In order to avoid the inconvenients of hiring the wrong person we have talked to variour business founders and HR professionals and here are the top 10 tips we have gathered:

1. From scratch to… getting things done

The most important feature you should be looking for when searching for a suitable employee is the ability of getting things done. You need a doer and a “things-happen maker”. So what you should be asking yourself when interviewing job candidates is this: is this a resourceful person? Can this person get by with little details and very few tools at hand? And will he do everything possible to make things happen? Remember: there are many smart PhDs out there who never get things done. And your start-up doesn’t need one of them on board.

2. Passion is viral

You need to hire people who are infected with passion for their particular job. Loving what you do means that you will eventually try harder to do it well and you will constantly look for ways to do it better. Passion is viral. If an employee loves what he does he will probably infect others as well with this love for your product.

3. Drive. Motivation. Action.

Is the person in front of you motivated to do this particular job? Self-motivated people will walk right through walls in order to get stuff done. They will keep pushing forward until they succeed and they are usually quite indendent in taking action. This is exactly the kind of attitude you are looking for.

4. Does he really need experience?

Experience is not everything. And I would also add that sometimes experience is exactly the feature you should compromise on when looking for an employee for your business. Look for passion, intelligence and potential, not for experience

5. Constant self-development

You need people who are keep to constantly learn new skills and abilities. You don’t need a person who stops moving forward in your team. What you need is people who dislike stagnating and who will forever try to improve their skills in order to be successful. You need curious people who continuously seek for news and improvements about their field, craft, profession.

6. Start-up mindset needed

If the employee in front of you has worked for a corporation like IBM for the last 10 years it may be difficult for him to addapt to the start-up do-everything-from-nothing context. But this doesn’t mean that former corporate employees don’t make good hire material for you. You need to ask the ex-corporate candidates about their reasons for leaving their job. If it was because they hated the bureaucracy and because things were moving too slowly without creating any value for the client then this is a person who could fit your start-up wonderfully.

7. Adaptability to chaos

Start-ups are not about safety. And they are never about strict rules or routine. If the candidate in front of you is looking for some fixed procedures and is reluctant to change then you should look elsewhere. Startups are about chaos, rapid changes, “no job description” positions. And you need a person who can adapt easily to this kind of environment.

8. Don’t forget ethics

Integrity and business ethics are a must when hiring people for your team. Of course, this is also hard to check, but you should pay attention for previous less ethical actions in the candidate’s background.

9. Problem solvers, not perfectionists

You are not looking for perfectionist specialists but for people with the right skills to solve a particular problem. Therefore the necessary skills are not enough. Your new team member should also have a result-driven attitude. They should try to solve problems at all costs and most effectively and not get stuck because things haven’t been done the right by-the-book way.

10. Willing to be a jack-of-all-trades

You don’t need people who don’t want to get their hands dirty. In startups there is usually less workforce than the business needs. And there are probably a lot of small tasks that are both easy and not so pleasent. And somebody has to do these as well. And it’s best when the nasty work gets divided and everyone in the team gets his fair share of nasty work. So you don’t need someone who won’t commit to small tasks as well when needed. But you should make sure that these tasks are the exception and not the rule.

Have you had any nasty experience while recruiting for your start-up? We would be more than happy to hear it if you feel like sharing it with us.

An entrepreneur and venture capitalist, Ondrej experienced his first successful business endeavor before he graduated from college in 1996. Several business enterprises later, he is now managing the early stage venture capital firm Credo Ventures, which he co-founded in January 2009. Until December 2008 he served as the Senior Investment Director of MCI Management S.A., where he was responsible for managing investments in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, and former Yugoslavia. Ondrej views venture capital as a tool to help entrepreneurs reach their goals, execute their visions, and boost the economy by supporting innovative ideas and projects

Alexandre founded VoyagesMoinsCher.com – the French leader of travel comparison – in 2001  and exited the business in 2007 after selling it to PriceMinister.com, which was acquired in 2010 by the Japanese group Rakuten. Alexandre is now involved as an investor in PariActu.com, wataro.com, 123flori.ro, eRepublik.com and other various businesses.

You can keep in touch with Alexandre via Twitter or Facebook or you can talk to him at How To Web 2010 about the way he evaluates businesses as an investor.

Unlike other entrepreneurs that after a successful exit continut with other entrepreneurship experiences, Alexandru doesn’t want to leave the company that bought InterAKT and wants to continue the work he started here as an employee.

Alexandru will tell you all about InterAKT and Adobe and about the experience of building and selling a software company.

You can keep in touch with Marius through his blog or you can meet him at How To Web 2010 where he will speak about what he looks for in a start-up before putting money on the table.

Radu founded GECAD in 1992 and launched the RAV antivirus technology which was bought by Microsoft in 2003. After the exit in 2003,  Radu refused to relocate to Redmond and also refused the position Microsoft offered him back then because of his love for entrepreneurship. Radu and his key employees decided to start a new software company together. That’s how GECAD Group was born in 2004 and started 4 new software businesses: Axigen – mail server technology, ePayment – online payment system, Avangate – electronic software distribution and Sentinet – security operating system.

You can connect with Radu through his blog or his Twitter and Facebook accounts.

You can contact Radu via Twitter, Facebook and Xing (he is an Ambassador for Xing in Western Romania). You can also meet him at the How To Web 2010 conference when he will talk to you about the advantages a start-up incubator can bring to a new founded web company.

As an entrepreneur, Vlad launched more than 20 online projects. His biggest success was Vodanet Media, one of the largest online publishing companies in Romania in 2007. A few of his other projects failed, the rest were integrated in Acasa.ro and Ele.ro, portals operated by Vodanet Media.

You can keep in touch with Vlad on Twitter or Facebook and you will definitely get to ask him more about tech hubs and the benefits an entrepreneur gets from working in a tech hub.

Promising EE start-ups are coming to London

The article’s main goal is that of proving that more and more Eastern Europe startups are turning to United Kingdom in order to help their business grow faster and to have access to London’s network of investors and advisers. Alex  van Someren, UKTI global entrepreneur programme dealmaker, stated for Financial times that “there is a notable pipeline of promising start-ups coming to London from countries such as Estonia, Poland, Hungary, Slovenia, Romania and Lithuania“. The article presents UK as a financial hub having a great concentration of financial expertise and institutional investors and as a great opportunity for technology startups in Eastern Europe.

So Financial Times seems to agree that Eastern Europe’s got web talent, right?!

7 reasons why moonlighting seems like a good idea

1. Cash is King – If you don’t have a way of supporting yourself and financing your business before quiting your job you may find yourself somewhere near failure pretty soon. Startup costs are easy to underestimate and you will need cash to keep your personal bills covered. Therefore you have to be sure before quiting your day job that you have a solid income source that will keep you going. Otherwise you may end up depressed, demotivated and… bankrupt. Keeping your day job means cash for you and your bills. And sometimes even for your start-up if you are lucky enough.

2. Peace of mind – Being an employee for 8 hours a day will definitely secure you and your family the peace of mind you need in daily life and in building a successful startup. There is no glory in being hungry and there is definitely no peace of mind about it. And when you desperately need money there is no way you  are going to make the best business decisions.

3. Disclipine comes from discipline – Getting up daily at 7 AM and dressing up to meet your co-workers keeps you on a daily track of discipline. Otherwise, if you quit your job and lose this scheduled human contact and self-control that a daily job offers you you may become very disorganized yourself and quite antisocial.

4. More free time doesn’t equal more productivity – You may just quit your job and find yourself with a whole lot of spare time and no organization or planning towards reaching your business goals. A lot of start-up owners could tell you that their early start-up days were some of the less productive days of their lives. If you clear your schedule all of a sudden the rule is that you will probably tend to fill it with a lot of unuseful things that will have nothing to do with your start-up. So instead of wasting time why not earn some money instead?

5. A job offers benefits, not only a salary - When you give up your job you also give up your medical insurance, dental insurance, your holiday days (you may find it very hard to go on holiday with a business to run and very little cash around.

6. Your job may be a source of ideas and contacts – Even if you don’t realize it now you will be confronted with this reality once you quit your job. But this job keeps you in contact with the industry you are working in, with important people in this industry and sometimes even with some business concepts that could prove valuable to your start-up.

7. Pressure kills passion – The start-up you are moonlighting on feels like a daily escape from your routine not-so-beloved day job. If you quit this job, then your start-up becomes your job. You probably heard that it’s ideal to turn your hobby into a job, but when you actually try it you will realize there’s nothing so ideal about it. Pressure is definitely a passion killer.

Against moonlighting

1. You’re busy from 9 to 5 - There are some businesses that require your presence during normal work hours in order to get off the ground. If this is the case it might be really tough to handle if you have to be at work from 9 AM to 5 or 6 PM Monday to Friday.

2. Time management gets tough - You have to be very organized in order to master time and task management and make some reasonable progress on your business idea if you keep your day job. Work hours are never the only time consumers on your schedule and you may end up spending very little or no time on your start-up. And after that you will probably not be so motivated and decide to quit it.

3. You do need a personal life, you know… – If you have a full-time job and a start-up to take care of during your spare time then when will you be spending time with your family and friends? When will you manage to free your schedule and go for jogging or go to the gym. Remember that it is a good idea to make a compromise as far as your spare time is concerned for a few months but this should be the exception and not the rule. Success takes some sacrifice but you should never sacrifice yourself and your balance.

In conclusion, it is true that a full-time startup might get off the ground faster, but working during startup founding keeps the bills paid and provides a back-up plan for the risk of going out on your own. What do you think? Would you take the leap without thinking twice or try to plan your way out as securely as possible?