This week’s Commonplace post is about hiring when you’re operating in a cash-strapped environment.
You know, if you’re a wee startup, say, and you’re competing with Google.
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Or if you’re an SME and you’re transporting dogfood and you have to hire software engineers.
Or you build swimming pools.
Or catch crayfish.
Or make noodles?
You get the drift.
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The basic idea is that you want to find underpriced talent.
And then you want to compensate for the deficiencies of said talent. After all, no talent is underpriced if they were perfect. (This is a fancy way of saying: you have good training).
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Intriguingly, a reader just pointed out to me that the general strategy also applies to the NBA. So, for instance, the San Antonio Spurs identifies flawed talent during the draft, and coaches them to address the flaws.
The money quote:
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‘Less successful teams just try to assemble the "best" players and end up overpaying for a mediocre result’ can explain a lot of things, business included.
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Even Ben Horowitz wrote about he created training as a moat for his team members at his startup.
Often times, startups claim lack of resources and time to invest into training.
How do we pitch it as a priority?
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reminds me of this
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Finally got to the end, where the authors draw conclusions from all the industrial case studies they present in the book.
This bit on talent stands out, mostly because CEOs would never admit that focusing on average folk is key to their success.
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