TES EduProgram-Hiring👔

Hi all, hope we’re all keeping well.

In the 3rd session of the Trinity Entrepreneurial Society’s EduProgram, we were given a talk on the hiring process in a start-up. The speakers for this event were

• Brian Caulfield, Chair at Scale Ireland and a Venture Partner at Molten Ventures.
• Gemma Dunne, Head of Relationship Management at Gradguide.
• Darragh McKay, CTO of Noloco.

Here are all the notes I took of the insights and lessons learnt during the talk !

• The first part of the talk really just went into the advantages of working at a start-up. The speakers mentioned how you’ll you get the opportunity to work with so many motivated creatives, and how they want you to get involved and build projects. The crucial element to get hired here is how good you articulate your motivation and show you have achievement in either academics or group projects.
• The type of people who do well in startups, are the people who feel that what they’re doing in the day-to-day has genuine impact. The last thing people will want, is someone with a mindset of ‘not my job’. You must be self-analytical and come to conclusions by yourself.
• Company experience then startup, or straight into startup? It really depends on the person. Ideally you do as many internships as possible in college. This will teach you what you truly get a kick out of.
• Advice for entrepreneurs: Take a sales course, learn how to sell. If you’re going into a founders route, you’ll be needing to a do a lot of persuasion every single day. Sales isn’t about talking, more so listening and questioning.
• If interested in a career in VC: make sure you focus on quality firms where you’ll really actually learn something. They say VC is an apprenticeship business. Takes €20 million to train a VC because that’s how much they’ll lose
• There are also 2 main types of people who will succeed in venture capital:
  -Someone who’ll really hustle and find a flow and go to all start up events and talk to everyone and ask who’s hot in this space? Who’s really good? Who’s your favourite startup?
  -Someone with really good analytical skills, able to crank through models of businesses
  Most people want the former. Very few people get hired straight out of college. Most have done a few years in investment banking or other financial industry before VC.
• To appear as an attractive hire for start-ups:
  -Show what you’ve done on your own.
  -Don’t focus too much on grades I guess.
  -You can not have a degree and have an exceptional degree; the type of education received is not a dealbreaker
  –You must be coachable
  -Really show your interest, passion, motivation and intrigue in the business and you’ll stand out
• Rule No.1 when culling: Fire the asshole
• Code in your spare time, build projects by yourself

Those were all the main points I took down during this talk. It was cool to learn more about the venture capital industry as well as gain an insight into how companies look for hires and what specific traits they value.

Thanks for reading it this far if you did, stay safe 👋🏻