Employee / Engagement
Language barrier
Having to talk to employees from the perspective of an employer is different. I myself had no experience being a full-time employee, with just two internships totaling six months of working and learning with companies. I had a tough start figuring out how to handle and talk to employees. My experience was in gaming and film companies, with very different people around me. But this field was different and vastly unknown.
I faced language barrier problems, miscommunication, not understanding slang or intent, and many more challenges. I could only become better by spending more time with the team—talking to them and trying to understand them. I am still learning to adapt to them and their terminology, not just logistics but also the local use of language.
I can speak Hindi, which is a common tongue, but not numbers, dates, or days fluently. I am very much used to speaking in English and had never needed to speak in raw, local Hindi. It took me a while, but I caught up with daily conversations. I still struggle with certain dialects and slang.
But this was just the starting barrier. The fact that I did not have any experience in employee engagement was the biggest problem. This would not be solved just by spending time; I had to learn from forums and books. So, I started reading books on MBA and related topics, understanding and learning about biases, which helped me a lot. This also helped me teach them the tools and systems that I mentioned in my previous blog.
Employee reliability
There is always a trust factor where we can only rely on employees to a certain point. So, building automated tools and reducing manual error solved a lot of this, but it was never completely finished. Many tools were built to minimize friction in work and make it easy to take and place orders, which worked well.
Next, we decided to hire a person for marketing and sales. With no experience in this segment, I made some of the worst decisions I could have made. We hired up to four different employees who walked in for job opportunities, with no experience or knowledge in logistics or marketing. This was a huge problem. I expected them to do their job just by hiring them, which was wrong, and I learned a lot from it.
Then I started narrowing down potential clients to reach out to, but that also did not go well. The people I hired were not prepared and did not have even a basic idea of how to approach clients. I gave them a list of tasks and even a script to talk, but there was no success.
This helped me conclude that I did a poor job of hiring. They were simply not suitable for the role. They could have been better used for office operations such as data entry and office support duties, which they often did on their own without being asked. It was unfortunate to hire and then let them go when it did not work out.
The problems with this hiring process were: no clear directives, weak filtering in the interview process, not looking for experience, offering internships or training without clarity or interest, and ultimately hiring employees who became a drag on both the company and themselves.
What could I have done better? / Questions to ask myself
Learn how to hire and understand the purpose of hiring. When is the right time to hire someone? Do we really need a new employee? Understand cause and effect, and avoid hiring just for the sake of it.
Experience gained
Even though I hired incorrectly, I believe it helped me understand who exactly to hire and what to look for. I learned how much of a role I can play in shaping the daily work of an employee, and how useful that is for both the company and the employee. I also understood how important it is to clearly differentiate roles.
I started learning again from multiple forums and books on employment. One of the best I have read so far is The Hard Thing About Hard Things. I also learned when to hire, which I believe is a key factor. What I mean by “when to hire” is that I should only hire when the company truly needs a specific set of operations that requires a dedicated person or department.
Only when there is a clear opportunity and a strong need for better operations should hiring happen—role-specific and preferably someone with experience. I can see this becoming necessary when we increase order volume. To do that, we need to focus on receiving a higher number of orders daily.
My next blog will be on order volume and consistency in order placement.












