Ten principles of Hostinger: Why you shouldn’t be afraid to hire better than yourself

Ten principles of Hostinger: Why you shouldn’t be afraid to hire better than yourself

If there is one thing that cannot be overlooked in any company’s life, it is hiring. It determines the company’s growth trajectory – not just numbers but also its competencies, brainpower, and creative potential. Therefore, enterprises must hire and develop the best to succeed. 

As a Chief Product and Technology Officer, I will share what Hostinger does to attract and retain the best.

Every hire matters

For me, hiring the best goes beyond filling up roles and positions. This is because hiring affects the organization at every level, including everyday micro and macro decisions. 

Every business decision is an accumulation of many smaller decisions, each affecting others. We are all decision-makers, influenced significantly by other people around us. That means that every bad hire makes the company’s decisions worse, and every good hire potentially makes them better. This determines whether the spiral goes upward or downward. 

So, my goal is to put the best people in every position. 

Hiring with purpose

Hiring the best is easier said than done. Faced with internal and external pressures to fill open positions quickly, managers very often lose patience and lower the bar. 

However, I believe that is the worst outcome.

Having a bad or not-good-enough hire is much worse than missing a few good performers. It can cause a domino effect and send the organization spiraling downward. So, we have to be persistent in trying to hire the best, not lose our focus, and not sacrifice our long-term learning and growing potential for short-term convenience. 

Hiring must be done with one purpose – we only hire someone because we believe in their potential. 

Art of hiring the best

There is no one specific formula for hiring the best. Instead, there is a constant process of learning and improving. Obviously, an organization also needs to have a broader framework to set the direction and integrate the best hiring practices into management processes.

Everyone in the company should invest in hiring because it is the most important thing you do. Every manager should look for ways to improve hiring practices to facilitate the best talent attraction. 

Personally, I have what I call the hiring playbook, which I constantly update and expand with insights from outside sources, reading material, podcasts, and so on. This playbook is filled with little hiring gems that I try to use and test in practice and also share with the team. 

Empowering candidates 

One of the proven tips in my hiring playbook is reverse interviewing. As there are inherent power dynamics in the interviewing process, you can unlock the person by giving them the power to ask all the questions.

So, I let the candidate ask the questions instead of interviewing them. It can reveal a lot about the person and their qualities and fit within our organization. For example, the best job interviews for me are the ones from which I can bring some ideas to apply. The candidate’s questions can provoke some revaluation of how certain things are done in our organization. If the candidate asks – do we have this or that process, practice, or solution in our company – and you start wondering why we don’t, that’s a good indication that you are talking to the right person. 

Raising the bar

We are constantly learning from the best companies and adapting their best practices. That’s how Amazon’s Bar Raiser approach has been adapted to our company. In short, this approach aims to raise the collective bar with every new hire. When making the decision to hire, you should think whether the person could raise your team or processes to the next level. 

So, Bar Raiser is an important tool in hiring the best. It is far from the only one we use, but it very well illustrates our general approach. 

I was joking with some colleagues that we, who have worked at Hostinger for quite some time now, should be happy that we got hired when we did. It would be much more difficult for us to get hired today. Simply put, that is the concept behind this tool – setting the bar higher and higher. 

Set ourselves for growth

But hiring the best is only one side of the coin. The other – equally important – is developing and growing the best. These two aspects are interconnected because if you want to hire the best, you must provide them with opportunities to grow. Conversely, if you want to allow people to truly learn and grow, you must surround them with the best talent there is.

Both things reinforce each other. The better talents an organization acquires, the better conditions there are for everyone to grow together. As the best candidates are usually the ones who are really ambitious, curious, and willing to learn, the straightest path to learning is in talented and growth-oriented teams. 

So, hiring the best helps current employees to learn and grow. At the same time, a learning and personal growth-driven culture helps to attract the best talents. 

Pushing ahead one challenge at a time

One way of encouraging talent growth and learning in the organization is by challenging people and motivating them to step out of their comfort zones. But there must be a balance – if you push people too hard, they will experience burnout. One new challenge at a time, upping people’s responsibilities a bit and seeing how they do creates a delicate but constant push to grow. 

There must be both skill and will to take that next step. Very often, we do not know what we are capable of until we are put in a new situation and pushed a bit off of our familiar rhythm. It is beneficial to have people around you who can make that nudge. 

But it must go both ways – not only managers pushing their reports to step up but also reports making managers improve. Ideally, most interactions between any employees should facilitate and reinforce learning and growing. 

People who make the organization

When we hire the best people, and others see how this person has completely changed the organization, they want to do the same. The high-performing people have very high expectations of their colleagues, and that’s a self-reinforcing loop. If you have really great hires, they recommend and attract other top employees.

All in all, it is its people who make the organization. If these are the best people, the organization also has what it takes to offer its clients the best solutions, achieve the best results, be the best place to work, and realize one’s full potential. It is not a small feat to achieve, but it is worthy, no doubt. 

Author
The author

Giedrius Zakaitis

Giedrius, Chief Product and Technology Officer at Hostinger, ensures the company delivers and supports the right products. Passionate about challenges, he promotes radical truth, transparency, and sharing the ambitions of talented individuals. A self-proclaimed geek, Giedrius dives deep into his interests, constantly generating fresh ideas and expanding his knowledge.