‘Hire fast, fire fast’: Ashneer Grover on why he doesn’t believe in lengthy hiring, notice periods

Ashneer Grover, founder of BharatPe and Third Unicorn, said he does not believe in lengthy hiring processes and notice periods. He says that the rule should be to “hire fast, fire fast”.

Speaking in the podcast, 'Limitless with Ishan Sharma', Ashneer Grover divulged his thoughts about the hiring process. Grover said companies spend too long in hiring a candidate, and then they want to give the individual enough time to prove themselves, which consumes a year's worth of time. Asish Mohapatra, co-founder and CEO of OfBusiness and co-founder of Oxyzo Financial Services, Sarthak Ahuja, director at Niamh Ventures and content creator, and Sanjeev Bikhchandani, founder of Info Edge that owns Naukri.com were the other guests at the podcast. 

“What I have basically understood about hiring, and a lot of people don’t agree with this thought, it’s hire fast, fire fast. What’s happening currently is that you are investing a lot of time in hiring a person, you go through multiple rounds. The candidate is also, naturally, on his best behaviour. When a candidate comes to sell himself or pitch for himself, then the salesman in him is at its peak. At the end of the day, you will get to know whether he will work or not only after you give him his tasks,” said Ashneer Grover, adding that he personally has not seen a 100 per cent success in deciding and hiring the right candidate. 

“Sometimes people are able to sell themselves very well. My realisation is this – we spend 3 months identifying the ideal candidate, then the candidate serves his 2 months of notice period, so we wait for those 2 months. We have, at this point, already invested around 6 months into this role. Once the candidate joins, we want to give him the same amount of time to prove himself. So from 6 months, now it is 1 year. Now, for a year, you have spent the opportunity cost in that role. After a year, you realise he is not a good fit. I think the best thing to do is to do local optimisation, you decide you need a candidate in a week-15 days, you get him in fast. Judge him on his work faster. And it is very simple to understand who works and who does not. So, hire fast and fire fast,” said Grover in the podcast.

Asish Mohapatra said he learnt from his career in ITC, McKinsey, and Matrix is to hire freshers, with around 0-3 years of experience, mould them as per the role. They would make their career within the organisation, stay loyal, and would be hungry to prove themselves too.

“The problem with this pool is that the amount of time they would take to understand the nuances of the role would be longer than an experienced employee’s,” said Mohapatra adding that they wanted to foster an environment of the college campus at work, and specified that there’s no designated seat for employees at their workplace. The campus atmosphere helps the employees bond better, their personal life becomes an extension of their work life. Attrition rates go down this way, said Mohapatra.