Lessons - The Hiring Process That Got SpaceX’s Attention | Harpaul Sambhi - Careerify Founder

In this lessons episode, explore how intentional hiring and radical transparency creates stronger, more resilient companies. Discover why defining clear values drives diverse and inclusive teams. Understand how open communication builds trust and alignment across all levels, and uncover how investing in top talent accelerates growth while empowering leaders to scale effectively. One thing that I was curious about was how do you build a hiring process that supports that? So it's so simple to fall into the trap of, and this is not a good thing, but this is what happens when people, you know, the incorrect interpretation of culture and a business is you're just hiring people that are similar to what you already have, which is in my opinion and what you just described incorrect. So how do you make sure that you build this into an actual process so that an entrepreneur starting out can get this right from the from the get go because a nervous entrepreneur that's just starting out probably would feel more comfortable hiring somebody that's very similar to them. It probably would feel like it's safe, right? So how do you not? How do you go against that? I think there's a couple of things to to ultimately anchor an entrepreneur on number one, like be intentional about company values. I think ultimately my first business, I went to kind of websites, went to Google, went to like other companies, and they just said, hey, let me go ahead and just steal their values, and then you write it on a wall, and that's it. And really quickly, I realized that not a lot of people even knew what our value, I didn't know what my values were either. So being very intentional the values of what you want to become, I think really starts to help in the sales process overall. I think then you create that intentionalism and you start to go into interviewing and saying, okay, like we have, we know who we are, we come from this ilk, we have these people in our network, but at the same time as well, where do we want to ultimately help diversify and be explicit and intentional about it. So as an example, we said, hey, we want to start to tap into the LGBTQ community. We don't really have much in our networks, so let's go out there and find it and be explicit and start to go into this communities. And that's something that you have to be more proactive on instead of taking the reactive measures. And I think it's lost one of the things that people, they just don't necessarily, and entrepreneurs just don't kind of like come back to. And this is like one that I really had a huge guard up, but now I'm totally forest is asking for help, right? And asking for favors. So just being able to say, Scott, like, I don't have a network here, do you have a network here? And being intentional about the explicit helps that you need can really start to open up the kind of like the conversations and speed up the ability to get you into those networks to then become more intentional about your hiring. So these are kind of a lift after you figure after you make that connection is less of a lift after you do it the first time after you ask for help the first time, then it's all of a sudden something that's more easily accessible to you too. Exactly. Yeah. And I think those are those are like the key areas of how to become a lot more intentional when it comes to kind of like the hiring process start first start by, you know, diversifying your pool, being more explicit there, getting into avenues and channels that you're not comfortable with and being okay with. And then ensuring that your interviews have well diversity or representation of the diversity that you're in for. Okay, so that that covers like, so now that's hiring. And then as you're interviewing, you're seeking out these candidates. I'm so hiring and interviewing kind of like go hand in hand when you're trying to improve, improve this aspect of your business. What about the transparency when it comes to both what you're looking for in a candidate as well as what the candidate is exposed to in your business? Yeah, I, you know, in my first business, I was hidden, I was hiding everything. And it's not intentional, but I, you know, you just learn that less is more. I guess like that's like the adage that people sometimes say. And as a result, like, you know, my, I would say my employees sometimes were in the dark of like, were we fundraising? Were we not? What happened to this big account that you were talking about that just didn't happen? And I realized there that if you have radical candidness in your company, and this is what we're doing in now magical, where we, we have our investor updates are open, our financials are open to every employee to scrutinize or ask questions of why we're making these investments. Our decision making process is open. It allows people to understand your side and be, allow them to ask the right questions for themselves, because I think a lot of the miscommunication and challenges in, in company building comes from and stems from assumptions. And if you don't know the key facts, then assumptions start to create and then you go to other employees that might have other assumptions. Now, if you level the playing field of just creating all the facts within your company, then we're all basing it off the same facts. And that creates the ability to have a very binary discussion to be able to say, Hey, these are the facts. This is how we're thinking about it. What is your thought? And now you agree to disagree versus not. And I think my first time around like I said in, in, in career five, my first business, we just didn't have that. A lot of entrepreneurs that I spoke to, I was like, do you provide, you know, financial updates or like, no, we don't want to show the fact that we have six months of runway. Now, those are sometimes situations where you as an entrepreneur have to ask yourself, like, what is this information going to do to an employee? Like it could be potentially an alarming figure. But at the same time, it's reality. And why not give, if you give people the data, if you give radical candidness, you start to create a foundation of trust. And a foundation of trust is where you can work off of versus, you know, providing an alternate universe, if that makes sense, specific data points or conversely trying to lead them on hoping for a prior to whim, like a new key kind to kind of increase your runway. And it never happens, right? So that is something that we definitely learned a lot of. And I think you're spot on in terms of building out that transparency and ultimately within the actual company itself. How do you deal with deal with is probably the wrong word. How do you manage all of the opinions that we're going to come at you now when you do have that radical candor? Because now everybody is going to have an opinion about what you should do and how you should do it. And it may be difficult for people to understand that you're not accepting their opinion or perhaps they're coming from a place where they think they know what's best, but potentially you disagree with them as a founder or an entrepreneur. How do you manage that? Because there's a ton of noise. The second you open everything up. Yeah. For me, specifically, it's about instilling trust and ownership. And we can always agree to disagree. You know, I think the big thing that I've learned over 12 years so far is people want to be heard. And if you can't give them the voice, then you're, you're already facing that battle of mistrust and not understanding the entire interpretation and the decision making process once you provide them this data points or not provide them the data points. So you often have surprises where people just resign and you're like, where did this come from? Right. So I think it's important for any entrepreneur to say this room that we're building with you as employees is it's a room of trust. It is something where we're not going to always agree by, but at the same time if you take the adaptation of learning, listening, and then pausing to reflect and say, I agree or disagree, that is actually like 90% of the the battle. People want to be heard, right? So that is the way that I like to construct it. And the the delta between my first business and second business is night and day. People make informed decisions. People will say, Harpal, I disagree with your thought here, but let's move forward because ultimately a lot of decisions when you when you come down to kind of like what is this decision? It's not going to break or make the company. Now if if it's a decision to where you're going to make or break the company, I you're going to sell the business. You're going to go for a fundraise. You're going to go bankrupt. You're taking on a key account that trash transcends the overall business. Then I do think you need to kind of move slow and think long and hard about it and and welcome those opinions to ensure that you have it. But most of these ideas, most of these decisions, there's always two doors. And if there's if the door kind of lied to you to come back, you can always kind of say, Hey, you're right. Let's go now build this and you now have a bedrock of information that you can now quickly speed up to in order to kind of solve the solution again versus not going at all. So that's how I think about it. And as a result, like I said, like it's really elevated our ability to have a better employee experience in the company. That's smart. I like that. Okay. So you're hiring talent. Speak to me about investing in talent. So do you try and bootstrap? Do you try and find the cheapest option and train them up? Do you look for certain maybe soft skills as opposed to ex experience with a certain hard skill or in a certain position? How do you go about that? I think there's always a trade off depending on your financial situation. My first business I was bootstrapped. You know, I penny pinched. I come I come from immigrants, right? So we really try to stretch the dollar there. And you know, I think what we ended up happening is we really hired for like that can do attitude, the hustle mentality instead of experience. And while that is great, the the challenges and I think the key what I've learned from the best in the business in the tech space at least is you want to scale yourself as an individual. And in order to scale yourself as an individual, you need to create ownership. And there are moments and times where inexperienced hustle is exceptional for the job, but you have to then delineate of you have to in that in this scenarios when you want to invest in that that your time and energy is going to be there to up level and train them, which is always part of the job. And then there's going to be positions out there where you really need to get the top talent in. So what I like to do is I look at the job position or the roles or responsibilities and say, if this is going to really transcend the company or hinder the company, do we want to make a bet on someone that's going to be rock, have a whole bunch of hustle or hire someone that has top talent. And I found that my decision-making process at Curify, given that we're bootstrapped, I would often kind of curb to inexperienced. And while I might have had the money, but it's if you know, I might have shaved off another month of runway or you know, it would have been tight and wouldn't, you know, I wouldn't be able to hire three people, I would be able to hire two. Like if you start to have those conversations in your head, where you're trying to humming and awing about the quality of a quantity aspect, go after quality hands down, especially if the job title and the job position is something that is very, very pivotal for the organization itself. And I think the answer, no, go for it. No, I was going to say so. So Curify, you did, you did bootstrap because I just want to highlight that the difference. So Curify, you did bootstrap and you were going for cheaper hustle. And then with Magical, you are hiring, you're trying to push your budget for the talent that you're bringing in so that you aren't as a CEO, as a founder, as an entrepreneur, spending your time trying to upscale these people, you're trying to get people that are walking in that do have the experience, especially in those executive or like key integral roles, right? That's what you're doing with Correct. Right now. Yes, we're paying above then what public companies will pay simply because we want it to be a place where people can get ownership and you don't have to think as an entrepreneur for that line of business. Now, there's always going to be problems, right? But you're creating an instilling trust in that person to get the right to get the job done. And hopefully his or her respective career and experience can can be something that you can lean on while making decisions, while they're making decisions as well. Thanks for tuning in. 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