Seguros Bolívar
A Senior Human Resource Director on the Know-How of Building a Start-Up
Article

A Senior Human Resource Director on the Know-How of Building a Start-Up

Du Hong
FreeS Fund, 2018
Read the article

Read, Listen, or Discuss

Amazon Kindle  Discuss
auto-generated audio
  • 0.5×
  • 0.75×
  • 1×
  • 1.25×
  • 1.5×
  • 1.75×
1×
auto-generated audio

Editorial Rating

8

Qualities

  • Applicable
  • Concrete Examples
  • Insider's Take

Recommendation

China is teeming with opportunities: Thousands of start-ups sprout up each year, but many wither quickly, too. Only start-ups brimming with good people will survive. But how, as a start-up, do you recruit a robust workforce? How do you create a meaningful corporate culture? Du Hong, the human resources director of Chinese content platform Bytedance, shares his insights into how to hire and build a team that will drive company growth. His style is conversational and his stories absorbing and relatable. Young managers of new companies will find this article particularly helpful.

Summary

It’s vital for any budding company to have strong performers. How do you find the best people if you’re in HR, working for a start-up? To predict candidates’ performance, ask about their past experiences. Whatever qualities they have exhibited in the past will come into play at your company. Get a good idea of previous situations they had to tackle. Find out what role they played, what their goal was and what specific actions they took. Inquire how the situation turned out.

Get to the bottom of two or three important questions, and wring out all the details. Pay extra attention to the candidate’s use of personal pronouns. Frequent use of “we” may indicate that the individual played a small role, whereas “I” may indicate more responsibility. Carefully distinguish ...

About the Author

Du Hong is the human resource director of the news and information content platform Toutiao.

Comment on this summary