How to Recruit the Best People for Your Growing Startup

As a startup founder, you know well enough that your success hinges on hard work and competence. Otherwise, you won’t be in the business of offering innovative solutions to enduring problems. However, as you reach the point where your startup begins to build upon its potential, you will need people who can support its growth.

Recruiting new people to your startup can be a daunting process, especially if you’re the type of entrepreneur who prefers to do everything on your own. The truth is, you simply can’t when your business starts to welcome new clients, and coming up with new products and services is inevitable. 

By getting the right people involved, you can focus less on the details and more on putting your startup on the map. The guide below is an overview of how you can find and nurture your workforce.

A Word About Recruiting Top Talent

Let’s talk about why the human factor matters in the first place. Founders often make the mistake of limiting their workforce, fearing that having too many hands will diminish quality and productivity. Most startups will enter a phase when the need for quality talent becomes a necessity rather than an afterthought.

As a startup grows, a quality workforce becomes crucial to sustaining its gains. You can’t possibly expand to new markets or develop new offers with your current team.  You need to nurture it by getting the right people for areas requiring specific backgrounds, skills, and knowledge. Recruiting top talents is an investment you wouldn’t want to overlook. If you want to see your startup thrive in the next five years or more, prioritize your recruitment efforts. 

How to Start an Effective Recruitment Campaign

It’s easy to declare that you’re scouting for quality talents, but these types of individuals are hard to come by in today’s job market. Over the past years, office workers have ditched their on-site jobs in favor of remote work arrangements in what is often referred to as the Great Resignation. The freelancing sector has absorbed much of the workforce from industries like IT and manufacturing. 

This has resulted in a scramble for quality talents who demand more than a handsome compensation package to work full-time. This is a good thing for many startups that can’t compete with large companies that offer big salaries. What’s important is that you come up with a process that helps you attract the right people. Follow the guide below toward setting up an effective recruitment process for your startup.

1. Define your recruitment goals

Just like everything else in running a startup, you must have a set of goals to adhere to. Without setting the right direction for your campaign, you could end up wasting time, resources, and effort on candidates who may not yield the results you are looking for. Take your time knowing what you should accomplish in both the long-term and short-term:

Examples of Long-Term Goals

Long-term goals are those that can be achieved within a certain number of years. In the case of recruiting top talent for your startup, your long-term goals may include fueling your business’s growth across markets and borders. Another example of a long-term goal is reaching a specific sales number. You may opt to close deals with a total value of $5 million within the first three years of operating.

Long-term goals often align with your startup’s overall mission, requiring the need to train and promote top talents into leadership positions crucial to the mission. So, when setting long-term goals for your recruitment campaign, consider the kind of people you want in your team within the next three or five years.

Examples of Short-Term Goals

When it comes to setting short-term recruitment goals, you will need to identify current challenges and issues your startup is facing. You may find that you lack a creative specialist to handle your marketing campaign. If you’re facing slow sales conversions, then you may have to focus on getting people with sales experience to join your team. Whichever the case, setting short-term goals should always align with problems requiring immediate solutions;

Your short-term goals should also be instrumental in accomplishing major ones. If expansion is an overarching goal of your recruitment efforts, your short-term goals should include knowing how to attract people with experience in the new markets you want to penetrate. By defining recruitment goals this way, you can maximize your time and resources toward building a fruitful campaign.

2. Define your target candidates

Once you have defined your recruitment campaign’s most important goals, you will need to come up with a profile outlining the right candidates for each vacant position. Whether you’re hiring a web developer or an account executive for your growing startup, make sure that your ideal candidate profile focuses on the following:

Experience

It’s not always necessary to ask about a candidate’s employment experience, especially if you have no problem hiring people fresh out of college. The success of your campaign will rely heavily on what your people already know and are capable of.

Be sure to specify the proficiencies you’re looking for. If you’re searching for a content marketing specialist, then your job description should require a background in digital marketing and brand communications. 

Academic Credentials

Anyone’s academic performance doesn’t always define their employability, but a degree is an indication that a person has at least learned basic skills crucial to the needs of your startup. If your startup focuses on robotics, you will need candidates with a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering degree specializing in Control and Robotic Engineering.

In any case, don’t make the mistake of onboarding candidates just because they graduated from prestigious universities. Not all academic performers possess the kind of work ethic upon which your startup thrives.

Technical Skills

Technology is evolving at a rapid rate, so it’s important to hire people who know their way around new tools and approaches for getting the job done. If your startup is working on a new mobile business app, you will want people who are proficient in using programming languages such as Swift and Python.

When looking for technically proficient people, require candidates to present certificates and other documents showing that they have undergone training to acquire such skills. You can also gauge their level of mastery by giving them tests to complete before they can proceed to the next step of the process. 

Soft Skills

Apart from technical skills, you should also look for people possessing essential soft skills. These are not job-specific skills but they demonstrate a person’s attitude and professionalism in completing a certain task or project.

When drafting job descriptions for each vacancy, opt to require soft skills such as time management, effective written and verbal communication, and organization. If you’re looking for managers to help run your startup, then consider requiring candidates to prove their potential to be a team player and a leader.

In any case, your ideal candidate depends on the goals you want your recruitment campaign to focus on. Use this profile to set a standard for choosing people who can contribute to the success of your startup.

3. Use your network 

Once you’re clear with who to recruit for your growing startup, you will need to determine where to find such talents. Platforms like LinkedIn and UpWork are great for hiring not just full-time employees but also freelancers who can support part of your business operations. 

You can make the recruitment process easier by reaching out to your professional network. Ask other startup founders if they could recommend people they trust. If you think that’s not possible, tap into your network and look for friends and family members who are eager to enlist. As long as they’re qualified based on your recruitment standards, then there’s no harm in getting them to work for you.

4. Come up with an appealing offer

It would be difficult to find top talents out there when there are other companies capable of rolling out attractive compensation packages. While your startup may lack the resources needed to attract the best people, you can still succeed if you can come up with an offer they couldn’t possibly refuse.

In addition to an attractive salary, you can also throw in incentives such as monthly bonuses, paid leaves, and flexible work hours. You will need to put your best foot forward if you want the best people to apply for a vacancy.

5. Maximize the screening process

Once you have shortlisted possible candidates to hire, you will need to narrow down your list further through a well-structured job interview. Aside from asking questions about the details they included in their application documents, consider asking situational questions. Provide candidates with scenarios that allow them to offer structured answers. This would be a good way to gauge not just their competence, but also the level of professionalism they may exhibit when they’re finally onboarded. 

Don’t take their interview responses at face value. You will need to delve deeper into their background and counter-check with previous employers. Always require candidates to provide you with a list of at least three character references.

6. Build a streamlined onboarding process

Once a candidate has passed the screening process, you will need to onboard them properly. Often, the best candidates wouldn’t go past the training phase because they’ve encountered bad experiences during their first week. 

For this reason, make sure the onboarding process allows for a seamless transition to your startup culture. Orient candidates on the values and goals you cherish. Then, maximize the rest of the training period for understanding company processes, protocols, and workflows. A well-structured onboarding process should engage their needs and help them ease into their roles.

Endnote

It takes a lot to build a startup, but the secret to a successful one lies in recruiting quality talents. Keep this guide in mind and supply your startup with people who are committed, competent, and caring.