Hiring New Employees

Now for question number 3: At what point does it make sense to hire new employees?

A) Reactive hiring, B) proactive hiring,C) strategic hiring, or D) the Joker.

All answers have their place,but here I choose C).

All important points.I think the combination is what makes it work, from all three angles.

So I'll take the Joker.

Right — feel free to start.We had 3 great choices.

Why did you decide on none of them?I have to honestly take a quick look at this again.

I think we live today — or from my perspective — I work a lot with startups and scaleups, and they're in very different stages.

Large corporations today also find themselves in very different phases.

And I think none of the 3 answers alone is correct.

I believe each answer is right at a certain point in time.

Yes, I chose the Joker.I think today it's no longer about when should I hire — it's more about: how early do I know, how early do I have the best knowledge about the talent market I'm hiring in.

And then I can cover those three areas individually and say: okay, I am informed, I know where other companies might be struggling,where there might be layoffs, how salaries are evolving,how candidate profile requirements are shifting.

And if I have that information, then I can always act specifically based on my own needs — hire proactively when needed, or hire reactively, or build strategic plans.

Yes, and from that I could for example also say:if I find someone I really want to have, but I don't have the budget — then two questions actually arise.

One is: can I hire this person even without the budget — and what costs does that generate?

On the other hand: what happens if I do hire the person,if this top talent joins us and perhaps requires less onboarding because they already have experience in the field — and then closes more deals,generates more revenue — then the costs that I initially balked at because the budget wasn't planned, end up offsetting themselves.

On the other hand, I'm also genuinely a fan of really thinking through where you want to grow as a company.

Do you want to expand the existing market?Do you want to enter a new market?

And then there obviously needs to be a basic setup in place to say: okay, I want to hire 5 people in the next year, or I need someone with the technical expertise or the language skills so I can always keep my eyes and ears open.

Would you agree with me if I say the hiring process doesn't end at the offer — it might only end after a year, once the person has already started at the company?

Because you brought up the topic of strategic hiring — for me that also means that the groundwork within the company needs to be in place.

I can't hire 13 people if I then have no plan for what happens next.

Because if I don't have that plan, I'll lose those people again — and we fall right back into reactive hiring.

So — how would you look at it?I do think it doesn't always end right at the hire.

You also have to look at whether the person stays through probation, how the onboarding goes,how long-term the person sees themselves at the company, how they develop.

That's why you really shouldn't always stop there — but for me it's also again about having a strategy: I plan that ahead of time too — how I bring people into the company.

Alright, that's a wrap — thank you both so much, and with that we close the discussion.

Discussion round for today.Super — that was fun, Andreas.

Likewise — see you soon.Hopefully it just keeps going the same way.