Hiring for Startups: From burger flipping to B-to-B

"hire slowly, fire fast"<p>sounds like good advice to me. I'm surprised how hard most people seem to find firing people. I mean it's usually pretty clear within the first month or so if you made a mistake, and at that point it's not like they have a lot of company-specific knowledge, so I think at that point, often it's best to apologize to the (now ex) employee for the hiring mistake and part ways.<p>Hiring good people is hard, and you are bound to make mistakes. It seems to me like you need to have a procedure for correcting same.

"human qualities"<p>You need to be careful here... turning away a good programmer because she has a touch of auspergers usually means you end up with a mediocre programmer. If programming is core to your startup, hire the best programmers you can get, and then hire other people who are compatible with the programmers personalities.<p>Of course, if your startup is largely marketing focused, a mediocre programmer who can deal with your marketing guy might be a better choice. But my point is that you don't need everyone on the team to be socially skilled or friendly- but you do need to make sure you have compatible personalities.