We’re always on the recruiting bandwagon and I’m a big believer people should know what they’re getting themselves into before they jump on the bandwagon. Taking a page from a previous professor’s book, if we bare all and they still want to join, then they’re likely going to be the best. His was more perverse – he actively discouraged everyone to become an entrepreneur – I suspect the ones who still pursued entrepreneurship might just have had enough intrinsic motivation to make it.
There’s lot of great reasons to join us. We’re growing fast, we are a team of underdogs and it’s us against the world. You will accomplish more here than likely anywhere else and you can take on as much responsibility as you can handle. This part goes on and on and if you pass our case interviews you’ll see the sell.
I want to focus on why you shouldn’t. We’re open about this in all our interviews but it’s easy enough to post here too.
1. We’re direct
For Southeast Asians, we’re direct. For those coming from America, we’re indirect. One of our cultural phenomenon is that we’re super tight. We live, work, play and eat together so it’s a little like family. This tightness is actually very different from other startups and a great benefit for the way we work. It does mean we’re very open and less willing to take shit or ignore shortcomings from people. We also move too fast to beat around the bush. This means we’re fairly direct: with instructions, feedback, comments, written words. So if easily offended, try something else. 🙂
2. We work harder than anyone else we know
Like actually. We work nights, weekends and whatever we need to to get the job done. We’re results and customer driven. If our customer needs something and you’re on holiday – you still get to reply. If it’s 10pm on Sunday, you get to reply. We know we’re not as well pedigreed as other companies, not as local as locals and not as Silicon Valley as Silicon Valley. This is the one input we do control and so we work it hard. Not mainland Chinese/Japan/Korean hard (I think that’s too much), but hard enough to win.
3. Trust is super important
We rely heavily on trust. When you come in, we trust immediately. We’ll be super optimistic else we wouldn’t have hired you. We’ll give you the keys to the safe, we’ll pile your plate up till you say “I can’t handle it” or you perform poorly. You’ll get as much responsibility as you want as long as you’re performing. This is super cool for most because you’ll do more interesting stuff than most people your age.
However, the flipside of this trust equation is that once it’s lost, it’s really hard to gain back. In fact, most people who reach this point end up leaving. It’s just too hard to perform well over a period of time to impress us and get back on the horse. This means we’re not a 3 strikes out kind of place. We’re a perform your best all the time kind of place.
