VIP Corner: Gurbaksh Chahal on how hiring your first employees is key to a company's success - SmartBrief

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VIP Corner: Gurbaksh Chahal on how hiring your first employees is key to a company’s success

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Strategy

SmartBrief is partnering with Big Think to create a weekly video spotlight in SmartBrief on Leadership called “VIP Corner: Video Insights Powered by Big Think.” This week, we’re featuring Gurbaksh Chahal, an Internet entrepreneur and best-selling author.

The key to a flourishing company — whether it’s a startup or a larger, more established business — is hiring the right people who want to see you and the company succeed, said Gurbaksh Chahal, an Internet entrepreneur.

For startups, the first five hires are often the most crucial because they establish whether you’ll even have a company, he said. The No. 1 quality Chahal looks for in the first five is how hungry they are and their willingness to work to see the startup succeed.

For more established companies, leaders should focus on finding new hires who support the company’s mission, but also embrace the company’s core culture. “A company becomes successful when the culture never changes and it stays within the parameters of how it was founded,” Chahal said.

Once a leader has built a strong company culture with dedicated employees who are all on the same page, it’s inevitable that creativity and innovation will follow suit.

“Once you hire the right people and they have all — everyone’s interests are aligned on the same objective — you’ll begin to innovate,” Chahal said. “You’ll begin to execute and you’ll begin to win on the evolution stages of a company.”

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