find this mantra to be especially useful in a startup environment. In the early stages of an organization, it’s difficult to say what best practices are, or to make judgment calls on how a particular campaign or project will turn out. Instead, approach your day-to-day with a healthy sense of curiosity about what might work best, even if it’s contrary to what has worked for you in the past.

Every industry, buyer, or prospect is different. The ability to ask questions rather than make assumptions will separate successful startup employees from the rest.

Summary

The startup world is certainly not for the faint of heart, but it can be extremely rewarding to build something from the ground up alongside a team. If this type of environment sounds like something you’re up for, browse startup jobs here.

This blog was written by Viaduct Director of Recruiting and Business Operations Tom Hausler.

Viaduct’s Managing Director, Peter Petrella, was interviewed by the Buffalo News for an article titled, “Buffalo’s Startups Aren’t Just for Coders, They’re Luring Accountants and Sales Workers, Too.”

Across the United States, record numbers of employees are quitting big finance and tech firms jobs—like Facebook, Amazon, and Goldman Sachs—and joining smaller startup companies, according to data from workforce intelligence firm Revelio Labs. “In a challenging hiring market, startups and more established, traditional companies are competing for the same talent,” Petrella said. If you have a good attitude, a strong work ethic, and a willingness to learn, a startup company could be a good fit for you.

Why are employees attracted to startups?

Related: What Makes Working at a Startup Special?

Related: 6 Ways to Attract and Hire Best-Fit Startup Talent

However, working for a startup is not without risks. 20 percent of new businesses fail within the first year and 45 percent go under within five years according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Are you interested in exploring the startup world?


Check out this article to learn why now is the best time to switch to a startup job. To browse available employment opportunities with startups in the Buffalo area, visit Viaduct’s job board here. You can also view additional startup opportunities at Forge Buffalo’s job board.

Five companies won $1 million investments on October 20th at the 43North—a Buffalo-based startup accelerator—eighth annual startup competition.

Over the next several months, the winners will begin to settle into their new workspaces inside Seneca One in downtown Buffalo. While one company is already local to western New York, the other four will be relocating to the Queen City from across the country.

Once they hit the ground running—and with significant new funding under their belts—hiring will be a top priority as they build their business.

“If you’re looking to get in on the ground floor of a rapidly growing business, now is a great time to make a move,” says a recruiter for Viaduct and Forge Buffalo, the area’s go-to talent hub for startup jobs. “From sales and marketing to operations and product development, we’re looking to fill a wide range of roles.”

Witherell will be working closely to find and secure top talent for 43North’s newest cohort and will be actively recruiting for dozens of key positions. If you’re interested in joining one of these startups, keep an eye on the Forge Buffalo job board or sign up to have jobs emailed directly to you each week.  

You can read more about each of the newest 43North portfolio companies below.

AMPAworks is a team of doctors, nurses, and engineers who have built an Internet of Things (IoT) camera using computer vision artificial intelligence (AI). This technology grants them full inventory visibility in pharmacies, medical device companies, surgery centers, clinics, and hospitals. Their system enables shelf-to-shelf granularity of inventory to help with demand planning and re-stocking.

Mod Tech Labs assists enterprise companies to create universal 3D content at scale by digitizing the real world using photos. Their no-code processing platform cleans, refines, and enhances 3D imagery of objects, places, and people with automated AI-powered tools.

Otrafy is an AI-powered SaaS supplier management platform with the ability to automate compliance and manage risks. This integrated platform automates repetitive tasks and analyzes supplier performance to reduce workloads.

Phood integrates with universities’ card services to connect students’ flex dollar accounts and the gig economy. A virtual debit card is issued by Phood to students which can be used to purchase goods and services from third-party vendors—like DoorDash—at no extra cost to the university.

Twipes is a biotech materials company that has developed the world’s first truly flushable and biodegradable wet wipes. Made from natural wood pulp fibers—that break down in water in three hours and biodegrade in a landfill in seven days—this product is PETA-certified vegan and cruelty free.

Buffalo’s entrepreneurial spirit is certainly alive and well. If you’re ready to join our city in building something big, get your resume ready and head over to forgebuffalo.com for a full list of opportunities with the region’s hottest startups.

The Chief People Officer (CPO) may be a lesser-known C-suite position in many companies. Nevertheless, that does not diminish the importance of the role.

When most people measure the success of a startup company, they look at the result-centered data—such as sales, clients, views, etc. Indeed, these numbers are certainly essential to the success and growth of a business. However, this data is unachievable without a manager of the inside operations—that is focused on the people working to compile this data.

Interestingly, a recent study conducted by Dr. Lauren Howe regarding the changing landscape of a CPO found that 86.9 percent of the current CPOs surveyed believe that they wear the hat of a data scientist who manages the people, training, and corporate planning of the inside operations. This data is collected and used to determine the emotional well-being, productivity, and performance of employees. Likewise, 90 percent of all respondents feel that the ability to read and understand people analytics is crucial to the role of a CPO.

The daily responsibilities of a CPO are no small feat. This person is essentially the highest position within the human resources department. They must connect the work an employee does with the corporate mission and vision of the business, or else they risk leading a team of complacent and apathetic employees who feel no strong incentive to respond to market changes and source company growth. This is done by overseeing all of the inside operations team below them, ensuring deadlines are met and work is up to company standard, and they must recognize deficiencies among the team and address them. Additionally, a CPO must also reward successes and achievements through compensation or promotional benefits. This will foster a positive employee culture and help to maintain a high employee retention rate.

At its core, the role of a CPO is both strategic and future-focused. Hiring for this position is not easy. A common mistake made by businesses is hiring someone who is solely result-focused in their methods. It is important that this individual is able to observe the business and its methods of achievement and make appropriate changes within the already established strategy.

With this in mind, there are five qualities that companies should seek out in candidates for the CPO position:

  1. A strong company understanding – It is important that a CPO truly comprehends the mission, vision, and goals of a business. A CPO cannot make decisions with other C-suite leaders if they do not understand the basics of operations that they will be deciding on. Often, these candidates obtain this understanding because they have already been employed by the company for a few years. In this case, it is often beneficial to look in-house when hiring for this position.
  2. Leadership experience – A CPO essentially doubles as a manager of company culture. First, they must be employee-focused, as a large part of this role is to develop the next generation of leaders from within the company. Secondly, when a CPO makes decisions that impact the company initiatives, these decisions also directly impact the employees of the company, as these are the people who will be implementing the initiatives. Having the soft skills to communicate their vision, be trusted by colleagues, and facilitate a coercive company culture is a large part of successfully fulfilling this role. As Shayne Payne, CPO at Finder, a financial services startup, puts it, “a CPO is a business leader with a people lens.”
  3. Strategic-minded – A CPO is responsible for optimizing “people” centered roles within a company—such as hiring, training, employee development, and employee performance management—to make sure that these positions support the company’s bottom line externally. This involves developing a plan and initiatives for long-term overall growth, identifying issues within the organization, and quickly finding solutions to those issues.
  4. Emotional intelligence – A CPO must be able to adjust for the benefit of the company.
    A CPO must be compassionate, self-aware, and able to manage their emotions.
    They must motivate and provide support where needed to push the company forward.
  5. Talent-minded – If your CPO has done his or her job properly, the company will have no problem retaining talent. However, it is important in today’s Great Resignation era, that a CPO is always looking to capitalize on people who will bring value to your company and complement the workplace culture.

To put it simply, investing in a CPO for your organization is an investment in your business’s future. People power organizations. Startup growth and financial success cannot be achieved without strong team members who are all equally as invested in its success as its leaders.


Related: 6 Ways to Attract and Hire Best-Fit Startup Talent

Related: Building a Leadership Team for Startup Success