Hiring resources is always a challenge for recruitment team. But when you are hiring for a startup then the challenge is doubled and risky too. The very first thing for an early stage startup is to have good resources for product development. A good resource also needs too remuneration, package in addition to good facilities. However for a startup, such facilities are not available and its difficult to provide such packages to attract talented resources. But one thing that is guaranteed in start is challenging work. A startup can challenge an established enterprise in terms of innovation. Big enterprises always advocate for innovation but when it comes to actual implementation, they look for a case study or two for the idea to make sure that the idea can work. But when you are executing an idea after verifying case studies then its not innovative idea. As per wiki “Innovation can be defined simply as a “new idea, device or method”” that means its “new”. When we are talking about a “new” entity, then its quite difficult to get case studies. But big enterprises cannot work, AFAIK, on an idea which is not implemented or its not proved that this will work. But startup are completely different, they are headed by people of ex of some big enterprises where they failed to convince their higher authority to implement the idea. Then they start a startup to execute the idea, which is innovative. Coming back to my hiring strategy, its always a risk. In the beginning, I started working with freelancers. One good thing about freelancers is that they will create an impression that they can take you to the moon and its their pastime to do that. However, it reality its quite opposite. I remember, I once recruited a freelancer from Delhi to create REST apis using PHP. Though I had to throw the whole code base into dustbin due to poor quality of code but I still remember her words “If you pay for a maruti car, you cannot ask for a BMW car” that means the buggy code is fine as the payment for the work is less, but it was a good payment too. What a logic. I then started working with interns, in the beginning got some good interns from KIIT University. These guys are really good and created a framework for my android project within 6 weeks, thats truly an achievement from a student in final semester. After interns I tried to recruit full time employees. It was a good experience. In Bangalore, there are lots of fresh engineering graduates looking for job. But all of them cannot be recruited and cannot start from day one. They need training and mentoring to be productive. I generally dont conduct interview, rather give them some assignments and based on their performance I take decision. When you know how to use google then its almost not an issue to do any assignments, thats exactly happened. Some candidates beautifully completed assignment in technology which they dont know anything. I was happy that I got some good candidates but alas. That is the experience, I have till now. But some engineering graduates are really good and I can say its luck that matters to get a good fresh engineer for your startup. That is the story.