When a company has two founders and no HR department, hiring is not a process. It is a decision made by the same people who write the code, answer the customers and pay the bills. There is no form to fill, no panel to convene, and nobody to blame if it goes wrong.
That is uncomfortable, but it is the honest position most small companies are in. This post is our thinking on how to hire well from that position: not a description of a system we run, but the questions we believe a founder should sit with before posting the first job.
The first hires are the culture
A values statement is a document. Culture is what people actually do when nobody is checking. Before the first hire, those two things are the same, because the only people in the company are the ones who wrote the document.
The first few hires change that. They will decide, by example, whether people admit mistakes or hide them, whether a late-night message gets a reply or a boundary, whether a rough idea is welcome or laughed at. Whatever they do, the next hires will copy.
So a founder hiring for the first time is not filling a role. They are choosing the people who will teach everyone who comes after them what the company is like. That deserves more time than a founder usually feels they have.
What to look for when there is nobody to tell you
Large companies have competency frameworks. A small company has the founders' judgement and not much else. That is fine, as long as the judgement is pointed at the right things.
Can they do the work
This sounds obvious, but it is the one that gets skipped. Degrees, previous employers and years of experience are proxies, useful when you have five hundred applications and no time. When you have twelve, you can look at the actual thing: something they built, a problem they solved, a piece of writing. Ask to see it and ask them to walk you through it. What they say about their own work tells you more than any certificate.
Can they work without being managed
A company with no HR department also has no middle management. Whoever joins will spend most days deciding for themselves what to do next. Some very capable people are miserable in that situation, and it is not a flaw in them. But it is a mismatch, and kinder to find out before they join than three months after.
Are they honest about what they do not know
A candidate who says "I have not done that, but here is how I would find out" is worth more to a small company than one who claims to have done everything. Small teams cannot afford to discover a gap at the moment it matters. The person who tells you the gap upfront is the one you can plan around.
Judge people on what they can do
We have a strong preference here, and it comes partly from where we are. Baleshwar is not a place recruiters visit. Good people here often have thin CVs, unfamiliar college names, and no former employer anyone has heard of. If a founder screens on those things, they will miss most of the talent within a hundred kilometres and then complain there is none.
The alternative is to build the hiring conversation around demonstration rather than description. A short, realistic task related to the actual job. A conversation about their past work in enough depth that bluffing is impossible. A problem you have genuinely not solved, discussed together for half an hour.
Two cautions. Keep any task short, a few hours at most, and be clear it will not be used commercially; unpaid work dressed up as an interview is a bad start. And do not confuse confidence with competence. The quiet candidate who does the task well is the one you want, not the one who talks best about it.
Write the job description you would want to read
Most job descriptions are written to attract, and so they lie a little. They list ten requirements when three matter. They say "competitive salary" when they mean "we have not decided".
We think a small company should do the opposite, for a selfish reason: it cannot afford a bad hire, and an honest description filters out people who would be unhappy before they apply.
An honest job description says what the person will actually do in a normal week. It says which skills are needed on day one and which can be learned. It names the hard parts of the job, not just the pleasant ones. It gives a salary range. And it says something true about the company, including the things that might put some people off. Working from home with a flat structure suits some people and not others. Say so.
The interview is a conversation, not an examination
A founder interviewing for the first time tends to copy interviews they have been through, which mostly means an interrogation. That is the wrong shape for a small company, because the candidate is deciding too, and they have less information than you.
An interview at a company of a few people should leave the candidate knowing what the work is really like, who they would be working with, what is uncertain about the company's future, and how decisions get made. They should have asked hard questions and got straight answers. If they asked none, that itself is worth noticing.
It should also leave the founder with something more useful than a score. Did they push back on something you said? Did they ask about the product, or only about the leave policy? None of these is a rule, but together they are a better signal than whether they could recite the definition of a design pattern.
Do not promise what you cannot deliver
This is the one we would underline if we could only say one thing.
A small company is tempted to over-promise because it feels it has to. It cannot match a large firm on salary, brand or stability, so it reaches for the future instead: rapid growth, a big role soon, equity that will be worth something. Some of this may turn out true. None of it is certain, and the candidate cannot check.
When the promise fails, and at a young company some promises will, the person you hired does not just leave. They leave feeling deceived, and they tell others. In a small town, in a small industry, that reputation arrives before your next job posting does. A large company can survive a few of these. A company of five cannot.
The alternative is plain. Say what is true today. Say what you hope for, and label it as hope. Say what you are unsure about. A candidate who joins on those terms has chosen the risk with open eyes, and when things are hard they are far more likely to stay.
What we would tell a founder hiring for the first time
Take longer than feels reasonable. Look at the work, not the CV. Write down the job you actually have, including the unattractive parts. Talk to the candidate as a future colleague, not a suspect. And whatever you are tempted to promise to close the deal, halve it, then say only the half you are certain of.
None of this needs an HR department. It needs a founder willing to be honest with a stranger about a company that is still being built. That honesty is the first thing the new person will learn from you, and the one everyone after them will inherit.
