Little Hands Growth Hiring
Hire on the KPI they'll commit to and their willingness to do the tiniest job.
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 6
- Confidence
- 90%
Berkowitz's screening system for early growth hires, built on two filters. First, what KPI will this person commit to? Anyone who will only own lead volume rather than closed-won revenue is out. Second, 'little hands' — will they personally do the nitty-gritty work, or do they assume a team will be hired for it? Big-company pedigree is a trap unless the candidate was there when the resources were thin.
Origin
Deel's hiring practice. 'Little hands' is a company concept Berkowitz says is loosely translated from French; it means that regardless of seniority, everyone gets into the small details themselves.
Core principles
- 01The team is called growth, not marketing, because it owns revenue — leads and SQLs are only leading indicators.
- 02A candidate who has never committed to a bottom-funnel goal and claims they will is probably wrong about themselves.
- 03Brand-name pedigree tells you nothing until you know when they joined that company.
- 04'I'd build a team for that' is a fine second answer and a disqualifying first one.
- 05Hire one leader, let them prove the theory, then let them grow the team — never staff ahead of a hypothesis.
How to run it
- 1
Ask what KPI they will commit to
Open with it. If they will only commit to lead numbers, that is not good enough — you want people who will commit to closed-won revenue and thus care about the business's bottom line.
- 2
Cross-check against their KPI history
Ask what KPIs they have owned in past roles. If they have never carried a revenue or bottom-funnel goal but claim they will commit to one, treat the claim as unreliable. Then ask what KPIs they think they should have been given — sometimes a good candidate was simply never handed the right one.
Pro tip The 'what KPI do you think you should have?' question separates people who were denied ownership from people who never wanted it.
Watch out Everyone will say yes to a KPI in an interview. History and self-generated ambition are the only reliable signals.
- 3
Interrogate the pedigree's timing
When a candidate comes from a famous company, ask when they joined it. Did they arrive at 5,000 people with every resource available, or were they an early employee who helped build the growth? Only the latter has operated at 10% of the resources.
Watch out This is the mistake Berkowitz sees most: hiring someone who accomplished amazing things with a full toolkit and discovering they will not get down and do the dirty work.
- 4
Run the zero / ten thousand / hundred thousand case study
Ask the candidate to produce a strategy with a $0 budget, then with $10,000, then with $100,000. You are testing both whether they can scale up with you and what they will commit to at each level of spend.
Pro tip Someone who throws up their hands at $0 and says 'I can only do social media monitoring' is telling you they will not commit to bottom-funnel metrics until they are fully resourced.
- 5
Test for little hands
Ask directly whether they are willing to do the tiniest of the jobs. The first answer must be 'yes, of course'. 'I would build a team for that' may be right eventually, but as a first instinct it is a no.
- 6
Hire one leader per area, then let them build
Bring in a single leader to own an area, have them put out a theory, and only grow the team behind a theory that works. Do not hire a team on the hypothesis that something will work.
Pro tip Deel's first three growth hires: a product marketer (messaging bridge between product and go-to-market), then a copywriter, then a data analyst.
Watch out Hiring people ahead of a validated hypothesis is, in Berkowitz's words, 'a really good way to have to do layoffs' when the plan you assumed would work doesn't.
In the wild
Berkowitz hired a product marketer first — the person who sits between product and go-to-market and sets the messaging. When that person needed help with messaging and tone, she hired a talented copywriter second. Third, unusually, a data analyst, because they were not willing to spend a dollar without knowing what it was doing.
→ Each of those first hires now leads a team (product marketing, creative, and a full data team). The theory-then-team sequence avoided layoffs from staffing ahead of unvalidated plans.
Candidates are asked to design a strategy at three budget levels. The candidate who can only propose social media monitoring at $0 reveals they need full resourcing before they will own an outcome.
→ Deel screens out senior-looking candidates who cannot operate at 10% of the resources they are used to.
Common mistakes
Hiring the big-company director for the 35-person startup
The brand name is appealing and the accomplishments are real, but if they joined at 5,000 people with every resource at their disposal they are not used to operating with 10% of that — and will not do the nitty-gritty work.
Letting the team goal on leads or traffic
Deel's team is called growth, not marketing, precisely because revenue growth is the goal. Leads and SQOs are tracked as leading indicators only; they are never what counts as success.
Staffing a team on a hypothesis
Building headcount around a plan you assume will work is how you end up doing layoffs when it doesn't. Hire the leader, test the theory, then grow.
Is it for you?
Best for
A founder or first growth leader making the first five growth/marketing hires at a company under ~50 people.
Not ideal for
Large, well-resourced organizations hiring specialists into an existing machine, where deep functional depth beats scrappiness.
From the transcript
“early on one of the first questions I would ask people is what are the kpis that you're willing to commit to so if someone's…”
“a deal we have this concept called little hands I think it's Loosely translated from French”
“asking someone you know to come up with a strategy with zero dollars with ten thousand dollars and maybe a hundred thousand dollars to see…”
“hiring people based off of a hypothesis that something is going to work that's a really good way to have to do layoffs”
“we always hired one person put out a theory and then let them grow their teams”
From the episode
An inside look at Deel’s unprecedented growth
Meltem Kuran Berkowitz (Head of Growth)