2025 was different for many reasons. As my role shifted to leadership, my focus moved from solving problems to building the team. We started out with a goal to build a team of self-driven and competent people in our partnerships, support and marketing teams. Building this team required hiring great people, helping them succeed, setting standards and eventually stepping out of their way. Among these, hiring was the most consequential decision to make because when good hires succeed, they raised the standards for the entire team. We set out to hire people who raise the bar, lead the way, and demonstrate Frappe values.
The focus on hiring didn’t come naturally to me. Initially I regressed to solving problems directly, which wasn’t sustainable. Rushabh likes sharing the story of the monkey on the pedestal to remind us all of the importance of “who”, over "how” when trying to solve problems. While I enjoyed the process of solving problems, the problems remained unsolved because it needed commitment from a dedicated owner. And so I realised, rather very late, that I had to do something differently. I had to learn how to hire great people and then step back.
This year, we hired ~15 new members in the business team. Here are some learnings.
Quality over speed
Initially, there was a lot of pressure to close job openings. Regions like USA, APAC and ME (partially) suffered from lack of dedicated ownership for a long time. At times we felt the pressure to close the open position even if the candidate was not a perfect yes. But those were the times we waited it out. The cost of one bad hire is higher than we think. It is not just CTC, but the emotional commitment, effort and time invested from both sides. If we had prioritised speed, it may have felt good in the short term, but may have taken us few steps behind in the long term.
Entrepreneurial skills
Around that time we moved to a new office, released a culture video and received some good PR. This helped us attract some really good applications through our job applications, LinkedIn DMs and email inbox. Some had entrepreneurial instincts demonstrated by high degree of ownership, experimentation and go-getter attitude. These are the candidates that I had fun interviewing. They had a sense of restlessness, humility and willingness to do something worthwhile in their lives. A learning curve they go through (including me when I joined) was to contain the energy, bring more focus, prioritise quality over hustle. We decided to hire a few people with such entrepreneurial instincts and some of them are already showing good potential.
Philosophy, role models and failures tell a lot about people
Frappe’s self-driven culture is a double edged sword. When people work on their own, without any instructions from a boss, their values and philosophy work as a guiding force. A list of interview questions that worked for me were — what is your sales/marketing philosophy? And who are your role models? What is your biggest failure and what did it teach you? These questions tell a lot what values and principles they hold close.
Problem solving skills
This year we introduced a problem solving round for almost all the roles in business teams. These are questions that test the ability to structure a problem, analyse it and arrive at a solution, with first principles thinking. Adding case studies and guesstimates helped us know their ability to structure a problem by asking questions and making assumptions, they were a good test of their listening, reasoning and interpretation skills too. These questions test the approach and business fundamentals of people. Eg. Can you estimate the profitability of Frappe? How? How can this grow?
Referrals
Candidates who joined through internal referrals tended to do better, as they benefited from early guidance and support from their referrers. Some referrals worked and some didn’t. When they didn’t, it weighed heavily on the referrers, quite naturally. This also happened with me. But instead of beating myself up, I told myself, I back people, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. Taking a chance is courage and this will not stop me from backing good people.
Long term players
One thing I’ve learned in Frappe is, good work shines, no matter if you’re a fresher, or with experience. So, a great way to start your journey would be to start somewhere and earn your way up with consistent good work. This also feels more fair to the people who have been working hard for many years. But we met some people who had higher expectations from the beginning. Even though we have a pick your own pay policy, the pay picking process is rational with very few outliers who pick an undeserved pay. A sense of social accountability kicks in. Much like our company’s growth, most of us try to take a long term and patient view towards our pay. When a candidate asks for unhinged hikes (100%+), stating that they will somehow justify it, they were subjected to a higher bar on the quality of their interview and hence weren’t considered unless there were a strong yes from the full panel.
Writing and comprehension tests
Frappe runs entirely on Gameplan (our internal communication tool) and most of the internal communication is via long form messages and presentations. Not only this, I believe that a person’s ability to write correlates with their ability to think as well, hence in some cases we introduced writing and reading comprehension tests. Writing was especially important for roles like marketing. Although it may not helped us find the best candidate but definitely helped us rule out a few.
Vibes
Vibe is how we feel about someone and it does matter in the interview (as long as it isn't bias). We often make the error of hiring someone who ticks all the boxes, but may not have felt energising or inspiring. The overall vibe of the interview is not just the 30-45 mins in the boxed interview room, it is also about the quality of questions, post-interview, lunch and email exchanges. The idea was that if the overall interview experience doesn’t leave us wanting to spend more time, then clearly the interview wasn’t as good as we thought.
Pursuit of talent
During my experience working in companies that hired from top tier institutes, I worked with a mix of driven, competent and high-agency people. Folks at Frappe often debate about whether or not, people from top tier institutes really have any edge over other decent institutes and if we should hire them? but I didn’t carry this bias and wanted to actively bring diversity of talent. Such individuals showed sincerity, rigour, problem solving skills and commitment which are valuable and rare. But they faced challenges working in the Frappe’s unstructured and self-driven culture where you’re supposed to figure your own path, start with why, and own outcomes end to end. Needless to say, pedigree or not, what really mattered to do exceptional work, what I call, best work of our lives, is curiosity, purpose, and depth which are a rare find.
Plan ahead
Next year we are planning to participate in campus hiring, and create a business onboarding program where every individual starts their journey in the support team. This will enable them with a deep product competency which will help them in their roles ahead.
Frappe’s hiring process has moved away from being reactive to more intentional, but we still have a long way to go. The journey doesn’t stop at hiring. Long term success depends on onboarding, mentoring, feedback, but also people’s own ability to learn, unlearn and strive through the roller coaster that Frappe is.
At times, hiring and mentoring feels less satisfying as I have to sacrifice short term wins (a cool project, or a fun problem to solve), but when I see the person I was involved in hiring and mentoring, do a good job and slowly start to do their best work, it leaves me with a sense of gratification. If I look back, I was able to do my best work only because someone saw my potential and mentored me throughout, so the effort feels worth it after all. I hope the 2025 cohort of new hires succeed in raising the bar of excellence in the business teams and wish them all the best!
