"How to Avoid 'Villains' When Hiring Talent: Startup HR Expert’s Secrets [VC Now]"

Interview with Kim Hyungjin, CEO of Inside Answer"Evaluate not just work skills, but also mannerisms and values""Perfect fairness is impossible... Frequent feedback matters"

"Recently, venture capital (VC) firms are shifting their focus beyond simply injecting funds into portfolio companies; they are now increasingly interested in supporting human resources (HR) to reduce management risks and enhance corporate value. For startup CEOs, the most pressing concerns ultimately revolve around recruitment and performance evaluation and compensation."

Kim Hyungjin, CEO of INSIDE ANSWER, stated during a recent interview with The Asia Business Daily, "HR solutions such as talent acquisition and core value setting are what determine the success or failure of a startup." Kim, who spent five years overseeing organizational culture at Toss (Viva Republica) and another two years as the HR Business Partner (HRBP) at Toss Securities, founded INSIDE ANSWER, an HR consulting and headhunting firm specializing in startups, in the summer of last year. To date, he has provided consulting services to more than 50 startups and completed over 100 recruitment assignments for more than 30 companies.

Kim Hyungjin, CEO of Inside Answer, poses for an interview with The Asia Business Daily. Photo by Seungwook Park

In the VC ecosystem, HR value-up has become an essential investment strategy. Firms such as Kakao Ventures, Altos Ventures, and Base Ventures operate HR support arms in-house. Notably, companies like Kakao Ventures are collaborating with INSIDE ANSWER to drive the human resource development of their portfolio companies. Kim explained, "It is common for startup founders who receive investments to recommend us to other VCs or for VC firms to reach out seeking solutions for their portfolio companies' HR concerns."

Unlike established corporates that are driven by massive systems, hiring is a critical factor that can decide the fate of a startup within the ecosystem. In organizations with only about 20 to 30 employees, every individual carries significant influence. If even one person who lacks capability or is not a culture fit joins the team, it can potentially unravel the entire organization.

Kim cautioned, "Startups, due to low brand awareness, often struggle to attract strong talent, and CEOs sometimes make the mistake of hiring with a 'let's try them out' mindset. In startups where every person covers multiple roles, there is little time for training. Bringing in someone lacking in skills or cultural fit can inflict significant damage on the organization as a whole."

To prevent such mishaps, Kim emphasizes qualitative interview processes where he meets candidates face-to-face during recruitment support. He said, "After identifying the specific skill sets and culture fit that a startup needs, I personally meet with shortlisted candidates to gauge non-verbal cues such as their communication style and values. If a candidate matches the desired startup profile, I then arrange for a coffee chat with the company’s CEO. This leads to an interview conversion rate of as high as 76%," he explained.

Hyungjin Kim, CEO of INSIDE ANSWER, made a statement in an interview with The Asia Business Daily. Photo by Seungwook Park

A prime example is LinkAlpha, a portfolio company of Kakao Ventures. Although LinkAlpha is headquartered in the United States and operates as an AI agent platform for institutional investors, it recently sought to establish a back-office engineering team in South Korea. At this point, INSIDE ANSWER selectively matched four to five key personnel for roles including legal counsel, backend engineer, sales lead, and HR—those who fit LinkAlpha’s culture—thereby facilitating rapid team formation.

Just as crucial as talent acquisition is establishing core values that unify the team. Startups, owing to their small size, initially move as 'one team' grounded in their core values, but as the organization grows, there can be pains as those values become diluted. Kim recalled, "When I was with Toss, we noticed that new hires tended to passively handle even unnecessary tasks when requested. To address this, we introduced a core value of 'asking fundamental questions.' Core values should not be just a flashy slogan—they must provide actionable standards that solve real internal organizational issues."

Designing performance appraisal and compensation systems is another major area of consulting for INSIDE ANSWER. Many startups fail by attempting to create excessively complex and elaborate evaluation matrices for fairness. Kim noted, "Startup CEOs waste time splitting employees into grades using spreadsheets and over-complicating the criteria. While such systems might work for large organizations, for startups, this complexity does not actually enhance trust in performance-based compensation."

The solution Kim proposes is frequent feedback to team members. He advised, "Because no evaluation or compensation system is perceived as perfectly fair by everyone, leaders such as team managers should regularly provide feedback to team members, aligning expectations and reducing feelings of unfairness. Team members often feel wronged not because of the assessment itself, but when leaders withhold feedback during day-to-day work and then suddenly give negative evaluations during the one or two regular reviews held each year."

Kim Hyungjin, CEO of INSIDE ANSWER, made a statement in an interview with The Asia Business Daily. Photo by Seungwook Park

When consulting for startup clients such as those in the Kakao Ventures portfolio, Kim creates a goal agreement form to document satisfaction levels from both CEOs and internal members, encouraging communication between leaders and their teams. "Even when giving routine feedback, leaders should quantify it: for example, referring to how much a project was delayed instead of simply saying 'you are too slow.' This helps team members clearly understand and accept the feedback."

Diversity in rewards is also necessary. Kim added, "Rewards can be divided into monetary and non-monetary categories, and for startup employees who have strong needs for recognition, it is important to provide not only salary increases but also non-monetary forms of recognition, such as titles and roles (promotions), as vital mechanisms for acknowledgment."

Meanwhile, Kim also expressed his aspiration to make HR solutions a catalyst for startup growth. He commented, "When I was at Toss, as the company grew, the so-called 'Naver-Kakao-Line-Coupang-Baedal Minjok-Danggeun Market-Toss' collective began to attract attention. I believe many such notable companies will continue to emerge. We are currently providing HR solutions mainly to AI startups, but the goal is to expand to diverse fields to support the growth of the industry itself."

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