Why you should not hire freshers for senior roles in startups ?

Until few years ago, a student getting placed in a company while in college was considered as a sign of brilliance! With unicorn companies like Flipkart and Ola making it big, the latest trend for any newly passed out student is to join a startup. The main reasons why they aspire for this are quicker career growth, wider exposure, ability to learn, higher pay, etc.

As per the study by Your Story, more than 60% of Indian startup founders are from IIT's and the Times of India has reported that the average age of an entrepreneur in Bangalore is 28.5 years.

When young founders hire employees, they prefer hiring people who are younger to them due a psychological belief that it's easier to manage freshers since founders are slightly more experienced than them!

Though there are various advantages to this such as obtaining raw talent who can think out of the box and ability to hire really smart people straight out of college at a cheaper cost to the company, what most startups fail to realise is that these employees will wear the caps of senior management when the company grows.

If the company's first few hires can rise upto the occasion and has the maturity to handle the responsibility, then their hiring policy is one of the best in the world! This is because, most often in any company that hires freshers to senior positions, they would have

1. Only bookish knowledge and lack hands on experience to solve real life crisis.

2. When these young managers need to hire, they would lack the expertise to recognize real talent and most often they expect theoretical answers than practical knowledge from candidates who has a proven track record in the industry.

3. Their ego of having achieved something at a young age might even bring downfall to the company.

4. They would jump companies very often to get better pay since they might not have the maturity of a manager who climbed the ladder through age and experience.

5.They would lack long term vision since their exposure has been only to college curriculum.

Despite all of the above, there are some amazing people who has taken up learning as a challenge and would rise upto any occasion! Such people, though hard to find, still exist and getting them onboard is never a liability, but an asset to be retained.