Introduction:

In Restaurant Business and Its lesson I mentioned why processes in complex domains need to be at the core. The people following the process, will drive it outwards. These people will most likely be your front line workforce.

Back at Subjimandi.app, we had front line people driving the business model of buying and selling graded produce to retailers and farmers respectively.

Our front line workforce were early career folks who were looking to kick-start their careers. The lack of experience was overcompensated with interest to learn.

We relied on younger and early career over few years experienced people for two specific reasons.

1. Budget. You can’t bring in experienced folks when you are not a recognised name. So, more money and perks have to be thrown in to help a candidate join you.

2. Zero unlearning. The time and effort it takes for a slightly experienced person to unlearn is much more compared to training a person.

Still, the challenge was to asses these folks when not sufficient work was available.

The motivation to hire stellar candidates was essential as they will be the people who will be the brains at the local level. They will be tasked with driving the process outwards to the customer.

Last point I would like to make is about the nature of business. We were in produce space, essential commodities. Our differentiation that we could build and sustain was our people and their competence. Everything else was or would have been commoditised.

Process of Hiring Front Line Workforce

Hiring team members is never easy. It is hard because people are involved and humans are complex. No process of hiring can fish out the most suitable candidate for the role.

Being early stage, every new addition to the team was ciritical as they will have a large size impact on the way we work. So, most of our hiring at this stage was to hire curious, humble and good humans who join our pursuit to make Subjimandi.app the marketplace for produce.

Example of Sales Executive

Sales Executive is the most common role every agri-space startup hires. For us, they were not just selling graded produce but also our business model of buying graded produce at source. So, our hiring for this involved lot of iterations to settle at a standard process.

The end result or success of this process led us to hire a female sales executive who pushed our volumes beyond our expectations in a new region. Yes, you read it right, female.

We made it basic but not simple. And we relied on the oldest trope of 2x2 matrix to help us gain perspective on the candidate.

Evaluation Template

• We are dividing the traits of the person into 4 quadrants. 2 are desirable and 2 are not desirable for us.

• Person falling in the "not desirable" bracket are not the type of people we would like to work with.

Sales Executive traits to map

• The vertical axis covered important and extra skills spectrum of the person.

• The horizontal axis covered the essential and negative traits of the person.

https://twitter.com/vsvivek93/status/1545699240415924224?s=21&t=U-KTjE7TgMzbZbWu1AW7qQ

Few Examples:

We personalised the cases to each candidate’s past but every time we asked the same set of questions to weed out most of our bias. Without it, we couldn’t rationalise a female sales executive hire in this space.

In the instance for us to check if they are Street Smart?

If the person presents any crisis negotiation tactics on ground with different classes of people. Do they have circumstances awareness or just systemic knowlege?

• Ex of Street smart:

  - Question: If you entered a new city and you have to take an auto from the railway/bus station to your location.

  - Doesn’t : If they get on the first auto by bargaining the price a little compared to what the auto driver asks.

  - Does : If they had asked 2 or 3 auto drivers for the fare to the location and then bargained basing on the knowledge you have gained about the price from the sample data. You are showing of being smart.

Another example of seeing if they are eager to learn?

People who tend to be curious are not worried about how much they don't kow but more focused on how much they can learn.

• Ex of eager to learn:

  - We would take a tangential and vague topic additional to their domain , “do they know what is marketing of produce means? “

    -   Does: If they mentioned not really or said not sure but still attempted to give an answer. Better, if they asked a follow up questions to learn more about the question.
  
    -   Doesn’t: Confidently saying yes and going on about their answer without trying to understand what we mean.
  

An aside, this clip on curiosity conveys a powerful lesson from my favourite show, Ted Lasso.

Similarly, checking the non desirable traits was equally important.

• In-action due to fear: Fear comes in many forms. But the one we were looking was that of a person not taking ownership. It will be showcased when the person is seeking permission before doing any activity and always looking to follow steps.

• Sexist : This is not really hard to check. We had a female member of the team part of the interview panel. Our Female member would interrupt the candidate or give immediate feedback. We will then check the reaction of the candidate. We also check if the candidate was addressing only the male member on the panel.

The end goal was to have common traits in our sales executive irrespective of the background they belong.

Front Line is the Face

This is not a new thought. Hindusthan Unilever sends its top tier MBA grads to the fields at the start to work as Sales Executives and understand HUL’s customers, small retailers.

In agri-space which is in physical trade. People on the front lines communicate your service levels and build your brand with the customers. If they understand the value of the company because of the problem it is solving. It could help you increase adoption and conversion.

Still, often I see that front line workforce is considered replaceable. They move from company to company but never grow from one level of work to an another. We under invest in their training and treat them as people who need to monitored at all times. They are unrecognised and treated with benevolence.

When I had to take the decision to close Subjimandi.app , my immediate worry was the team. They were our success. They sold it to farmers and retailer, not me. I was just the person who established a process.

Now, seeing them all continue to succeed has been a true testament to out effort in honing these young individual. They knew everything that is happening in the company. Understood the strategy and most importantly relayed insights from the ground.

All of them are now at a higher level in each of their jobs and continuing to grow leaps and bounds.

My approach to hiring since this small success has been to focus on what a person can do for us rather than what we want them to do. I tweeted this way back, but it is often something I keep referring to time and time again.

https://twitter.com/vsvivek93/status/1347336065493856257?s=21&t=pkXL6PtmFjVXdKSU63tvwQ

Signing off till next time,

Vivek, hiring front line workforce once again.