My First Hire
as a 23 Year Old Entrepreneur
While I was in college, I never worried about interviews. That is, until I was sitting in my first one attempting to secure an internship, and the first question had me stumped to the core.
“Tell me about yourself”
Huh? That question is so impossibly broad. I stammered through some horribly stitched together rendition of my life’s story. That was a bit of a wakeup call, and I took interviews a lot more seriously after that. I studied techniques and prepared answers to common questions which led to smooth sailing in my subsequent interviews.
I wasn’t nervous for about an interview until a few months ago, and the tables had turned. I was the one giving the interview!
The person sitting across the virtual screen was a sixty-year-old engineer from the United Kingdom. In that moment, imposter syndrome hit me hard. It was a unique experience, being a twenty-three-year-old conducting an interview with someone who had far more experience and knowledge than me.
Why?
So why did I have to interview this guy? The basics of the situation are that I embarked on an entrepreneurial journey! I had spent six months tinkering away with a 3-D printer, attempting to create a new water bottle cap for stainless steel bottles.
Despite having no experience in product design, I dove head-first into the process of creating a product from scratch. All I had was my 3-D printer and my unbridled optimism to guide me. You can read more about that story here.
But after that six-month period came to a close, I realized that I needed some professional help turning my crude prototype into something that I could actually sell.
How’d I find him?
I did what every great resourceful entrepreneur does when faced with a new problem. Google the answers to all my questions and watch an ungodly amount of YouTube videos. Google got back to me with two options:
Hire a Prototyping Company
Hire a Freelance Product Engineer
Upon careful consideration, it became evident that using a prototyping company was beyond my financial means. Although the second option had the potential to save me money, it also posed several inherent difficulties. Concerns included the presence of scammers, unreliable guarantees, and a relatively limited track record. However, undeterred by these potential setbacks, I enthusiastically embraced this alternative. After all, what could possibly go wrong?
Upwork
I discovered Upwork, a platform designed for freelancers, where clients like myself can post job opportunities on a virtual bulletin board. Freelancers have the ability to browse through these job postings and submit their applications.
The process is relatively straightforward. I quickly composed a concise job description and soon enough, I received an overwhelming response from nearly fifty product engineers who were eager to take on my project.
It was during this search that I came across Philip, a seasoned sixty-year-old engineer hailing from the United Kingdom.
The Interview
The key questions I wanted to ask Philip were:
What projects similar to this one have you worked on before?
How many hours will it take for you to complete this project?
Philip was a nice guy, but there was one thing that made me dislike him. He ditched me! I offered him the job a few days after our interview and he turned it down for “having too much on his plate”. sureeeee
I probably deserve it for trying to hire the first person I interviewed. I went back to the fifty engineers who proposed to work on my project, and gathered the most qualified applicants from across the globe.
They were:
GUICHENG:
MUHAMMAD:
FEDERICO:
GT:
GRANT:
Over time, my interviewing skills have improved, allowing me to be more confident and less nervous during the process. Through careful evaluation and consideration, I was able to narrow down the field of candidates to two strong contenders. These decisions were made based on thorough assessments of their qualifications, experience, and alignment with the role, and understood the vision I had for the product.
Here’s what I liked about them each:
Grant:
Spoke English very well
Had a detailed project proposal plan
Was close to me (sort of, I live in the USA)
Muhammad:
Was only $28 dollars an hour compared to Grant’s $75 dollars an hour
Had worked on a water bottle previously
Both had very high reviews on Upwork and had earned hundreds of thousands of dollars on the platform, meaning I trusted them.
andddd my first hire of by business career is…
Muhammad!
The $28 dollars an hour was too good of a price to ignore on my limited budget.
Takeaways
I feel like interviews are both hard and easy at the same time. Determining someone's qualifications from their educational background, previous projects, and past employees (in my case it involved carefully scanning client reviews on Upwork) is pretty straightforward. Determining if you like and want to work with someone is a far more difficult thing to determine in a thirty-minute exchange while both the interviewer and interviewee are on their best behavior.
My advice? If I had any to give, is the classic age-old advice that doesn’t really help anyone.
Go with your gut.
They call your gut the second brain for a reason. One thing I can say to encourage you though is everyone is just making it up as they go along, or at least I hope so because I sure am!
Subscribe to never miss another update!