Attracting and absorbing the right talent

As the final leg of the five-day workshop intensive event, MaGIC hosted the biggest and by far the most concentrated career-oriented startup event — MSA Career Fair with up to seventy startups looking to fill open positions as their businesses continue to grow.

MSA Career Fair has successfully invited companies such as JobStreet, Zalora Malaysia, MyTeksi, myHarapan, SoftSpace, EasyUni, Carousell, Do Something Good, Worthybook, e27, iKargo, TrustedCompany, iMoney, and many more to participate in the event.

Making hiring decisions is one of the toughest and weighty components to running a startup. Finding the right individual with the right skills who fits into the company's culture is crucial to its success. For a team of two founders hiring their first, second, or even fifth employee, the stakes are even higher.

Many startups at MSA Career Fair share a common goal: attracting and absorbing the right talent.

For MyTeksi, a location based smartphone taxi booking app, the startup welcomes self-driven web and backend developer, as well as mobile developer to further enhance MyTeksi’s features and platform as the company continues its expansion in the region. According to Aaron Gill, Head of Product at MyTeksi, potential candidates have to go through three levels of screening. “To start with, candidates will have to answer a 5-question online screen test, follows by a tech and coding evaluation, and finally an interview to evaluate a candidate’s personality-culture fit with the company.” Just as the author of Good to Great, Jim Collins argued in his book, “when in doubt, don’t hire — keep looking”, in the month of October, out of the 150 applications submitted to MyTeksi, only two applicants made the cut and secured a full time position at MyTeksi.

On the other hand, e27, one of the region’s leading platforms for news on innovation-led businesses are looking at filling two open positions in Malaysia: a writer to cover local activities in the technology and startup ecosystem; and a business development executive who will be e27’s evangelist in Malaysian startup ecosystem. In describing the kind of candidate e27 is looking for, Denise Heng, Business Development Executive of e27 in APAC spelled out the main traits that potential candidates should embody, “we are looking for someone with the right attitude and a hunger to hustle, a person who is passionate about technology and startup.”

Chris Leong, Director of Strategy at Soft Space, a mobile payment technology company said that programming skills aside, they are also looking for creative thinkers who are passionate about technology, “we are interested in someone who is smart and has an opinion about the latest trends in technology”.

Before making a hiring decision, Carousell, a mobile-first C2C (Customer To Customer) marketplace would normally pair up a candidate with Carousell’s programmer, to determine if the candidate is a good fit for the startup. “They will also be given take-home assignment to build a feature for us. Once the candidate joins us, he or she will continue to develop the feature which will eventually be implemented to our application,” Lucas Ngoo, Co-Founder of Carousell explained.

A few hours after opening, MSA Career Fair was gaining momentum as more local and international visitors made their way to MaGIC.

Richard Delancey, an entrepreneur from the United Kingdom was among the visitors to MSA Career Fair. New to the startup scene in Malaysia, he is keen to explore. “I have experience in hardware engineering hence I am looking for opportunities at a hardware startup,” he said. To Richard, what attracted him to Malaysia is the lower manufacturing cost, “There are a lot of talent and energy in Kuala Lumpur, the startup scene is growing. And unlike in China, I won’t face any language barrier in Malaysia.”

Richard Delancey is new to the startup scene in Malaysia, and is keen to explore.

Every candidate will have a set of expectations about the company they sign up for.

Nerissa Lee, an American Chinese heard about the career fair through word-of-mouth. Among the startups that caught her attention at MSA Career Fair includes Zalora Malaysia, TableApp and MyTeksi. “I prefer to work for an established startup that has a strong backing (funding from investors) — because new startups won’t pay me the salary that I ask for. At the end of the day, I will want a job that can support me financially."

Nerissa Lee, prefers to work for an established startup that has a strong backing.

Also at the MSA Career Fair, CEO of YTL Communications, Wing K Lee expressed that he would love to see more similar events in the near future. “The timing is perfect for an event like MaGIC Startup Academy Launch. MaGIC has done a great job by connecting startups with global ideas and at the same time offering local talents an opportunity to share their ideas and success stories with international talents. Everyone deserves a chance. The world is the platform, with the internet no market is too far.” From Wing’s point of view, once MaGIC sustain the momentum in catalysing the local ecosystem, it is on its way to recreate Malaysia’s own unique “Silicon Valley”-style startup ecosystem — where entrepreneurs are open to share ideas and leverage on relationships. “I believe what is more important than money or funding is entrepreneurs’ access to coaching and mentoring — which is what MaGIC is doing through this event. Easy access to funding may cause problems: an entrepreneur may not be as invested in building a company when the money comes too easily. Great innovation happens only after you have experienced failure.”

"Great innovation happens only after you have experienced failure," Wing K Lee, CEO of YTL Communications said.

MaGIC Startup Academy Launch was a 5-day workshop marathon for startups held at MaGIC, Cyberjaya from 15 to 19 October. The event marked the launch of MaGIC Startup Academy, a platform set up by MaGIC to equip entrepreneurs with skills and tools required to succeed in the digital economy.

For more information about MaGIC and the academy, log on to http://academy.mymagic.my/

“Think differently, defy conventions” was the key message presented at the keynote session by the CEO of AirAsia X, Azran Osman-Rani.

MSA Career Fair has successfully invited companies such as JobStreet, Zalora Malaysia, MyTeksi, myHarapan, SoftSpace, EasyUni, Carousell, Do Something Good, Worthybook, e27, iKargo, TrustedCompany, iMoney, and many more to participate in the event.

MSA Career Fair has successfully invited companies such as JobStreet, Zalora Malaysia, MyTeksi, myHarapan, SoftSpace, EasyUni, Carousell, Do Something Good, Worthybook, e27, iKargo, TrustedCompany, iMoney, and many more to participate in the event.

Making hiring decisions is one of the toughest and weighty components to running a startup.

Making hiring decisions is one of the toughest and weighty components to running a startup.