Looks Good on Paper
Looks Good on Paper flips hiring on its head. Hosted by Andrew Wood and Anita Chauhan, we dive into why CVs and "perfect fits" are overrated. Through fun, insightful conversations with industry experts, we explore how skills, potential, and real experience should be the focus of hiring... not what looks good on paper.
Quick, candid, and packed with actionable insights, we’re here to rewrite the rules of hiring, one episode at a time.
Looks Good on Paper
#41 - Cultivating & Nurturing All-Stars Within Your Team - Ahva Sadeghi
In this episode of the Recruitment Reality Podcast, I am joined by Ahva Sadeghi, CEO/Co-founder at Symba, an innovative onboarding and talent management platform. She highlights how Symba has grown from its initial conception of remote internships to focusing on new hire readiness in order to allow individuals to be productive from day one.
She shares insights into the challenges faced during the initial years of launching her startup and how customer feedback played a crucial role in expanding the product's capabilities. Ahva emphasizes the importance of forming a strong team, providing a great onboarding experience, the impacts of a company's culture on its growth, and the need to constantly learn and adapt.
Avha’s first piece of advice for listeners was that when receiving feedback, you should only implement wisdom that resonates with you from people you respect. She also shared advice that one of her mentors gave her, which was that you should make sure that everyone that comes into contact with your company is better off because of it.
Watch on YouTube
RESOURCES MENTIONED:
- Willo: Video Interview Screening Software https://www.willo.video
- Andrew Wood, COO & Co-founder at Willo https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-douglas-wood
- Symba: The Go-To Platform for New Hire Readiness https://symba.io
- Ahva Sadeghi, CEO & Co-founder at Symba https://www.linkedin.com/in/ahvasadeghi
Show Resources
- CV Free Toolkit: cvfree.me/join - Break up with the CV and get everything you need to modernize your hiring approach with skills-based assessments
- Willo: willo.video - The most cost-effective way to screen candidates at scale. Interview candidates anywhere & at any time
- Connect with the Hosts:
- Andrew "Woody" Wood: linkedin.com/in/andrew-douglas-wood
- Anita Chauhan: linkedin.com/in/anitachauhan
[00:00:00] hi everyone. Welcome to this week's episode of the Recruitment Reality Podcast.
[00:00:10] I am delighted to be joined by a relatively new connection that I made, me and you made, when we were out in Las Vegas, of all places, at HR Tech. Um, on the Startup Stans, which was awesome, we were, we were booth buddies as such, uh, although we didn't see much of you either because you were too busy presenting and networking and
[00:00:33] Hey, what happens in Vegas?
[00:00:35] stays in Vegas, exactly.
[00:00:37] So, um, it's great to get you on and I'm excited that, you know, our two companies. Like I said on LinkedIn earlier, it was a really serendipitous moment to be honest, because our two companies have such a great, sort of overlap or symbiotic relationship potentially, where we find the kind of talent that you help on board.
[00:00:57] so I'm delighted to welcome Ahva onto the call. CEO, that's right, CEO and co
[00:01:06] and co
[00:01:06] um, of Symba. Uh, I don't want to do the introduction, um, but I will say Ahva is an incredibly impressive, uh, young lady who is also a Forbes 30 Under 30. Winner or shortlister, uh, which is awesome. So I'm, I'm so grateful for you to give up some of your time to, uh, to come on our podcast, but, uh, but yeah, over to you, it'd be great to get a bit of an introduction and obviously a quick introduction into the business, where it came from, why it started.
[00:01:39] Absolutely. Well, first of all, thank you so much for having me on your podcast. We're really excited. We love what your team is doing, and it was so great to connect. I remember when I came in, both Mona and Ellen on our team, they were like, we met An awesome startup and we think there's going to be a lot of, you know, as you said, symbiotic relationships.
[00:01:58] So we're excited about, um, where this is going because we believe in partnership, we believe in collaborative effort, and we don't believe that any segment of the recruiting process should be in silos. So I think this is really the future. Um, and what we built at Symba, um, and we are Symba not for the Lion King, um, but for Symbiotic.
[00:02:17] Relationships is all about, um, opening up the workforce.
[00:02:21] Um, our story begins kind of with my own. I was in college in Tucson, Arizona, and I was very passionate about international relations, women's rights. Um, however, all the internships I wanted. We're not in Tucson. They were in D. C., in New York, in like really big cities that would be expensive for me to relocate.
[00:02:42] And I did six unpaid internships. I know in Europe that's actually illegal, but in the U. S. about 40 percent of internships are still unpaid. And so when I was doing my fellowship with late Congressman John Lewis, We were tasked with, how do you, support and change the narrative around civil and human rights in the United States?
[00:03:00] And I thought, well, I've done six unpaid internships and it's impossible to get my foot in the door. How can we flip that narrative? And so our first vision of Symba back in 2018 was building remote internship experiences because I was a remote intern in college and at first everyone thought we were crazy.
[00:03:18] They said it will never happen. Stop trying to make this happen. And then in 2020, we were the only solution in the market, and we really exploded and came in to be a solution for organizations who were cancelling their program. about 50 percent of programs were about cancelled around that time, so we changed it up quite a bit, and now our focus is really all around new hire readiness.
[00:03:41] So empowering people from day one and getting them, um, productive, um, after they join the organization.
[00:03:48] Awesome.
[00:03:49] So, that's a bit of an evolution, right? In terms of what the original thought was to where it is now. What's driven that evolution of the product?
[00:04:02] So it is an evolution to some degree. I would also say it's, it's really just, um, an expansion and a growth, um, because it's not really changing or completely, you know, altering, the product really in any way. It's a, a new application and growth and our customers. Our customers are asking for it.
[00:04:21] They're getting in the door with this program and they're saying, well, there's an application here, here, and here. Or if we don't, if someone sees the demo and they don't know the purpose, immediately they think about different elements of their workforce to apply it to. So, I think that that, to us, was a great signal.
[00:04:37] When your customers are asking, it's important to listen and understand where can we provide the most value. We thought it was here, but actually there could be bigger opportunities. So, we're constantly learning.
[00:04:49] That is the life of a startup, um,
[00:04:52] And I'm sure you could probably elaborate on like, for your team, like, you know, how are you listening to your customers? Like how are you changing and adapting?
[00:05:00] Uh, yeah, I mean it is, do you know what's really interesting? Is we're going through a phase now of, uh, so, being the salesperson that I am, what I used to do in the early days is I would go out, I'd demo the product, and then somebody would say, Oh, well we really need it to do this. And I would then get them to sign a contract, with a date in it saying, This feature needs to be done by this date.
[00:05:27] I'd then throw that at Euan and say, Hey, by the way, In this contract, these customers are asking for this specific feature, and we don't have it yet, so you're going to have to, you're going to have to kind of develop it. So it was even to the point where not even customers that we were dealing with already, it was new stuff that actually just forced our roadmap forward.
[00:05:46] and it was just by being essentially an ignorant salesperson, and enabling customers to, to make those demands. What we've now transitioned to and, and much more sophisticated is having an open roadmap that people can vote on and upvote and, and, you know, really have a say in what's coming. I think that what we've noticed more recently as well is we are now actually able, because our product is almost fully formed in its kind of current state, is actually trying to listen to the market and listen to our enterprise customers about what are their concerns for not this year, not even into halfway through next year, but the end of the year after.
[00:06:27] So what's the really future looking, forward looking roadmap that's going to overcome the problems of tomorrow, as opposed to be you know, a great solution for now? We've already got that. But what comes next? I'm sure, again, that's probably happening in your world. but that's why I specifically used the word evolution.
[00:06:45] It's not a pivot. I hate it when people say pivot,
[00:06:47] Me
[00:06:47] too.
[00:06:48] taking a, my, my, uh, my friend or colleague, uh, a guy called Jamie Beaumont, he had a HR tech system, uh, which he then pivoted into a buy now pay later system. That's a pivot.
[00:07:00] Um, a pivot is not You know, adding an extra feature or slightly changing the way that you deliver your system, right?
[00:07:06] That's just evolution of the product. Um,
[00:07:11] you know, steps ahead. That's true innovation. That's really out of the box thinking. So that's wonderful work you're doing. Mm
[00:07:17] yeah. well, trying to do, that's for
[00:07:19] sure.
[00:07:20] Um, so tell, tell, tell us a bit more about, um, your journey as a business then. When did you launch and, you know, where, what kind of companies are you now dealing with and what are their, you know, what's the real common, maybe, challenge that they're facing?
[00:07:35] Yes, so for Symba, we started the idea back in 2018 and our first ever launch was with State Department in D. C. That's where I was working and that was a team I was able to go to, to say, let's leverage Symba because I was working remotely as an intern when I joined the organization and that's how I really got my foot in the door.
[00:07:57] And so we did a pilot with 5, 000 participants all across and some internationally and it was largely successful. And that's the point where I left my full time job to fully send it on Symba and my co founder shortly after, six months after she did the same. And, um, it was So challenging. I think I don't, you know, I said at the beginning, like people said it wouldn't happen.
[00:08:22] I mean, it was So challenging. to the degree that this was a nice to have. People were like, oh, great, look at what you built. Like this is nice. Um, but not to the degree of like, this solves a ma massive pain point for us. So we kept trying to figure out the, the challenge and how we solve for it. And we were in a accelerator program at the time and that really did help and give us a lot of support.
[00:08:45] Then we decided, okay, let's shift gears into almost, I would say, a pivot into, we said, maybe we should do actually recruiting and sourcing. And we tried to start doing that for two months, and we were like, we're going to sunset this product that we've built, and that helps teams scale remotely and build their whole program experiences.
[00:09:05] And then all of a sudden we needed to revive a product that we thought we were going to sunset. Um, and we actually built it. From scratch, we decided, okay, let's actually sunset it. And like, let's just build something brand new with a fresh look. And so, um, we had a customer Chewy coming through, um, Google search.
[00:09:25] They found us because we got started to get a lot of PR around these two founders, remote internships, like kind of ahead of the game. And they found us through Google search and they, we hadn't built, we shared Figma designs. Hadn't built it and then they're like, let's go, let's do it. And so my co founder basically didn't sleep for like a whole month to build this whole thing.
[00:09:47] Um, and that we were onboarding them and they said, where is your help center? And we were looking at each other like, oh my God, we don't have that. We like, we literally didn't even think about some of these things. Yeah, help center. Um, it's me. I guess I'll be your chat bot.
[00:10:00] Here's my mobile phone number. Call me when you need
[00:10:04] Anytime, text me, call me when you want to reach me. Like we're, we're there to support.
[00:10:09] Um, and so that, um, was kind of an interesting moment cause it was also a bubble, right? Where there was like a massive need and a massive demand for what we were building so much so that we could go through, um, the sales.
[00:10:22] Um, Pipeline and the whole process and sometimes a matter of weeks. And so we know that from data now in this current world that that's not necessarily the case. So we've had to really become very thoughtful about building ROI, demonstrating the value proposition because buying teams have been consolidated.
[00:10:40] So we might have to position ourselves and sell. Symba to three to four people on the team who all have to give the green light before we can even go into procurement. Um, I'm not sure if you've also experienced that too, or you have kind of one, one persona you have to really sell to.
[00:10:56] Yeah, I mean we're quite lucky that we're a relatively Relatively low cost part of the kind of HR tech ecosystem and and you know what typically we deal with one rank below the actual economic buyer one rank below the The uh, you know the person that has the budget and we do a demo It really depends on the organization though, right if you're talking about large public organization You know There's just a huge number of people that you have to influence, even for a small deal.
[00:11:30] Um, but then, you know, the bread and butter stuff for us is really like, you're the head of TA and, you know, you take it out of the HR budget and you've been given it and you just sign it off. So, we're quite lucky in that sense, really. Um, but I think your, you know, your solution really spans across both.
[00:11:48] talent acquisition and HR and you've got, you know, a few different fingers, um, or thoughts coming from a few different places across what your system actually does, right? Because the TA people, yes, they need people well on boarded and to start well and to be retained so they don't have to have more people.
[00:12:07] But then equally the HR team and the hiring managers also need them productive quickly, all of that stuff. So your, your system is, A broader church of individuals that you need to influence, right?
[00:12:18] Exactly. It's this whole life cycle of the experience. And it actually is kind of critical because this is a system that can keep everybody in check. Where, you know, sometimes everyone's like, did the new onboarding cohort get their laptops? No one knows unless you go and manually ping someone in IT. Do they have all the things they need?
[00:12:39] How are you communicating besides just email? So what you just shared is so true, but also it is a challenge, right? Because now you have to get everyone's buy in. And then everyone's looking at each other. They're like, so who's going to pay for this? Right, because all of us are going to use it and, uh, we don't want this to come out of our budget.
[00:12:57] Maybe it comes out of your budget. So I think it's, you know, when you say luck, I feel like it's a little bit more of planning, right? You've really cornered it effectively to understand this is where we're going to have a stronger propensity to have people adopt our product and that's really important for startups in this space and HR tech.
[00:13:14] You have to make it frictionless and as easy as possible. So that's something that's been very top of mind for us right now. How do we make that easier? Yeah.
[00:13:21] So, if I, uh, let's say somebody listens to this podcast is In one of those camps, right, in charge of onboarding and ensuring people successfully join and have, uh, you know, everything from have laptops to are trained in the values of the organization before they join so that they can hit the ground running.
[00:13:41] What's my, uh, you'll have to excuse the praise, but what's my oh shit moment? Like, oh shit, I really need Symba in my business.
[00:13:49] So, um, I think usually the, the oh shit moment is basically the moment where, you know, you, when somebody really important is joining the team and something falls through the cracks. When, uh, you know, you think about, um, designing your own experience, um, and sometimes when I paint a picture for this, I say to people,
[00:14:11] think about your first ever corporate job you ever had.
[00:14:14] Imagine how you were feeling before day one and did you have the support? Did you even know what day one would look like before you got there? Because usually you don't. And usually you have butterflies in your stomach, usually you're like, when you're sending, um, Doing a lot of activities, you're like, is this the right thing?
[00:14:31] Did I miss something? And you're relearning a lot of processes. So what we try to do when we talk to folks who lead these strategies, we say, let's map out the dream state of what you would want someone to experience the moment they join. How can we almost like, you know, journey map, these moments of joy, these moments of excitement, these moments of um, you know, growth and learning and development.
[00:14:55] throughout and then we come in as kind of the infrastructure. So we're not the why, we're the how to implement your why on how you want people to feel it. And, and, you know, we think about onboarding and it applies to so many things of our lives. I've even think about it, you know, right now we're recording this during the holidays.
[00:15:11] And I think about when you walk into a party and someone's there to greet you and welcome you and take your co and give you a drink and say, you know, come on in and introduce you to people or. You walk in, um, you don't know if this is the right address. Cause this was like a text someone sent you a while back.
[00:15:30] You can come in. Everybody's already like at the dinner table and you feel like you forgot something, but you know, you thought you were supposed to be at this time and you feel all scattered, you know, the insecurity it creates and the difficulty just like navigating that type of environment is completely polar opposites.
[00:15:47] So how, how do you want to feel and what type of environment do you want to cultivate?
[00:15:51] Absolutely. And what type of environment does that create once that person's in? Because if, if somebody is greeted and feels comfortable from minute, second, one, you know, compared to has to find their way, has to, you know, build the community, sit at the table and chit chat with everybody until they find out whether they're in the right place, you know, that is, that is a huge negative on productivity.
[00:16:18] Basically. So it's not just a feel good factor, is it? It is getting people up to speed quickly. Uh, making sure that they're happy, they stay, and they are productive as quickly as possible.
[00:16:28] Yeah. And I think one thing just to add to that, Woody, is that it's the world now, we're all moving so much more than we did before, like Gen Z could change their jobs 10 times by the age of 34. And so the reality is, is maybe we're not going to keep people in their seats. But how can we make sure when they get here, they have everything they need to go so that at least maybe they can be productive, um, quicker.
[00:16:51] Because maybe we can't change the retention model. But maybe we can actually flip the infrastructure and the capacity to get people ready.
[00:17:00] Hmm.
[00:17:00] that's something that's in our control.
[00:17:02] And then retention becomes less of a problem because you have a seamless, you know,
[00:17:07] Yeah, it's okay. Yes,
[00:17:11] you, do you think, however, that Maybe the part of the reason why this might be a slightly controversial or counterintuitive question to ask somebody that has, uh, you know, developed the software that you have, but
[00:17:24] what about those candidates that join and never should have joined, an organization because they didn't really understand the role or the culture or whatever?
[00:17:34] Like, do you actually see Symba having a role in that? Because it, it really, you know, It's, it's really painful and really difficult for recruiters to recruit the right person, you know, based on an interview, a resume, or whatever, and then that person joins and First day, they're like, this is not the job I expected, right?
[00:17:55] So do you actually think, on the flip side of making sure that people are productive and that you maximize retention, you're also kind of like, I'm maximizing education to ensure that the people that should have never come through actually don't start, because that's bad for us and it's bad for them.
[00:18:11] and I think that we can double tap on what you just said, because I think that there's a reality of like, when you look at a job online and then you get into the role and it might be like actually very different roles and tasks. And you have to ask yourselves, like, is this because of like, The actual job description, is this because of how it was portrayed in the recruiting process, and is this moment in time, or is this a volume thing where we see anyone recruited for this role specifically, the turnover in X number of days is this percentage.
[00:18:44] So then let's go back and dig deeper into the recruiting process. Is the job description clear? Do we need to change that? Is the process of interviewing accurate? Is the actual hiring manager involved during the interview process to give a reality of what that looks like? Is The onboarding process effective to get them up to speed to be in the know of how to actually do their job, right?
[00:19:10] I think that there's a lot of steps along the journey that, um, could be broken. It's like, you're looking for like a leaky pipe somewhere in the house, but you don't know where, but at least now, you know, there's a leaky pipe rather than just chalking everything up to like a, Oh, this was that instance. And they were just not a good fit because a lot of times.
[00:19:30] And the majority of the times, I think it's important for us to take a good hard look in the mirror and like, is it actually the candidate or is it something that we could have done better? And if it's happening multiple times for a given role, odds are, we need to go back to the beginning and see what's wrong and map out every single step up to like, you know, three or five years retention and understand what can we do better.
[00:19:53] Absolutely. I think one of those things is like, one of the unmeasured, uh, issues within an organisation is your culture. Um, and actually, you can portray one culture via your job description, via your interview. Your hiring manager can act in one culture and then somebody gets into an organisation and the culture is completely different.
[00:20:14] But actually, the company doesn't understand or doesn't know that their culture sucks. Do you know what I mean? It's literally like holding up the mirror, like you say. You're, you're doing all of the right stuff to get the right people in. The shop window looks amazing, but as soon as you're in the store Everything is trash.
[00:20:32] So, it's super important that, you know, we have the data to understand that. Um, as an organization so that, you know, because it's not deliberate, right? There's a lot of organizations that have great cultures, and there's a lot that don't have good cultures and they have toxic cultures, but they just don't know what is toxic about it or how to change it, right?
[00:20:51] Um, so it's interesting. So Classic podcast term, switching gears slightly, Ahva. As a startup, obviously you've had to hire people and you're a growing business, so you're going to have to hire people in the future.
[00:21:07] I'd love to know a little bit more about, you know, how you've gone about hiring for a relatively unknown brand, you know, in a, in a small but growing business.
[00:21:18] Like how have you attracted talent? What have you done? And I guess what advice would you give to other people in a similar position? Mmm.
[00:21:27] that at this stage of a company, when you're building a company, the people that you are able to recruit and attract to bring onto your team is ultimately kind of mapping out whether or not you'll be successful because those are the folks who will shape.
[00:21:42] The direction, the company, they'll be ambassadors of the vision and the mission. So how you are able to attract people and get them excited about the mission is so, so important. Actually, my, when I was building Symba, I studied economics and human rights as I kind of shared at the beginning, I had no idea how to get started with a startup and my mentor gave me all these parenting books.
[00:22:05] And I was like, what is going on? I'm 24, like what's going on here? And she was like, Ahva, in order to really, Build something amazing. You're going to need to learn how to do positive reinforcement, how to nurture a team, how to cultivate all-stars from the beginning. And so I really took that to heart.
[00:22:23] Um, and for us, what we've done is we've been loud and vocal about what we do. Everywhere. And I love that you're wearing your logo. I'm wearing Symba, like, it's like something that you want to talk about. It's something that you you're excited about. So that cultivates a ripple effect in the community.
[00:22:42] Your friends are talking, your family's talking. People eventually start to gravitate to you when they believe in your mission and ask you questions and want to figure out how to get involved. At first, everybody volunteered. at Symba And then when we had a little bit of capital, actually, we used our own money to pay our interns because everybody's working for free, but we're going to pay our interns because we don't believe in unpaid internships.
[00:23:05] And then at the time where we actually raised capital, we were able to officially bring people on full time. But most people like Ellen, she was working on Symba in the evenings after her day job. And so it's finding individuals who are so excited about a vision like this that they're willing to. Spend their free time to work on this, and this gives them joy.
[00:23:27] It brings them excitement, and it's so much fun. Um, but there's a lot of risk involved. There's a lot of like roller coaster up and down. So it's not for everybody, but there's so much, um, about it that I love. And I feel so grateful because. One thing that keeps me going every single day is our amazing customers and our amazing team.
[00:23:48] Everybody is such a joy to work with and we get to build our own culture, right? You get to hire and invest in the individuals you want to be a part of your all star team. So I think it's such a gift to be able to build that from scratch.
[00:24:01] Absolutely. And I think to the point earlier about culture and your point about, you know, they're going to dictate the, uh, the success or failure of the business, it's a really great, um, I guess, litmus test for you as a founder, like, who are the people that are willing to work for us? Like, who are the people that are coming and getting excited about this?
[00:24:21] Because if it's the people that I'm like, wow, I would never want them near my culture, and they keep coming, and they're always coming, and nobody else is coming, That just means your message is off and you've got to reset, right? Whereas if the people are coming that you're like, Wow, I'm so glad that when I went for a coffee with that person, they suddenly text me saying, Do you know what?
[00:24:41] I'm so impressed. I want to work evenings and see what we can do to help this move faster. All of that kind of stuff. It's just an amazing way of figuring out whether you've got the right team already, whether you are adding to the right team, all of that kind of stuff.
[00:24:54] So, um, super interesting. How does that look when it scales?
[00:24:59] So, you know, you're going to have to start doing the employment process and handing responsibility of employment to other people, which is a horrifying prospect for a lot of founders, you know, relinquishing the control. How are you feeling about that and what do you think you need to put in place to, you know, be able to scale as and when you're ready?
[00:25:20] That's such a great question because I think that in theory, you onboard someone that you're like, we need to support here. And then all of a sudden you're like, Oh, I don't necessarily know if I'm ready to give it up. And some things that we have noticed, like in customer success, my co founder, Nikita, was always leading customer success.
[00:25:38] And actually, as a CTO, that was really profound and really inspiring. I'm powerful because that meant that, you know, she was learning what the customer really wants and learning how they use it. But obviously that's not scalable. customers, you know, your co founder also needs to build the product and lead the team and the team.
[00:25:56] So, um, I think that was really, really important to start to hand things off and find individuals that you are proud to have as an ambassador of your company and realize that not everyone is going to do things the way you do. And that could actually be a great thing. Um, and you will hopefully learn a lot of new things.
[00:26:17] And the individuals that we have on our team, they bring something new to the table and a fresh perspective. And not everything should be done one way, because then you don't have any innovation, right? If you tell everybody and you build all these strict handbooks and process document everything like, How is anybody going to learn and create anything new and build a better process?
[00:26:36] Because as a founder, you're doing like a million things at once. So how can you spend, the same amount of time, an individual who's dedicated to one segment of your business for their whole time? You know, just, and they have more experience in that segment too. So I think, you know, it's important to trust and, and, and enable individuals and empower them because odds are they're going to do a better job than you are if you did your job right and hiring the best individuals you can.
[00:27:03] Yeah, absolutely. I think the job of a founder is to be a generalist, generally speaking, in the beginning. And the year one things that you do is totally different to the year five things that you need to do as an individual, and you have to have the specialists and the trust, um, that, you know, and trust your specialists that they're going to do the right thing.
[00:27:25] And like you say, like, If everybody has the same perspective, you don't move forward at all. Growth does not happen, um, from everybody just going, Yes, I think we should do exactly what the founders have just said we should do. Um, which for us, this last year, that's been the year of transition for us, where it's been literally me and Euan for the first couple of years, and now it's like, okay, wow, we've got a really amazing full squad.
[00:27:52] of people that have their own ideas that are absolutely brilliant that I'd have never have thought of.
[00:27:56] That's amazing to hear. I'm so happy.
[00:27:59] I resonate with, uh, with you on that one. Um, so look we're almost out of time, um,
[00:28:05] I always ask To round off the conversation with three bits of advice. Now, generally they could be like, for candidates in the marketplace, any advice that you give for candidates, for people that are maybe looking to improve, you know, onboarding or recruitment or whatever.
[00:28:23] I also think it would be foolish of me not to ask if you have any advice for Other people, you know, thinking about founding a business, um, especially at the ripe old age of 24, uh, when you did it. Um,
[00:28:38] I'm just kidding. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. I'm kidding.
[00:28:42] Um, so yeah, have you got any parting words of wisdom for any of those three camps of people?
[00:28:48] So my first piece of wisdom would be to only take pieces of wisdom from people that you actually want to because there's a lot of people giving feedback and guidance and it can be very overwhelming for, I think, all camps, right? For people doing their job and building onboarding. There's so many stakeholders who have their thoughts and opinions when you're hiring a job.
[00:29:09] Um, and as a founder, everyone at the beginning has so many thoughts about your business, but the reality is, um, no one knows the reality on like you do. So really lean into, um, what you know, and your expertise and take wisdom only from those who truly believe in their guidance and you look up to and respect the work that they've done.
[00:29:34] Um, and the second thing I would say as a been really profound for me and my personal growth and development of building Symba and a company is um, advice I received from one of my mentors who said make sure that everyone who comes into contact with Symba should be better off because of it. And so that means that individuals don't necessarily need to stay and grow with Symba forever.
[00:29:57] Maybe people come in and out for a year or segments of the evolution and they have a great experience and they learn. Or a customer who uses Symba, you know, anybody should grow because of it. And so that to me is really, really profound because I think in the startup world, there's so much growth and learning and opportunity at a fast track speed that you really can't get anywhere else.
[00:30:18] So I think that, you know, embracing that mindset, uh, as you build your company, as you think thoughtfully around all the processes and things you do is really important.
[00:30:27] Awesome, great advice. I totally agree about, um, Um, the, the advice piece, I would add my, you know, what I always tell people whenever I start to give them advice is don't forget advice is like buses, they run all the time, and there's lots of different directions that they go, but you ultimately decide whether you get on the bus or not, right?
[00:30:49] That is your choice. So, listen, have a look, but that doesn't mean that you have to take somebody's advice, and typically, I don't know if this is the same for you, The people that, uh, have really helped steer our business as kind of mentors and, and people that have given advice is actually more the people that ask difficult questions as opposed to give suggestive answers, um, and really make you think, you know, beyond the realm of what you're stuck in at the moment.
[00:31:20] The difficult question then just breaks that out and you, you know, you think about things in a totally different way. Um, so yeah, thank you so much for coming on. Um, looking forward to our long and fruitful partnership that will continue.
[00:31:35] If, um, if people do want to get in touch with you or the team at Symba, what's the best way for them to get in touch?
[00:31:43] So, I'm very active on LinkedIn, so, um, I'm sure you'll have my information linked here because my name is a little challenging to spell, and we are Symba. io, and it's S Y M B A. io. And you can also reach us on LinkedIn and our website. We'd love to connect and again, so excited to be here with you, Woody.
[00:32:06] And one question I'll leave with because we talked about wisdom versus questions is, How do you want to make people feel the moment they join your organization?
[00:32:16] You're asking me that question?
[00:32:17] No, I'm just asking your audience that
[00:32:19] question. As you said you said the question versus just feedback. And I said, that's my question. How do you want to make people feel the moment. they join your organization?
[00:32:28] Yeah, I love that. A bit of a parting wisdom question and everybody should self reflect on that and, and I think the additional question is how do they feel now? Right,
[00:32:39] Hopefully
[00:32:39] asked, yeah, once they've, once they've asked the question how do I want them to feel, how do they feel now, and maybe Symba's the way that we can bridge the gap between the two.
[00:32:49] Um, that's a seamless plug for you there, Ahva. So, thanks everybody for listening, as I said, great pleasure to have you on, Ahva, thank you so much, and everybody else have a good week. Don't forget to subscribe to the channel. Thanks very much.
[00:33:04] Wonderful, thank you.
