When Priyanka Jain, co-founder and CEO of vaginal microbiome test and care company Evvy, is hiring, she knows what she wants to see in a candidate.
She’s looking for someone “who goes above and beyond just what your job title tells you to do,” she says. That could mean including an “Interests” section on your resume that lists volunteering or outside projects, or just illustrating your passion for your field with accomplishments on the job.
She also knows what she doesn’t want to see in a candidate: Someone who’s only interested in doing strategy. When execution is “outside of their zone of genius,” she says, “that’s always a little concerning.”
‘Everybody has to be able to do both’
Every company needs people who strategize about how to improve operations, as well as people who execute. But at a startup, where personnel and resources are limited, “you don’t have the luxury of having strategy people and execution people,” says Jain.
Every person needs to be able to “figure out what the problem is,” she says, plus, “you also need to be able to get into the weeds, figure out the solution, write it yourself, get it into the world.”
At the end of the day, when it comes to strategy and execution at a startup, “everybody has to be able to do both.”
‘The level of detail that anybody’s able to get into’ can be a clue
To suss out if candidates can both ideate and roll up their sleeves, Jain asks about a problem they had in a past company and how they solved it.
“The level of detail that anybody’s able to get into as it relates to the process and not just the deliverable tells you a lot about how involved they actually were,” she says. If they can explain exactly the steps it took to solve the problem, they probably took those steps themselves — and could do it again to solve problems at their next company.
The other element Jain is looking for in a candidate’s answer is their attitude. “If they get excited about both sides,” she says, “that’s always a really good sign.” They’ll carry that level of enthusiasm for getting things done going forward.
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