Finding good employees is challenging for companies of any size, but for cash-strapped startups in the midst of a talent war, it’s particularly difficult. AdventNet, Zoho’s parent company, is no longer small (now more than 700 employees), but our recruiting strategy was forged from the challenges we faced when we were just starting out.
Most HR departments use fairly conventional criteria to identify talent, namely an individual’s academic and employment pedigrees. There is nothing wrong with this, except that when everyone uses them, the candidate pool gets over-fished. As a bootstrapping startup unable to compete with compensation, Zoho had to recruit a different way.
Since we didn’t find any significant correlation between traditional pedigrees and real-world performance anyway, we thought, why not look to non-pedigreed workers and evaluate talent in terms of actual job performance? OK, performance can only be evaluated after a candidate is hired. But Zoho has developed a practice that allow us to recruit non-traditionally — and effectively.
Keep in mind that most of Zoho’s staff are in India, so our experience must be taken in context. But we have used the same recruiting rules for our operations in the U.S. and Japan, if on a smaller scale. Continue »

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