How Viktor Frankl made me think differently about hiring.
I know, it’s an odd thing to correlate.
Maybe this is what happens when you have a bit of time on your hands? Maybe when I’m deep into the detail of a new role at some stage in the future i’ll look back at this and screw my face up a bit, “what was i thinking?”
So bear with me for now, because I’ve recently been reading about the philosophies of Viktor Frankl, an Austrian psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor, and think that there’s a kind of relevance to modern startup hiring challenges. Frankl’s work, particularly his concept of “logotherapy”, (which is the human drive to find meaning in life as a central motivator for well-being and happiness) and the principles outlined in works like “Man’s Search for Meaning” and “Prisoners of Our Thoughts,” makes me think about how I could reimagine the interviewing part of hiring.
I think that the combination of my last role being made redundant, whilst at the same time having an injury that put me in a moonboot for 10 weeks, gave me time to think about this stuff. It certainly made me think more about my own personal attachment to work. I think that for me, it’s the mental stimulation, the satisfaction from achieving outcomes, the challenge of solving tricky problems and learning new skills, concepts and ways of thinking about problems. Add to all that the feeling of being part of a team, and it’s clear to me how much work is a part of my life.
I know I’m not alone in this.
So, how does this all tie into startup hiring? Ok, calm down, I’m getting there.
In early-stage businesses, where resources are limited and every hire can dramatically impact a company’s trajectory, finding the right talent kind of transcends the traditional matching of skills to job descriptions.
The unpredictable nature of startup environments demands something more than just turning up from employees: resilience, adaptability, the ability to forge a path forward and hopefully a genuine connection to the purpose and the outcome.
Also, please bear in mind that this is just a thought exercise written down; it’s not meant to be perfect or set in stone.
The Startup Hiring Challenge
The way I see it, startups face unique hiring challenges that are quite distinct from established corporations:
- Uncertainty as the only constant: Teams must navigate ambiguity, shifting priorities, and potential pivots.
- Limited resources: Most startups can’t compete with corporate compensation packages, which demand different motivational drivers.
- Outsized individual impact: In small teams, each person’s contribution (or lack thereof) is magnified.
- Cultural foundations: Early hires don’t just fit into the culture—they create it.
- High failure rates: The statistical reality of startup failure demands team members who remain committed through difficulties.
Traditional hiring approaches that focus predominantly on technical skills, credentials, or past performance in stable environments often fall short in this context.
I think something more is needed.
Frankl’s Core Principles and Their Relevance to Startup Hiring
Frankl’s philosophical framework, born from extreme suffering and observation of human behaviour in concentration camps, brings some insights that I think apply to startup talent acquisition:
1. Exercise the Freedom to Choose Your Attitude
“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.”
The Startup Application: We need to hire for resilience and attitude, not just aptitude. The most valuable startup employees are those who can maintain constructive attitudes in the face of challenges, setbacks, and failures. I think a lot of people love the idea of startups, but if they’re not comfortable with these things, then it’s not for them. This is too big of a risk to take,
Interview Strategy: Ask candidates about their response to past failures or systemic challenges. Look for those who demonstrate the ability to find constructive paths forward rather than becoming victims of circumstance.
2. Realise Your Will to Meaning
Frankl believed humans are primarily motivated by the pursuit of meaning, not pleasure or power. People actively seek purpose in their work and lives.
The Startup Application: Identify candidates motivated by the company’s mission and the impact of their work, not just compensation. These team members remain committed even when the path becomes difficult or unclear.
Interview Strategy: Beyond asking why candidates want to join your company, explore what gives their work meaning. The most valuable hires connect personally with your mission, seeing their work as fulfilling a larger purpose.
3. Detect the Meaning in Life’s Moments
Every moment contains potential meaning, even (perhaps especially) moments of challenge or suffering.
The Startup Application: Find candidates who discover opportunities in challenges rather than becoming overwhelmed. The startup journey is filled with obstacles, so trying to hire people who get energised by solving difficult problems seems to make sense.
Interview Strategy: Explore how candidates have found meaning in past professional challenges. Those who view obstacles as growth opportunities rather than mere barriers may well thrive in startup environments.
4. Don’t Work Against Yourself
Frankl observed that excessive focus on outcomes often prevents their achievement (what he termed “paradoxical intention”).
The Startup Application: Identify candidates who avoid self-sabotage through perfectionism, overthinking, or fear of failure. Startups need team members who can execute imperfectly rather than delay for perfection. This idea of not letting good enough get in the way of great is really important.
Interview Strategy: Look for candidates who demonstrate healthy relationships with failure and mistakes. The ability to learn quickly, adjust, and move forward without crippling self-criticism is essential. If they can openly talk about past mistakes, then they could have a healthy relationship with failure.
5. Look at Yourself from a Distance
Frankl believed that the capacity for self-detachment, or observing oneself objectively, is a uniquely human trait that enables growth.
The Startup Application: Value candidates with high self-awareness and the ability to view their work objectively. Team members who can receive feedback without defensiveness accelerate both personal and company growth. Identifying your skill gaps and solving them in order to achieve something is not be underestimated.
Interview Strategy: Ask how candidates have responded to critical feedback. Those who can articulate specific instances of incorporating feedback to improve demonstrate valuable self-detachment. Ask them when they last had to learn something in a morning or an afternoon in order to progress.
6. Shift Your Focus of Attention
Frankl learned in concentration camps to shift attention from immediate suffering to meaningful purposes beyond himself.
The Startup Application: Seek candidates who can pivot quickly and shift focus when needed. Startups require adaptable problem-solvers who don’t become fixated on single approaches.
Interview Strategy: Explore candidates’ experiences with rapid changes in direction or priorities. Those who can fluidly adjust their focus while maintaining productivity are invaluable in environments where the path forward isn’t always clear and where things can change unexpectedly.
Translating these philosophical principles into practical hiring processes required a bit of thought, but here are some ideas. :
Assessment Techniques
- Case-based interviews with unexpected challenges: Present scenarios where circumstances suddenly change, revealing how candidates respond to uncertainty.
- Mission alignment explorations: Move beyond superficial “Why us?” questions to deeper discussions of how candidates derive meaning from work.
- Team simulations: Create collaborative exercises that reveal a candidate’s natural orientation toward collective success or individual achievement.
- Resilience narratives: Ask candidates to describe specific instances where they maintained effectiveness and attitude despite adverse conditions.
Sample Interview Questions
- “Think back to a time when a major milestone was missed and it was your fault. How did you choose to respond, and what meaning did you draw from the experience?”
- “Talk to me about a situation where you had to radically shift your approach or priorities mid-project. How did you manage this and what was the impact?”
- “What aspects of our mission connect with your personal sense of purpose? How would this work provide meaning to you?”
- “Think back to a time when you’ve had to receive difficult feedback, how did you personally grow or develop as a result of that?”
Rethinking Onboarding
Implementing Frankl’s principles shouldn’t end with hiring decisions but should extend into onboarding:
- Purpose immersion: Begin with deep exposure to the company’s purpose and impact before the technical aspects.
- Failure framework: Explicitly discuss the organisation’s relationship with failure, mistakes, and learning.
- Community connection: Accelerate team integration through meaningful collaborative experiences rather than merely social ones.
The Competitive Advantage of Meaning-Centred Hiring
I think that if we can incorporate more meaning-centred hiring, startup teams can gain some significant advantages:
- Retention beyond compensation: When team members connect deeply with purpose, they could remain committed despite competitive salary offers elsewhere.
- Resilience through difficulties: Teams built on these principles can weather the inevitable storms of startup life with less burnout and higher performance.
- Adaptability in uncertainty: Employees selected for meaning-orientation navigate pivots and strategy shifts with less resistance.
- Cultural strength: A foundation of shared purpose creates stronger bonds than perks or personality-based “culture fit.”
- Sustainable motivation: Intrinsic motivation through meaning produces more consistent effort than extrinsic motivators.
Limitations and Considerations
That said, I dont think that this approach to hiring comes without any challenges:
- Assessment difficulty: Evaluating attributes like resilience and meaning-orientation is more difficult than assessing technical skills.
- Diversity implications: Ensuring that meaning assessment doesn’t inadvertently select for cultural or demographic homogeneity requires careful attention.
- Balance requirements: Technical competence remains essential; meaning-orientation alone cannot compensate for fundamental skill gaps.
- Authenticity demands: Companies must genuinely embody meaningful purposes; otherwise, meaning-centred hiring becomes manipulative and ultimately counterproductive.
By hiring not just for what candidates can do but for how they find meaning and navigate challenges, startups can build teams with the resilience, adaptability, and commitment necessary for success. Which feels like something worth pursuing, or at least thinking about.
As Frankl himself noted: “Those who have a ‘why’ to live, can bear almost any ‘how.” For startup teams that are navigating the inevitable challenges of building something new, screening new potential team members in this way may make the critical difference between perseverance and capitulation.
Thanks for reading this far – can you help me out?
- Share this with someone who might find it useful
- Subscribe if you haven’t already
- Consider upgrading to a paid subscription on Substack, where you’ll get early access to podcasts, templates & AI prompts
These small actions help me keep building this resource. 👍
Thanks for being here, now on with the good stuff.
What I learned from interviewing a four-time first sales hire
If you’ve ever been unsure about when to hire your first salesperson or what they should actually do, you’re not alone. Most founders wrestle with it longer than they admit.
I spoke with Matt Clements, who’s been the first sales hire at multiple startups, including Xplor (which went on to a $3.8B exit). He now leads sales at Budgetly and has strong views on what early hiring should look like, and where founders go wrong.
What I like about Matt’s thinking is that it’s not hypothetical. He’s done the job. Cold called from hotel rooms. Built the CRM. Written the script. Closed the deals. He’s worked directly with founders, and in some cases, followed them into their next startup. That kind of trust doesn’t come from theory; it comes from delivering when things are messy and undefined.
Here are three things that stood out — and why they make sense to me.
1. Don’t hire a VP of Sales first
“Do not hire a VP of Sales as your first hire. Just don’t.”
Matt’s seen this mistake up close. Founders bring in a ‘strategic’ sales leader when they don’t yet have a working sales motion. The result? Lots of thinking, not a lot of selling.
He absolutely sees value in a founder-led sales approach, followed by hiring two individual contributors. Not one. Two. That way, if one’s off-target, you’ve got a benchmark. And once both are hitting goals and the model is repeatable, then you bring in a leader to scale the team.
This will resonate with early-stage teams that have seen how fragile momentum can be. What I like about this approach is that it helps you stay close to the customer longer, without losing the chance to scale later. It’s a more honest trade-off.
2. The best early hires know their numbers
“Would I buy from this person?”
That’s Matt’s gut check when hiring. But it’s not the only thing. He also digs into the numbers: What’s your average deal size? What’s your win rate? What’s your target, and how are you tracking?
To me, this shows that competence and self-awareness are the real differentiators. If someone can tell you they’re behind and why, that’s useful and shows that they think about the problems. If they can’t explain their performance at all, that’s a risk.
“I don’t even care if they’re behind target. If they know the reason, and they’ve taken action — that’s someone I want on my team.”
This makes sense to me because if salespeople don’t understand their numbers, they’re relying on chance, the universe being kind or Jupiter rising. None of which helps you build a repeatable system.
3. If it’s not written down, it’s not a process
Matt’s seen what happens when the early team keeps everything in their heads. Things feel fast and scrappy, until someone leaves or a new person joins — then it all breaks.
“If it’s not written down, it’s not a process. I don’t care if you know it by heart.”
This will resonate with any founder who’s tried to scale without sales ops in place. And it’s a good reminder that systems aren’t just for later-stage companies. You don’t need to over-engineer things. But you do need to make sure your team can follow the playbook without guessing.
What I like about this is how practical it is. It’s not about perfection. It’s about being intentional. If you want to grow, start writing things down now. Scripts. Call outcomes. Pipeline definitions. The works.
Final thought
One thing Matt said that’s stayed with me was around communication. Early-stage founders often ask for trust — but trust is built with context.
“You’re better off overcommunicating than undercommunicating. Bad news doesn’t get better over time.”
That applies both ways. Founders owe early hires context: where we’re going, what we’re solving for, what matters most. And in return, early hires should bring transparency, not just optimism.
To me, this is where good early sales teams are built — not just on targets, but on trust, clarity, and honest conversations.
I’ve culled The List. It was getting very little interest, so I’ve dropped it. It seemed like a good idea at the time (sounds like me in my early 20’s after a big night out….).
That’s it, for this week, it’s something a little different, a little philosophical. Let me know your thoughts, was it interesting, useful, something else?
Until Friday 🫡
Before you go, can you help me out?
Over 1000 people have subscribed to this newsletter in under a month, which makes me feel that it’s resonating.
If you found this useful, here are three ways you could support me:
- Share it – Forward this to a founder, hiring manager, or job seeker who’d benefit
- Follow StartUpHiring on Linkedin if you’re not already – https://www.linkedin.com/company/startuphiringaustralia
- Subscribe on Substack – Get early access to podcasts, templates, AI prompts, and bonus content at https://startuphiring.com.au/
- Send feedback – What topics would help you most? What’s working? What isn’t? Just hit reply.
I’m building this into the go-to resource for startup hiring. Whether you’re hiring your first employee or looking for your next role, I want this to be genuinely useful for you.
These small actions make a massive difference in helping me reach more people who need this content.
Thanks for being here. Have a brilliant week.
Weekly newsletter drops
- Monday 10:30am – Monday by the Numbers: Data-driven insights on startup hiring trends
- Wednesday 1:30pm – The Main Issue: Comprehensive guide with advice for teams & talent, plus The List and latest podcast
- Friday 10:30am – Hot Takes Friday: My unfiltered opinion on what’s happening in startup land
Need hiring help?
If you’re struggling with a specific hiring challenge, I still offer 1:1 strategy calls through my consultancy, Crew. Book a 15-minute clarity call here
Simon
