Passion or Experience: The Right Ingredient For an Employee

Should Startups hire based on experience or passion?

A Startup is an initiative/ business started by like-minded entrepreneurs who have an ideology that form the basis of tis startup. The business is focused on solving some problem of the consumer, by either providing intangible services or by providing an evolved product as per the demand in the market. 

Now the question arises, ‘who should the startup hire to be a founding member of their mission and also be an active contributor in achieving their goals as well?’  Before hiring an employee, it is the foundation of every company that defines the future of its existence. The foundation mostly depends on the management team that plans, strategizes and recruits employees that could work in their interest with passion and with a pinch of experience. With both strings attached, a startup could do wonders.

Some advantages of a passionate worker over an experienced employee are:

1. A Passionate Employee is often better than an Experienced Employee as they will go above and beyond to prove themselves that they could excel, whereas an experienced person might not be so willing to prove himself as his belief lies in ‘experience speaking for itself’. 
2. An inexperienced Employee who is very passionate towards their work joins as a clean slate and can grasp all duties and information more effectively than to a person who is coming from an experienced field with multiple ideas.
3. A Passionate Employee with limited experience will have a fresh, different work or ideas to get the task done. On the other hand, an Experienced Employee will only stick to the stereotype framework that he has been following since ages.
4. Passionate people may tend to be loyal and gel well with the chaos that comes with working in a startup and trusting them boosts their morale. Experienced people tend to move out for other opportunity that steps their way as soon as possible.
5. Even though the salary that a passionate employee gets is not that high but they don’t define their work as per what they get paid, but for an experienced person compensation is first priority and defines their work.
6. Passionate Employees are likely to improvise and learn new skills thus helping them to multitask which can be helpful for the employer as well.
7. Passionate people like to work as a team indulging and motivating other employees as well. Unlike Experienced Employees who focus only in highlighting themselves and not necessarily will be team players.
8. An Experienced Employee will join a startup with a motive to get a promotion as per their past experience, but a passionate employee would be focused more in work and self-learning for the betterment of the company.

However, this does not mean that experienced employees should not be hired at all, because the experience they bring with them can help in scaling a business faster and keeping the costs at bay. Hence, benefits of years of experience cannot be matched by the sheer passion for working.

Therefore if you want to hire leaders in an organization, an experienced employee is needed to hold the fort. But to build a team you need passionate employees who can steer change and help you achieve the targets. Slowly steadily these employees will also grow and become leaders in the organization and train many more who join.

Hiring culture today has taken a turn towards getting onboard employees who have a positive attitude towards the company they are going to work for. It is difficult to differentiate between the two characteristics as both these employees have their own benefits and disadvantages at the same time. It purely depends on the company’s stage of growth and the plan they have devised for scaling, so keep an open mind for both- as passion and experience together can make for a deadly combination.