Zintro, Inc. - Hiring a Management Team

By David Dodson
2015 | Case No. E566 | Length 10 pgs.
Entrepreneurship

Zintro, Stuart Lewtan’s second start-up, just completed a round of financing that was intended to fund a rebuild of the site’s user interface and provide Lewtan the cash needed to hire a first-rate senior management team.  But the hiring process had not been easy, reminding Lewtan that recruiting quality employees was hard work.  Nonetheless, he found two candidates he was excited about, but each came with their own issues.  His choice for CTO received more than one disappointing reference, and the person he had hoped to hire for vice president of marketing may have misled Lewtan on his work history.  Would Lewtan have to start from square one in the hiring process, or could he make these two candidates work with a high level of confidence?

Learning Objective

The learning objective of the case is to help students navigate through two highly nuanced scenarios involving hiring a key management team member. In the first, students learn about the importance of thorough, quality references to vet a candidate, with the class discussion aimed at walking them through the various types of references to solicit and the questions to ask. The second scenario helps students evaluate a sticky situation where a friend with a solid reputation has clearly misrepresented his work history, without outright lying. How should Lewtan handle this and is the candidate’s action a red flag of future misrepresentations?
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