AV7 | C-suite Hiring And  Why “Business Problems Are People Problems”| Minh Giang – Newing Company

Corporates are much better than startups at hiring impactful C-level leaders and it isn’t just because they pay more. Fortunately, startups can apply the same methods and mindsets to find the right people solutions to their business problems. Minh Giang, former partner of Talent and Culture at Mekong Capital sheds light on executive, corporate hiring and the approaches she employed to recruit CEOs and C-level hires for companies in Mekong Capital’s portfolio (Vietnamese Australian School, Pizza 4Ps, Pharmacity etc.)

She is Giang is currently the Founder and Partner of Leaders and Culture at Newing Company, a coaching and consulting company that provides leadership development for individuals, teams, and helps lead organizational behavior changes.

Discussion Topics: C-suite Hiring and Why “Business Problems are People Problems”

• Meet Minh Giang
• About Newing
• First recruitment and Mekong
• Qualities to look for in a candidate
• How crucial is the culture fit round?
• Why you should not skip reference checks
• Must ask questions in the interview
• Onboarding is part of hiring process
• Firing vs retaining an employee
• How to set up a candidate for success
• All business problems are people problems
• Journey from investor to founder
• How to hire in survival mode
• The role of HR and CFO
• 30 Second Pitch

Transcript: C-suite Hiring and Why “Business Problems are People Problems”

Hau Ly: Hello everyone. We are your hosts, Hau and Adrian and welcome back to AVV Founders and Friends Podcast Season One. We’re sitting down with successful entrepreneurs in Vietnam and Southeast Asia to get a behind the scene look at their first hires and early teams of their companies.

Adrian Latortue: And today we are here with special guest Minh Giang, former partner of Talent and Culture at Mekong Capital, and currently the founder and partner of Leaders and Culture at Newing. Now, while we usually have tech founders join us, Giang, you are joining us as a former private equity investor and worked directly with portfolio companies after Mekong Capital Investee. Can you quickly share with the audience what kind of work you did at Mekong Capital, on Talent and Culture? And can you share with us more about Newing.

Minh Giang: Hello, both. Thank you so much for inviting me to the podcast, this is really an honour. So I knew Mekong Capital for more than 12 years, and at Mekong Capital I partnered with our team with Talent and Culture team, so we partnered with our Investee Company, to build up the leadership team. I mean that like a recruit, and hire the CSIS team there, and I also helped them to organise and facilitate host, the leadership development program. And for my staff, I personally work directly with the CEO and the HRA to build up the corporate culture. What’s the corporate culture here, I mean that the ways of working are like the way that the team coordinates, communicates and makes a decision to produce the result. I mean, that until now was more than like a 20s Vietnamese company, and I had the opportunity to witness their progress, for example, like ATA, in 2015 when I worked with them, they only had three founders. And we need to recruit the whole leadership team there. And now they have more than 800 stores, and 80% of the leadership team, they were recruited from Mekong Capital. So that’s my pride, and that’s my luck when working at Mekong Capital. Thank you.

Adrian Latortue: That sounds amazing. And I’d love to ask you a little bit more about this journey at Mekong Capital. But before we get there, can you share with us a little bit more about Newing, the company that you’re building now.

Minh Giang: Yeah, I am the co-founder with five Vietnamese women and by 2025 we aim to provide the coaching and the consulting service to 10,000 Vietnamese leaders. And currently work with most of our clients, our partners are the Vietnamese companies, 20%, are a Vietnamese startup company, 50% are SME, SME here means that like they pass the survival mode, and now they’re ready for scaling up. And 20% of them are well-established SMEs companies. And the next game, maybe they want to build up the 100 years’ companies or move to the multinational companies.

Adrian Latortue: Thank you. Yeah, we’re going to talk a little bit more about Newing later. Can you tell us about one of the first teams that you helped build for a portfolio company at Mekong Capital? And what was that like?

Minh Giang: So my first time, I remember Mekong Capital in 2010, at that time, with VAS, a Vietnamese Australian school, so they have the habit of recruiting the CEO, the new CEO, to turn around the VPS. And the criteria here is that that person needs to work well, both with the ball, including the Mekong Capital, and the founder, the Chairman, and also who can empower the current management team. So we came up with a list of the comparable companies in the world. And then I found on LinkedIn and I’ve searched on the Google and I remember there was the name Marcel in my list, and he has like a perfect experience in turning around and he also has like, sole experience in working with a venture capital with a P firm with I mean that have a solid experience in managing the stakeholders. And I called directly from Vietnam to the UK and I called the secretary and that was the first time that I talked to Marcel. And after like, sharing about the opportunities, and we want to engage him to serve as a board member first. And maybe after that he can step down to be the CEO, and he accepted the offer letter. And he spent like, six months as the board member at VAS. And then he took the role as the CEO. And that’s what the biggest recruitment ever was, because he was the person who turned around VAS.

Adrian Latortue: What were some of the other qualities that you identified in this candidate that you thought made him exemplary?

Minh Giang: So, the first thing that we identified is that he has exactly experience, like the same skill sets, the same competency that we need for this company. The second thing is more specific here, so he is the perfect guy to handle the problem, like, what’s going on. So, normally we recruit, like we need to identify, Okay, so what we are facing now as the company, and we find the people who have the exact experience, who handled that in the past. That’s one. And the second thing is that in our interview process, and especially with the reference check, we spend a lot of time conducting the reference check, to ensure that in that process he is exactly what the person that we want him to recruit.

Adrian Latortue: So when you recruit this person across the pond, I think one of the first questions that comes up beyond skill and experience is, how does this person work in this environment? I think there’s two different cultures, you have Vietnamese culture, you have the UK or English culture, and then there’s the culture and values of the organisation itself. And it might be hard to really determine if somebody who’s a senior leader, who has all the experience really can embody the culture and values of the organisation. Typically, this might come from founders and owners, right? So how did you, and the HR managers really test for these core values?

Minh Giang: To be honest, even now I share with you like, the best practice or like to test the core value however, we don’t know until he’s or she’s on board. Trust me, I think that I have more than, like, include the time that I will as a headhunter the executive search at Navigo Group, so I have more than 15 years to recruit the C suite people, you don’t know until you get him or her on board. So that’s why we always spend time like to consider onboarding as the recruitment phase as another recruitment ground. And we don’t believe in the interview much. But we do believe in conducting the reference check. Because in the interview, like, if I am smart enough to know what type of the people that you are looking for I can pretend to be in one hour, but I cannot pretend in one year, two year or three years. So that’s the intention that we check the reference check, we focus on conducting the reference check, and reference check my work better. I think that’s really interesting, because I’ve heard the exact opposite from other HR professionals.

Hau Ly: So I’d love to dive into some of that. And you already kind of started talking about this, which is the reference check part. How do you do it well? Because what I’ve heard from many other HR professionals is that sometimes it can be a little bit of a waste of time, and if you do it in a way that actually doesn’t help you make a hiring decision, then it’s not really working for you. One of our previous guests actually talked about this where he said, he asked us like, how many times do you actually change your mind about your hiring decision after you did a reference check on a particular candidate? So yeah, please elaborate. I love to understand your perspective on this.

Minh Giang: So, at first, we need to ensure that the CEO have a clear job deliverable, or job result or expected outcome for this position, at least in six months, one year and three years, maybe that they don’t see the three year but at least in six months, you need to know, okay, this can be that what things that the candidate needs to resolve, need to produce and that is the first step. And trust me, there’s a lot of recruitment breakdown happening at this stage. It’s not about the reference check. Yeah, from that sort of, we conduct the interview, and we conduct the reference check. So there were a lot of people they don’t believe in or they may see that conducting the referencing is a waste of time. I don’t know what they did. However, in our way in the past, at Mekong Capital, whenever we recruit the c-suite candidates, we always conducted like we always use our own network to conduct the reference check rather than asking the candidates, phone number of his friend or his reliable, trusted network. And by doing so, so I may call to the service provider, even with the audit firm. Like many times when we conduct that when we recruited the CFO, we always call the Big Four, like, to ask the person who used to work directly with the CFO.

Hau Ly: What sort of questions do you usually ask when you do a reference check for the candidates?

Minh Giang: So in your interaction with these candidates, like how they react with the pressure or how they react when they feel that they cannot control the emotion or something like that or the question it is all the open question, it is not yes, no, or tell us the situation when you witness, he or she, like, facilitate the conversation to get alignment from the team member, something like this. So we want to go by the story. Because in the story, or in the situation is can show up, it can express the exact behaviour of these candidates, rather than yes, no question for example when we conduct the reference check of one candidates, and we asked about, okay, so how he can tell us the situation, when he facilitate the conversation to get alignment about the team from the team member? And when that person shares details, we know exactly. Okay, so this candidate, so in my perception is that oh, wow, this candidate, definitely, I think that this guy, maybe like to complete the coaching program or something like this. So we are looking for the behaviour, not the values in these questions. And back to Adrian, so how can we test the corporate culture or the core value? So we always find the story or the situation, that candidate expresses or behaves, that we think that fit with our sense of the behaviour and the core value of our company.

Adrian Latortue: Wow. There is a gem there, you test for behaviour over values, and that, I think, in your explanation of how you do the reference checks, you’ve highlighted how getting these stories demonstrates the behaviour, and perhaps this behaviour, is it demonstrates certain values, whether we can label those on behalf of the candidate or not, but we have a better idea of how this person might behave in the company. I love how this goes back to this point you made, we don’t know if this person is a fit until they’re in the company, they’re operating. And almost anyone can become the kind of person that you’re looking for start to embody values in an hour long conversation or maybe through a week, but they can’t do that for six months.

Hau Ly: And there’s only so much that you can see in your hiring process. So I think that’s a very important thing to realise.

Minh Giang: Yeah, totally alive. Using the onboarding process as the part of the hiring process. Even now at Mekong Capital, we hire slowly, but we fire very quickly. And we use our onboarding process, as the process that we can identify whether the candidates fit with our core value or not. Like you put them on the field, and you see them and witness them rather than through the conversation you have in the interview. And for some people especially for the C suite, and leadership team, it may take more time maybe three months or six months. So that’s why I always consult our CEO, as our investor communicates that at first, he or she needs to ally with the candidate, what kind of deliverable he or she needs to deal with in the first three months? Maybe that’s not in terms of the result. But maybe that’s in terms of how to complete one of the minor steps in the journey, something like that. But you need to have the job delivery or the expected outcome should be aligned with the candidates right on the first working day. And normally we forget that. Normally as the HR we always focus on the top recruiting. But I just focus on the expected outcome, the result. And the second thing is that we need to use the on boarding process as part of the hiring process. So that’s why we need to ensure that we can track and measure whether he or she fits with the position or not.

Hau Ly: Absolutely. One last thing I just want to throw in the mix there is we really think about this, like using the lens of onboarding, being part of the hiring process, then I’m curious if you agree or disagree with this statement, which is retaining new hires, whether you can retain a new hire or not it’s not necessarily like if you have to fire people within the first three or six months, that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Minh Giang: I’m Ally, especially for the C-suite leadership. I’m so sorry. But retain the wrong person, especially at the leadership position. So the consequence that you need to handle after that is much bigger than firing them and replacing the new one.

Adrian Latortue: So I guess one thing on that is that, you know, that’s scary, right? Especially when you’re hiring you’re hiring C suite leaders. If you’re hiring like higher level managers or execs, why because especially for start-ups, and younger companies, he spent so long searching for this person, right? And he said, Hey, we hire slow fire fast. So you invest all this time, these resources, collective resources from multiple people across a team. You’re doing all these reference checks and you find like, Hey, I finally found this person, right? You finally found this person, you think that you did all the checks, and we don’t really know what’s going to happen until they come in. And then the first day that they’re on the job, and we know, it’s on boarding. So as you said, hey, this is still part of the hiring process, but you’re like, Man, this is not going to work out. So the final question for you on this is, how would someone, how would a leader of a company, how would a founder be able to get over that? How would they be able to really think differently, or change their mindset about bringing that leader into the company and not be so much worried about, hey, if this person’s going to churn out very quickly?

Minh Giang: So what I just share with you both that can have them, like to evaluate or to choose the right person start with the measurable, the facts and the data, the outcome that we can rack and measure in terms of the result, the candidates fit with the position or not that’s the one. And the second thing is that, because that’s the fact in the data, even like, Okay, I took a lot of time, it took a long time to recruit the candidates, however, after two or three months, so he or she doesn’t show up like, the ways of working or that show up the result that we expected. So we have data to confirm that okay, so this person doesn’t fit. And that’s one. And the second thing is that back to the CEO and the founder, you know, we all know that like a hire slowly, and fire quickly however, when they hire the leadership team, or the new outside the C suite people, they pay salary, maybe higher than the CEO. And so that’s why they put a lot of expectations on the new hire. And it’s called that they are not patient enough. So the thing here is that to successfully integrate the new hire, the new leaders, it’s required the recruitment process, like I just shared with you about a job deliverable, about the process, about conducting interview reference check. But it’s also required the effort of the CEO and the founder and the current leadership team.

Hau Ly: Absolutely. This is something that we talked to virtually, I think all of our guests on the podcast about what happens after the hiring decision is made? How do you make sure that you set up the candidate for success? So, thanks for sharing that. And again, it’s important to put into efforts to invest in the candidates after you make the decision to hire them, and not expect them to come in and be this white knight, who will figure out how to solve all the problems that you have in the company by themselves. And if it doesn’t work out in this onboarding process, then that’s part of the hiring process. And you are making the right hiring decision by either choosing to keep working with them or letting them go. So, this is very, very fascinating to hear.

Minh Giang: Yeah. And for ___ (23:06 inaudible) so they put $2,000 and chose to stay. At Mekong Capital we don’t have $2,000 however, we had to choose there. I mean, after almost a one and a half months, we sit down together with the candidates and put on the table hey, so what’s your experience so far? And we can share directly and we can offer another space for them to choose again whether he or she chooses to continue or like, he or she can say, maybe that I need more time to think. So let’s create that space for them for both sides to choose again.

Hau Ly: That’s great. It shouldn’t be a unilateral decision. I love that. Let’s switch gears a little bit, Giang. I remember the first time that we met, the two of us met and we grabbed coffee. One of the things that you shared with me that really stuck with me was this one statement that I thought was very powerful. And it’s a lot of business problems are people problems. I don’t know, you remember telling me that. But I was really, really impressed with that. That was an aha moment for me. And I love for you to share that thought with our audience as well. So can you explain that a little bit? And maybe give some examples?

Minh Giang: So let me tell you a story. In 2010, when I worked with a mobile workgroup, and recently I worked with ATA at an individual level, they are not like superstars in the market. I mean, that 50% of the leadership team, at the mobile workgroup, they could not speak English. So like in the common definition of being a superstar, you need to have a solid credit from the big English schools and you have to work as a multinational company or something like that they don’t have. At an individual level, like I shared, they are not superstars. But at the team level, the ways of working, the ways of coordination, they are really like a champion football team that can coordinate trust and coordinate with each other. So I also have experience working with some companies on the opposite side that they recruited a lot of superstars. But they could not communicate or work or coordinate with each other. And end of the day, so the company is collapse, and we need to work a recruit the whole like, the CEO and CFO, like recruit the whole team together again, and like, I said that the business problem are the people problem. Because of the people or the business, we tend to look at the strategy, the direction, the technology, or the people. The process is good, however, it’s not enough. Because at the end of the day, who? So the strategy is what we need to do. But how we need to do it depends on the people.

Adrian Latortue: That reminds me of you know, there’s a phrase that people say now, it’s who not how, and so it emphasises its kind of who’s doing what work instead of the sort of the processes and the technicality of how it’s being done. So yeah.

Hau Ly: Giang for the next question, we would like to ask you to take up your private equity investor/consultant hat and put on your founder hat because you recently co-founded Newing. What was it like transitioning from being an investor talking about all of these things around how to hire to now being an actual founder and doing this for yourself? Was there anything that you had to learn or unlearn as part of that process?

Minh Giang: Thank you for the interesting question. I just founded the company for four months. And there were a lot of things that I learned. And, again, one thing that I learned as a founder was that there were a lot of things to do. So I learned how to prioritise. At the beginning, okay, you are right, when I was the partner or as the investor, I just focused on the people, the culture, and I didn’t need to think about cash flow, to think about marketing, to think about strategy direction, nothing. So that is the privilege when working as a corporate life. However, as the founder, I have learned that there were a lot of things and it happened at the same time. So at the same time, the cash flow, the resources, the people, the opex, the capex, the product, everything, but how I can prioritise.

Hau Ly: Awesome. Thanks for sharing your experience as a founder, Giang. And the next question will also be related to what you were sharing now. You’ll now see that as a founder, you have to juggle a lot of balls as you described it, right? And there’s always some fire somewhere that you have to put out every single day. So our next question for you is, how can founders think about hiring for the long term, when they are always basically in this survival mode?

Minh Giang: Yeah, in my view, just in my view, so this is a personal view, and also in our experience at Mekong Capital, when we start any new investment, there are two positions that we always focus to recruit, as soon as possible. One, HR, second, finance. So for these two people that we looked at the data and we found out that, as soon as we hired the right people for these two positions, so we can set up a really strong correlation. And these two people that we really focus to recruit for the long term position. Long term here, I mean, at least one to three years. And definitely, that we expect that they can grow together with the company. But for the other position, I think that maybe that as the early stage, so the CEO or the current co-founder, they kind of handle to overcome the survival mode, you will recruit the right HRD, or HRM, like who can help you like to cascade out it’s not only the corporate culture or the value, but can help you in the recruitment, on boarding, also, like, integrate the OKR, the KBI into the performance management is all the people job is all that. And a lot of things have happened because we don’t have the HR. So I don’t want to give any advice here, because it depends on the situation. However, for me, I really, like think about the two positions as a long term role.

Adrian Latortue: I guess a quick follow up from that is, you say HR and CFO, for a lot of founders, like tech founders these sound like really big roles. And the common pushback will be we don’t need those people right now. But you’re identifying them as mission critical. So can you share what these people should be doing in the company when they’re arriving? I think it really emphasizing this idea of people who are willing to get their hands dirty. So how are the CFO, beautiful title C suite, how are they getting their hands dirty? How’s this HR, the HR director, HR manager, getting their hands dirty when they’re coming into a really small company, and they’re supposed to be long term hires.

Minh Giang: So there are two tie-ups C Suite. I mean that even like with the HR and the CFO, there are two tie-ups skill sets. One skill sets are setting up and building up and the other skill sets is about optimization, maintaining so that’s why that when we identify the candidates we need to ensure that the first thing that he or she know what to do like they know how to set up and how to get dirty hands because there are some people they don’t have the experience nor they don’t like that and we need to ensure that we share right at the beginning that Hey guys, so we have nothing as multinational everything that has the process, but as a startup company, nothing no process. So that’s something that we need to put right, like in the early days to ensure that he or she understands that hey, this job requires that you get a dirty hands. So the key thing here is that we recruit the person and we give them the space to grow up and we accept to recruit at the certain level of the company development we can recruit or replace them.

Adrian Latortue: Thank you for sharing that. So how would you pitch Hau and myself on working with Newing? What’s your thirty second pitch?

Minh Giang: Oh my God.

Adrian Latortue: She has to sell the company. Let’s go.

Minh Giang: Oh my God. So, this is a really surprising question, because I have never had the intention to pick a new company to any investor. But now I can consider you as our potential partner.

Adrian Latortue: Potential partner or potential colleague, if you were to approach us and bring us into Newing, or you want us to work with Newing, how would you do it?

Minh Giang: Andrian, so I have four questions for you. Are you committed to __ (34:44 inaudible) but you are at stake with your doubts or your fear about yourself and your team members?

Adrian Latortue: Yeah.

Minh Giang: Okay. Are you a leader who is willing to choose to be the source of the success for your team and organisation?

Adrian Latortue: Oh, of course, yes.

Minh Giang: Are you open to taking new views and an uncomfortable accent to lead yourself and your team and your organisation to achieve new success?

Adrian Latortue: Yes.

Minh Giang: And do you want to build up a strong team who share the same vision and can power on each other to impact on change and reach new heights?

Adrian Latortue: Absolutely.

Minh Giang: So Newing can partner with you to fulfil all that you just said.

Adrian Latortue: It’s like you maybe pitch like I just agree to these things. It’s impossible to say no to. And I’m pitching myself, I have an internal conversation with myself to pitch myself and why to work with Newing. I love it. This reminds me of there is a technique and a philosophy on this on getting people to say if you say three yeses in a row….

Minh Giang: No, that’s different.

Adrian Latortue: Yeah, it’s like if you say three yeses in a row then you already agree, right?

Hau Ly: Yeah, that’s a legit sales technique.

Minh Giang: No, that is a negotiation technique guy. Never split differently __ (36:28 inaudible). And that I learned from Mekong Capital, because we invited him to coach us. Actually, is that every conversation in our life is a negotiation. When you want someone to say yes, you are in the negotiation conversation.

Adrian Latortue: Thank you so much for sharing Giang, we really loved your stories, sharing all of your experience at Mekong Capital. Also, with the companies that you’re working with Newing, a lot of different gems and deep insights there, particularly I think, around hiring senior leaders, and taking a step back and not just thinking about, hey, I’m a startup company, and I’m being scrappy, I’m going to hire in that manner, but thinking about the longer term future to bring on true leaders in the company, and that can affect change. So thank you for all of that.

Minh Giang: Thank you so much. And I’m so happy that I can add a little bit of value to you both and also your network. And yes, currently I don’t work on anything regarding recruitment, however, I think that is something that I worked for a long time. So that’s why I just share what I did in the past. I hope that is helpful.

Adrian Latortue: That is valuable, yeah.

Minh Giang: Okay. Thank you.

Our Guests: Minh Giang

Minh Giang is the Co-Founder and Partner of Leaders and Culture at Newing company, a Vietnamese company focused on developing leadership for individuals, teams, and organizations. 

She served as General Director of Talent and Culture and was also a member of the Board of Directors of Mekong Capital prior to building Newing. She had previously worked as a recruitment consultant for VietnamWorks.

She serves on the advisory board of A Plus Mineral Material Corporation in Vietnam and on the executive board of the Ho Chi Minh City Association for Women Executives and Entrepreneurs (HAWEE)’s strategy and membership committee.