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Lowering Recruitment Standards with Sugasini Kandiah · Founder F**K ups

• Ben Bagg: I w I hope I can put this in the the the takes. All right, here go. Today's guest is Suga, the founder of Hinden Hidden Gems Talent, an agency helping Singaporean and Australian startups build remote teams with top talent across Malaysia and Indonesia. A Yale economics grad, Suga spent a decade in private equity, a Emia and Krador before walking away to bet on herself. The twist. Suganau runs an agency built on ruthless betting. A lesson that she learned the hard way. Some of her biggest fuck-ups were lowering her standards and making bad hires out of perhaps desperation, leading to constant churn and stalled growth. So today we dive into why smart founders shouldn't really take just warm bodies and the cost of a bad hire and the strict recruitment rules that Sugar now lives by, because a good enough hire never is. Suga, welcome to the pod. Suga: All right, thank you so much, Ben. It's a pleasure to be here. Ben Bagg: I didn't fuck it fuck up the start this time. Let let's start with the s you know, some of these ⁓ bad hiring choices you made in the past. ⁓ maybe you could walk us through a few that still sting the most. Suga: Yeah. Yeah. So I started this business, you know, more than a year and a half ago now and you know, I had some insight into recruitment. I didn't come f from a recruiting background, but I had some insight into recruitment and I thought, hey, I think I could do this. And so, my first hire was someone who had originally worked with me and she's great. ⁓ and so she kind of set the standard for what I was expecting ⁓ with all other hires, right? And so what I wasn't prepared for was how hire number two, number three, number four, number five just Ben Bagg: Mm. Suga: didn't turn out the way I'd hoped, right? And I think it's especially tough when you are recruiting for so many other people and making all these great hires but then failing to recruit for your own team. ⁓ honestly, I think there were there were times where I just kind of wondered, ⁓ you know, should this just be a two-person business? Like, are we just not capable of recruiting for ourselves? And ⁓ Ben Bagg: the recruitment company that isn't capable of or wasn't capable of recruiting for themselves. Suga: Yeah. 'Cause we we messed up so many times, right? And and but I think what I tried to do with every mess up was to talk to the candidate who we were either terminating or in fact our first hire actually chose to leave us and try and get feedback on what didn't work, why why did that candidate want to leave us or what is it that would have allowed the candidate that We wanted to terminate to potentially do better if day if there was another if we had to do this whole thing again. Ben Bagg: Okay. So why do you think that I mean I can understand the first higher works because, you know, it was a a previous relationship, someone you had built trust and worked with in the past. But why do you think two, three, four, five you struggled so much? Was it ⁓ perhaps the bar was a bit lower, you were just trying to get a bum on C, get some work done? ⁓ you know, wha what do you think was happening then? Suga: so I think a couple things ⁓ happened, right? It was a confluence of of factors. So I think first was in the case of our first hire who we actually really liked but decided, you know, he wanted to build a career in another industry altogether, ⁓ one of the big feedback ⁓ one of the big pieces of feedback he gave us was our poor onboarding. ⁓ so we didn't we didn't do onboarding very well. ⁓ you know, we just I mean I I didn't come from a recruitment background and I kind of try to figure it out and I had this impression that everybody could figure it out on their own. ⁓ you know, it's not rocket science, but there's certainly some nuance to it that you need to guide ⁓ a new person on, ⁓ versus just trying to let them figure it out. I think the second thing for us is we're a remote team. So you know, that coupled with poor onboarding, I think s ⁓ some of our initial hires felt really lost ⁓ about what were expected of them, how they how they could be productive and effective. and that that's that's of course that's of course all on me, right? So the onboarding was was a bit of an issue. But then I think what we were also testing for, when we started, I thought, hey, we need to test for maybe good critical thinking skills or someone who can figure out recruiting on their own. And then I felt, okay, maybe we need to test for Like who has the grit to do recruitment? 'Cause it is a pretty it is a it is a pretty hardcore job if you want to do it well. so, you know, in one of our in one of the earlier iterations of our assessment, we actually put people through a seven day trial period where they had they were given a job and then they had to go out and recruit for that role. and we had mixed results, right? We had a very high drop off rate because a lot of folks were like, nah I don't wanna do the seven day thing. Ben Bagg: Yeah. Suga: But then some people had like limitations in terms of the tools they had access to to complete the full seven days and get results. but then I also realized, you know, it wasn't the most efficient use of our time to have people go through these seven days. and and in the end it was only people who were who had a certain amount of desperation really who would do the trial. Yeah. Like if you were pretty comfortable. Ben Bagg: Yeah. Take that off a yeah. Suga: in in your existing organization. but then maybe looking for something more, the seven days might be a bit of a put off. You might say, hey, I'll just wait till something else better comes along. Ben Bagg: Yeah. So you feel that there was a combination of how you actually recruited internally? Because obviously for your clients you're predominantly sourcing and screening, but your clients are making the hiring choice. So you were struggling with that internal assessment of candidates. And then when you were bringing them in, the onboarding was like, Hey, we're all founders. We can all we all can operate with that founder mindset to solve our own problems. you think that do you think that Suga: Yeah, you're absolutely right. I did have that in my study. Ben Bagg: Yeah, do you think that was kind the primary reason why the first hires were just failing, maybe bad expectations and not the greatest of screening at the beginning. Suga: ⁓ a couple more things I'd add to that is you know, one thing that I feel like you helped me discover, Ben, was I had this this like limiting belief, right, that as a small company, you know, with no brand, like strong people wouldn't want to join me, right? Like really great candidates may not want to join me. I ha definitely had that at the back of my head. And so I almost felt like I just have to like make do with the talent that I come across. you know, I didn't have this this thing this belief that hey I can attract good talent and give them a platform to grow their career and and really do interesting things here. I I kind of was like, ⁓ you know, I'd be lucky if I can get someone really good. So I I definitely subconsciously had that belief at the back of my head also. and then one big thing I I changed was I initially left my colleague to handle recruitment, ⁓ at the beginning because I was just like, I don't like this yet. Ben Bagg: Your number two, your your very first hire. Suga: Yes. ⁓ and she's great. She's great. ⁓ and you know, she she she's great. She did a great job. but that's not her job, that's mine. And so ⁓ I had to take ownership of you know, she initially did the recruitment, she helped me with the onboarding, ⁓ but I realized that's that's actually my job. I need to do the recruitment. And it was something someone else said to me, which was, you know Yes, you may be a small company and people may not want to come work for your small startup, but they will want to come work for you, right? Like you are a factor that will allow them to decide whether this is a place worth betting their career on. And so I needed to be driving the recruitment process. Ben Bagg: Mm. Suga: And so I see this even amongst my clients, right? Some founders, even though they're fifty people, they still take that first call, especially if it's for a new role. Ben Bagg: Especially for really important roles too. it's funny 'cause I've heard other founders make this fuck up quite a lot where they just it it's tiresome to screen and interview candidates and it's just not I just wanna go and sell, I just wanna go cost of a a a mis hire is is is so high that it's it's it is your job. You are like the head of recruitment. A company is just a group of people, right? I think that's literally the definition. What so you had this this belief that made you lower the bar and that belief was that because we're a small company Suga: Yeah. Yeah. Ben Bagg: When you lowered that bar, and obviously I know that you've you've changed now, but when you lowered that bar, how did that actually impact the day to day of the business then when you brought in talent that was where you had lowered the bar for? Suga: Yeah, so okay, I'll give you an example, right? There was one candidate whom we interviewed who we really liked who we thought, my gosh, this guy's great, smart. He even completed like our seven day assessment and we thought, ⁓ this candidate's great. But there was something in his C V he was he had only been in his present role for a few months and then when we asked him like, Why are you leaving this company, he gave us a very waffly answer. You know, it was an answer that didn't really make a lot of sense. ⁓ but because everything else checked out, I was like, All right, mm Yeah, I mean let's just hire him, right? When you know, the answer he gave us on why he was leaving like really didn't make any sense to us at all. ⁓ but what we ended up what ended up happening with the candidate was he only lasted with us about two weeks and that's because you couldn't find him during working hours. Like, he just wasn't available. ⁓ he would work a lot like after working hours, like after eight PM, after nine PM, and I suspected something was really off. we had, you know, we have an office in Indonesia, and you know, you would say he couldn't come to the office on on the designators designated office days. And so, you know, very quickly, especially in a remote environment, the trust began to break down. and you know, it's it was my suspicion that he had his own sidekick going on, which is why he wanted to leave his company, wanted a remote role, so he could work on both things at the same time, right? yeah, and I think it if I had my bar ⁓ I mean if I had maintained the bar I would not have hired this candidate. Like, you know, there's a big trust there's there's a big question mark of trust from the get go, ⁓ and I wouldn't have taken that risk. Ben Bagg: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So basically because the bar was lowered, you ignored a red flag. A pretty big red flag. so what was the cost to you having this but you know lack of trust, like this person like showing up at eight PM or whenever the fuck they wanted to show up? How did that actually then impact you? Did that mean then you Suga: Yeah. Ha ha ha Ben Bagg: You know, we un un undoubtedly care a lot about our businesses, right? So we start did did we start getting pissed off, micro trying to micromanage, like what what happened to your energy being sucked by this random guy? Suga: Yeah. ⁓ man I gotta tell you, I mean, you know, I think from like from a work perspective it wasn't that bad because I caught it like I arrested the problem like within two weeks, so it wasn't like he was knee deep in a lot of work and you know, we were and then we we had to now like find somebody else to take on that work. So from a work perspective it wasn't too bad. But I think for me personally that particular high end fire really got me questioning my own judgment and whether I was even like cut out to be an entrepreneur. ⁓ you know like how how did this happen, right? ⁓ because it wasn't an issue of competence, it was really an issue of of character there. And yeah, I would say I would say it took me a few weeks to to bounce back and decide like I can still make great highs for my own team. Ben Bagg: So the hardest part of this for you then really was that you second guessed yourself after that and you're like, Sha sh am I even capable of doing this? How did you overcome that? Did you just go smack yourself in the face and go, You can do it? ⁓ Suga: Yeah that's precisely that that's precisely it. I think I just told myself, look, if you don't keep hiring for your own team, then this is it. Then you draw the line here and this is all this is all this business is ever going to be. ⁓ so You have to have a little bit of faith that great hires are out there. I mean, I had one great hire with me already. and I had you know, just find the faith that there are other great hires out there and just go back go back into the ring, right? And and keep fighting. So yeah. I honestly that was it. That was it. I was just like, Look and then I think one thing I told myself was if I have to get through a hundred failed hires to find that one Ben Bagg: Yeah. Well Suga: Great hire, I will do it. yeah. I was willing I was willing to accept that. Ben Bagg: Yes. Good attitude. Excellent attitude. I mean my whole brand my whole brand is found of fuck ups, but the purpose isn't to fuck up, the person the purpose is to to actually learn from our mistakes. You made a mistake. I bet you haven't made that one again. Or did you? Suga: No. I mean today today like the trust component of i of a of candidate is super important, right? Like when I talk to them I gotta have I gotta be able to like figure out what are they looking for? What do they want and can I give them what they want? If I don't have that sense, like what do you really want? Nah, I'm not Ben Bagg: Yeah. Did you make any bad hires that perhaps come to mind, you know, the still sting where it wasn't so obvious? 'Cause on this case, like within two weeks you exited them, it's pretty bloody clear. But there are other people that maybe our recruitment process didn't catch a skill gap, ⁓ the competencies or or critical thinking, et cetera, et cetera, ⁓ that are all really important, which then impacts performance, like day to day morale put in. Did you do you have any sort of turbulent hires like that? Suga: No, I think with all of the hires, very quickly I could figure out if they were gonna make it or not. Like maximum three months. Usually less. Right? You can see the signs. I think what's nice about recruitment is it's pretty straightforward whether someone's performing or not. Yeah, it's pretty black and white. It's like a sales job, right? Like the the metrics don't lie. ⁓ and so you give someone like maybe a month on their Ben Bagg: Black and white, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Suga: a month, you know, to to ramp up, but after that the metrics don't lie. And and then you can also see, you know, every day we have a team call and you can see if someone's problem solving or if they're just like doing the same thing over and over again. Ben Bagg: Yeah. Yeah. So when you're trying to when you're calling it for a for one of these I guess probationists and they're not performing, i i is your methodology like just really looking at the numbers, letting maths dictate upon whether this person has made it or not, and then you live by that mentality or ⁓ fire fast, right? If the p if the numbers are saying you're not fit, it's time to go. Is that is that what happened? Suga: Yeah, I wouldn't say just the numbers. I would say ⁓ the numbers are one big indicator surely. But ⁓ the other thing I look at is ⁓ what my colleagues say. So now with few people on the team I've managed to hire a couple more. But I look at what my colleagues say, right? And then their input is also really important to me. ⁓ because they're grinding away and they can recognize if someone else is grinding away or someone else is slacking. ⁓ or if there are limitations or if they're skill gaps, as you said. ⁓ so Ben Bagg: Yeah. Suga: usually I will flag it to my colleagues or usually or sometimes they'll come and tell me like hey we don't think this person's performing. in fact one of the one of the biggest fuck ups I made was I was leading this recruiting process for for ⁓ to build out my team and then the way I do it is I manage the entire process and then my colleagues do the last interview. Right, as like a kind of culture fit interview, thumbs up, thumbs down. Yeah, so they do the last interview, right? 'Cause I I wanna manage the whole thing and make sure all the gaps 'cause that that really is my job. And ⁓ so they do the final interview. And so with one of ⁓ one of the hires I'd made, my colleagues had actually said, thumbs down on one of the candidates I put to them. And then I said Ben Bagg: And you still hired. Suga: I said, Mm, alright, well maybe we can give her another assessment. And I refused to I refused to just like accept it, right? I was just like, let's give her another assessment. And she did well in the other assessment. And then I was like, Well, I mean I think this assessment is really good and I basically overwrote overwrote them and ⁓ I overrode my own process, that's right. And Ben Bagg: You overroad your own process. Suga: And I, you know, kind of very subtly forced the decision, right? and and yeah, that that ended up being a not a great hire. so Ben Bagg: Just a bit. ⁓ For all the reasons that your colleague ⁓ probably had had given you. What what why now that this is interesting. Why did you make that mistake? Because that was you build a process where look, I'm gonna screen and I'm gonna own, but I want my team to like them too, I want them to buy in because I'm in a great great culture and good people like good people. When that person disagreed with you, your your colleague disagreed with your assessment. Why did you then feel the need to to hold hold down your own bias? Suga: Yeah, great question. So I think, you know, if I think back to that particular hire, I got a little carried away ⁓ by the story that ⁓ she shared about ⁓ you know, she came from a very rural town and, you know, managed to get into one of the best universities and I was just like, This is such a great story. This girl is such a maverick and ⁓ and you know ⁓ I loved that story and I thought, ⁓ man, we you know, I love I love people who kind of go against the grain and who try and forge their own path and and that that really resonated with me, right? And I was like, ⁓ I gotta have her on the team. Very independent, ⁓ minded. Ben Bagg: So you got kind of sold on the story and the story felt so powerful for you it overrode your system. Suga: ⁓ absolutely. Ben Bagg: Maybe you would like ⁓ realistic TV, maybe. Suga: I used to love reality TV. Yeah. yeah, but I think, you know, I I I feel like I'm also pretty experimental with my hiring. ⁓ because I think in recruiting you can have a system and a process, but it's it's not easy to box ever you can box quite a lot of people actually, but not everyone. Ben Bagg: Yeah. So a lot of like bad hires, silly choices, flags ignored. What does it look like now? Like how have you rebuilt that bar, right? We talked about earlier how you kind of like many founders in the early stage, you kind of lowered the bar for a multitude of reasons. How did you lift that bar back up? How have you r kind of really tightened the recruitment process so that now you bring in fantastic people? Suga: Mm-hmm. Yeah, so ⁓ I think big one is I own the process. it so Buck stops with me there, no not outsourcing it to anybody. ⁓ I think I've been pretty flexible on the assessments that we do. So maybe if it's a more senior hire you have a lighter assessment and and you wait more for for their personal for personality, their track record and if it's a junior hire then all right, let's let's see how you actually do on the job. ⁓ so being very flexible on the assessments, ⁓ and trying to be clear what are you looking for? What what are you really looking for? I think in the past I just wanted to test for grid and attitude and I feel like that's something I'm prepared to give up on and that it's not you can't really test for that. You have to work with the person to really see it. I mean you have some indicators ⁓ about their professionalism, but attitude and grit I think you really gotta see you gotta see it for yourself, right? Because different people perform differently in different ⁓ environments as well. ⁓ so I think giving up for the test for attitude, ⁓ which is what we really tried to do in the beginning, then we focus on just critical thinking, critical thinking and problem solving. And that's the most important thing to me. Ben Bagg: Yeah. How do you assess critical thinking and problem solving within your recording process? Is it sort of a an offline thing? Is this like a part of the interview questions that you ask? ⁓ That's something that many founders struggle to assess candidates on. Suga: ⁓ so Yeah. So ⁓ today it's like a three part process, right? So one it's a first call or four part process. So one's a first call with me where we really deep dive into the problems that you worked on, how you solved them and see if they're just able to talk to you in detail about you know, the things that they had worked on previously. That's a big that's ⁓ that's a big thing I for and then we have an assessment. Ben Bagg: Yeah. Suga: So where we ask them to like solve for different things, right? Like I'll give you like ten CVs. Tell me which ones you think are suitable for this job and why. I'll give you like interview videos. Watch the interviews and tell me like, you know, what you think of the candidate, why. Come come up like it's it's a lot of judgment forming, right? So come up with judgment and how good are you at doing that. ⁓ so the assessment is is you know, it's now a two, three hour assessment versus a seven day assessment. And then but then what I do after they after they put together the assessment, they get back on another call with me where we discuss Ben Bagg: Yeah. Yeah. Suga: what they've done. Yeah, and in fact that that second call is so important because, you know, one candidate he had done the assessment and he had used AI but clearly did it very well with AI because the answers were all quite good, I had to say. But then with the moment he got on a call, he couldn't explain so much of it and it was and, you know, ⁓ if I didn't have that second call he probably would have been hired. and then after that the final call goes to the team. Ben Bagg: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And do you now trust your team's judgment? Suga: ⁓ yeah, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely in fact they also get a say in whether someone passes probation or not. Yeah. So everybody I mean ⁓ a couple of team members will be asked to weigh in on like how this person did during their probation and then I take that into account when making decision. Ben Bagg: Okay. Wow. That's interesting. kinda like a bit more of a there are of course there's performance and things like that, but there's a little bit of a committee decision happening on passing probation as much as the Suga: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Ben Bagg: I really like that you have the assessment and the kind of presentation of the assessment. So many founders will just blindly go, ⁓ that was good. And rather than pro, you know, have them present, ask them questions. Because like you say, I like what you said earlier, like you asked about the the problems they've solved and if they can explain in detail they'd normally have Suga: Yeah. Ha ha. Ben Bagg: And so if somebody can't go sort of two or three layers deep into the topic that they've just presented to you, they don't understand the topic. Suga: Yeah. Ben Bagg: is a very good way to to stream out the naughty behaviors. Suga: Yeah, I mean and I think the other thing that you know, the other conscious choice I've made also is to hire junior folks rather than senior folks, right? And this is this is another this is another limitation, but I've sort of consciously chosen to do that because I feel like we're developing a different kind of recruitment playbook here. And you know, if someone has worked at another recruitment agency for many years, ⁓ the chance then they would first need to unlearn what they've done and then relearn what we're doing. So so so this is also another limiting factor, for my own recruitment, but Ben Bagg: Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. So what do you look for then if they don't have the relevant necessarily the relevant work experience? Is it all about just how they solve problems, how they communicate? Suga: A big part of it. And then also look tell me about you know the biggest obstacle you face in your life and how do you overcome it? Ben Bagg: Yeah. No, I like that. I I I like that approach. I think some of the best hires I ever made over the years were like long shots for me. I remember I one of the best salespeople I ever hired, she was the single mother who was a virtual assistant when I interviewed her. And I this is gonna sound very biased, but my mother was a single mom who was a virtual assistant to what Suga: ⁓ wow. Ben Bagg: When r she's still a virtual assistant. and so I don't know, I just was like, Okay, you're cool, you and she was very sh ⁓ nervous in the interview. And I just were like, you know what? I kinda liked her. I'm gonna get ⁓ it was very nostalgic. I don't know, I hired her. She ended up being the best sales rep we had. Because she didn't have all of these pre kind of notions or prehab or habits or training embedded. So when I trained her and coached her like we're she took it on board, took the action, she became the best performer we have. so even though it was a weird reason why I hired her, ⁓ it ended up being the be the best hiring decision I made. Suga: That's amazing. No, I I I I mean that really resonates, right? I think some of my bad hires were also long shots that I wished had turned out like your story, you know. ⁓ Ben Bagg: Yeah. Yeah, that was not a good reason to hire. That that should have been a hiring fucker. ⁓ Suga: No, but you know, sometimes it does turn out so great. ⁓ and so I mean I think today I'm a lot more conservative, I think having been burnt. I'm a lot more conservative. I I try to run this like you know, like like you would in a proper corporation, ⁓ and not let my my whims and fancies like dictate the process. Ben Bagg: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, we have to try to avoid that as much as possible. I think one of the best ways when you're a small team, and it's kind of what you've done, is you just make the process a little bit longer. Right? There's the first interview, then there's the assessment, then there's the review of the assessment, then there's the meeting about the assessment, then there's the you know, having all those extra steps that slows down the impulse impulsive hiring sort of choices. ⁓ which I can I think is really good. If you were to, you know, kind of the big lesson here for a founder, let that if you could just imprint ⁓ pass this message along, ⁓ if you're a founder who's maybe small business and maybe you just really need a bum on C or you need someone who'd be trying to hire, how can they avoid the same mistakes you made? What what do you think they should they should pay attention to? Suga: I would say two things. One, if you're a founder of a small team, then you've got to vote own the process. You cannot outsource it. Second, be very methodical about what you're looking for. ⁓ about what either skill or attitude you're looking for. ⁓ you may not find everything but be methodical about you know which ones are the most important and then make sure your assessments, your interviews are geared towards finding those particular traits. Ben Bagg: Good, fantastic. Siga, thank you so much for sharing your story and coming on the pod. Suga: Thank you for having me, Ben.