Every day, startups walk the line between genius and failure. So it takes a special type of person to succeed in this environment. Employees need to be willing to make mistakes and learn to adapt.

"In a startup, trial and error is sometimes the only strategy to move forward," Andreas Pettersson, CEO of Irvine, Calif.-based video IoT company Arcules, said in an email. "Employees must be able to adopt that methodology from the start. If they do not, they will fail anyway."

Because of this ongoing risk, you need to assess your job candidates' feelings about failure early -- as early as the hiring process. Potential employees may talk about an obstacle they've overcome in the past. But that isn't a complete measure of how they might deal with mistakes in a real-life setting.

Instead, you need to dig deeper to find out if a candidate can handle (and learn from) failure at your company.

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