Winning new employees is of crucial importance for developing young ventures. However, we know little about what founders can do to make a “good” impression in job interviews and attract talented people. We propose self-presenting as an entrepreneurial hustler as an effective technique to achieve this goal – independent of whether the founder is a woman or a man. However, when applicants themselves are entrepreneurial, this technique might lose in effectiveness.

Why new venture recruiting is particularly challenging

While recruiting new employees is vital for new ventures to grow, these firms face particular challenges: They often lack a brand image and, in general, public awareness is still very limited. Thus, founders might find it difficult to attract potential employees to work for them. Despite these difficulties, however, previous research offers little guidance on what founders can do to increase job applicants’ willingness to join the new venture. Our study, published in the Journal of Management Studies, addresses this deficit, focusing on a distinct technique founders can use when they are in interview situations, that is, self-presenting as an entrepreneurial hustler.

How to impress job applicants: Self-presenting as entrepreneurial hustler

Self-presentations of entrepreneurial hustle refer to a specific way in which founders talk about their past experiences. Founders presenting themselves as hustlers particularly emphasize the unorthodox and urgent actions they took when dealing with high levels of uncertainty. Results from three experiments confirm that using hustler self-presentations can indeed increase applicants’ perception of how competent the founder is. Through that, founders can furthermore boost applicants’ willingness to join the new venture.

Why it works: The role of stereotypes

The reason why self-presenting as hustler works might be based on stereotypes about how founders behave and what they typically do. Earlier research has demonstrated that the hustler in fact is one of the most prevalent stereotypes in entrepreneurial contexts. If founders present themselves as entrepreneurial hustlers in the recruiting interview, they fulfill applicants’ stereotypical expectations and thereby create the impression of being a successful, competent entrepreneur.  

Can both women and men gain from hustler self-presentations?

Since the effectiveness of the hustler self-presentation technique seems to be based on prevalent stereotypes, one might wonder whether female and male founders equally gain from using it. After all, prevalent founder stereotypes still have pronounced gender connotations, that is, for many people a founder (especially, a hustler) is imagined to be a man. However, despite existing gender connotations, the results of our study suggest that the effectiveness of hustler self-presentations does not differ between women and men. In other words, both women and men can realize the same competence gains when they self-present as hustlers.

Are hustler self-presentations effective with every kind of applicant?

Our study, however, shows that the effectiveness of this self-presentation technique is diminished when applicants themselves have acted entrepreneurially in their previous jobs. We conjecture that this effect is based on the so-called self-promoter’s paradox: People that promote themselves in an excessive way are not perceived more competent, but rather achieve the contrary. If applicants hold their own entrepreneurial experience, they are more likely to think that hustler self-presentations are exaggerated.

What are the implications?

Our study offers clear recommendations for founders growing their new venture. Self-presenting as hustler is effective and helps boost applicants’ willingness to join the new venture. However, founders benefit from diligently browsing applicants’ CVs for relevant entrepreneurial activities in the past. In case, applicants are entrepreneurial themselves, founders might consider using more effective techniques to create favorable impressions.

What these alternative techniques could be, is a question for future research. While previous research offers some early insights on relevant interview techniques – to which we have contributed with our study – the domain of new venture recruiting continues to be underexplored.