The ability to think out of the box, hard work and the willingness to learn. Those are the qualities startups look out for when hiring, panelists agreed at the “Startup Got Talent” session, moderated by Marissa Trew, Content & Marketing, WIT, at the WIT 2017 Bootcamp.

Dan Lynn, co-founder, ZUZU Hospitality Solutions, said: “You’ve got to find your niche of people who are innovative and open to change. You’ve got to find those people,” and get them to join your team.

This preference for innovative people outweighs what sort of corporate experience they may have, or if they are a fresh graduate that is more open and malleable enough to fit into an amorphous job role.

Initial experience does not matter, said Alex Shen, strategic partnerships manager, GetYourGuide. “It is a much more fluid career nowadays — it’s really about having the learning attitude to whatever job you want to do,” she said. Shen herself used to work at HSBC, where the skills she had picked up still serve her today in partnering clients.

Mildred Cheong (pictured right), general manager, Air Black Box Asia Pacific, said it is really about the person’s passion. “If a talent or an employee is looking at job security, startups are not for them. But if they are willing to use creativity to be part of this creation process, then they will find job satisfaction,” she said.

But when it comes down to judging a candidate’s experience, panelists were split on what experience they preferred.

Cheong said she would pick someone with start-up experience because they would have had more “cross functional” experience where they do more and gain more exposure faster than peers in bigger companies. But Lynn thought that some do benefit from working in big companies. “You can have a great experience there. Maybe not for 30 years, but maybe for three to four years — learn those things and go to a startup.”

These days, startups have also become more attractive to employees and startups have their pick of applicants. Nabil El-Shafeay (pictured left), head of global partnerships, BeMyGuest remarked “10, 15 years ago, no one would have applied for a startup. Now, a startup is not something bad; the trend has totally changed because a startup can shape your career and give you a step forward, not a step back.”

But working at a startup is not without a downside. Asked what was the hardest, panelists chimed up about a lack of resources such as an IT helpdesk, or human resource team. Said Lynn, “There’s not a lot of middle level management — everyone does things,” highlighting then when things go wrong, everyone has a part to play in finding the solution.