sahil parikh’s work+life stream

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May 2, 2009

Hiring a consultant to reduce costs

Consultants (or freelancers) are sometimes a better value in your team and helps you reduce your costs, especially in the time of a slow economy. Here are some things you should look for when consultant hunting.

1. Experience & expertise - Needs to walk the talk. A lot of times people talk bigger than what they can do. Try a few small non-core projects and see how it works out.

2. Willingness to adapt - You want someone who is flexible, humble and willing to form a great working relationship. Think this relationship is for the long term and beyond just one project.

3. Communication - Should be clear, succinct and crisp. Sometimes, less talk the better.

4. Responsiveness - send them a few emails and see the turnaround time. The faster the better. Not only does this prove that they are committed but also shows their web-savvy-ness and promptness.

5. Not Greedy - In a slow economy you will find lots of them trying to make a quick buck. Just make sure you are not the guy that's going to shell out the cash.

Personally, I like to work with people that don't call themselves experts, are humble and are easy to work with. Recently, we have hired some really good freelancers and have built a win-win relationship with them. There were also the greedy and non-responsive few who lost out on the bigger projects that could have come their way!

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Filed under  //   hiring   startups  

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April 22, 2009

Reference Check 2.0 - A guide to a 10 minute reference check online

So, the other day a SEO (Search Engine Optimization) consultant contact me via email and promised me that he could get 100's of customers to DeskAway if we use his service for a few months. He told me he was pretty reputed in the industry and that I check out his website and blog and judge for myself. Thus began my quest for a reference check online - First, I went through his blog and website (I believe a blog is more important than the website) to see what his content was all about and that how many people he was already engaging through the number of comments (on the blog).

Next, I searched Google to see how many incoming links the website and the blog were getting. The more incoming links, the better - which means that more people are linking to his content. I checked the blog's PageRank and Alexa Ranking. If there were many highly ranked websites linking to his site then his PageRank would be high. I think it was 5/10, which was not bad. The YouTube videos on the site helped me see his talking and presentation style. You can learn a lot about a person when you can see and hear them talk!
Then, I checked his previous work and recommendations at LinkedIn. Its like almost everyone has a LinkedIn account these day with a list of all their accomplishments, recommendations etc.
This month I have been trying to use Twitter and make sense of it for my personal use. I decided to check what this guy tweets about. Also, its important to see the ratio between followers to following. It was almost the same - which meant that he could be following a lot of people in the hopes that they follow him back. Also, quick Twitter search on his name gave me some insight into what others were talking about him. So, armed with all this information, I will begin a conversation with him sometime next week. Its almost like I already know a lot about him and his works! There, this was my quick and easy 10 minute reference check! I would love to hear if there are any other tools you'll use.

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Filed under  //   hiring   startups  

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February 18, 2009

Finding the right candidate for your team...

After the Tata NEN Hotteststartups competition we have been literally flooded with resumes from all over India. I personally go through all the resumes, mark the ones that are worth talking to and then start dialing people to see if I can chat with them comfortably over the phone and get to know how they started in their field. Good communication skill is important for any business and that's the one thing I look for in a candidate - can the candidate express himself/herself clearly.

This 2-5 minutes (sometimes it even takes 30 secs) phone call eliminates a large number of applicants. Interestingly, a lot of people have even forgotten that they have applied for a job or they don't know what we do. This is ground for elimination. How do you apply to job when you don't know what the company does? Its like throwing darts at the board and lets see how many actually hit.

Next, only a few get through to the live interview at our office and then we make our final decision to hire. Luckily, we run a small company with few team members and hence our hiring process is not that frequent. Though, its always a good idea to look out for candidates when you really are not pressed to hire - who knows, you might just find a 'value' candidate in the process.

Are there any hiring processes that you use to find the right candidate?

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