Finding and recruiting the appropriate people may be difficult, whether you're tripling the workforce in your first office or establishing far-flung international hubs. Despite this, according to several recruiting experts, many founders and management teams do not devote enough time and energy to the hiring process.
The most common blunder is failing to put in the necessary time and effort, which involves clearly defining jobs and applicant briefs, making quick choices, and not holding prospects in interview limbo.
Access to talent is a strategic asset. Because a brilliant concept can only be implemented with two things: capital and human capital, and not having access to talent will kill you.
Getting the brief right
Startups need to be very clear about precisely what they want and how that individual will fit into the organization, both from a skills and experience standpoint and from a cultural perspective.
That is also true when it comes to international expansion, where you must ensure that you have the proper profile for each market and have the necessary skills and culture fit.
Most of the time, searches don't work or endure for a long time because there's no clear vision of precisely what the client wants. This is understandable because founders may not have hired for high-profile jobs like VP of marketing previously.
Procrastination's dangers
Companies also do not begin calculating how much personnel they will require early enough. So it appears that the greatest issue is that you employ much too late. And by ‘too late,' it means that when you raise funds and get funds, you create a broad recruiting strategy, and once you've raised funds, they start to create a very detailed hiring plan.
There are various reasons for this, but it has an apparent impact on the company's scaling. At the same time, it may save money on wages in the short term; it is ultimately ineffective and the “wrong sort of runway extension.”
Make sure your pitch is perfect
While companies spend a lot of time fine-tuning their pitch decks for investors, they don't do the same for potential hires, which is a missed opportunity. So why don't you make your recruiting pitch as attractive as your investment pitch so that people would respond when you reach out to them?”
Founders and top managers frequently overlook the fact that the candidate is unfamiliar with the company's mission, culture, potential, and the role's possibility.
Many people think you should show up to the first meeting with that information and declare your everlasting love for the company. But, instead, you find it in well-funded businesses, where the founders believe, “Well, you know, everyone should want to work here.”
The requirement for speed
Startups are known for their speed and agility when getting things done, but when it comes to hiring, some of them take their time.
The problem is, candidates are enthusiastic at first, and then they start talking to people and get even more enthusiastic. Then there's the matter of the delays. And when the momentum fades, it gets more challenging to take them through the process, and it becomes more difficult to close.
You should hire for the future
Startups should take a longer perspective when recruiting potential workers, examining applicants for their fit with the firm's requirements as it grows.
The fundamental question you should ask is, “Where am I in terms of phase and growth, and what am I heading into right now?”
Hiring up to 15 people will be recommendations — it will come from your network, but there will be no gas pedal there. But, again, it's an issue that you can't recruit 250 individuals from that network. Typically, 10-person startups underestimate this, resulting in delays and missteps.
There are a few critical periods at which startup CEOs confront changes in employee growth: from 10 to 50, 50 to 100, and beyond that, you can't possibly know everyone in the business, and the focus switches to how to communicate successfully with the whole organization.
Continue to repeat yourself indefinitely
The coronavirus epidemic forced the entire globe to work remotely, and it appears that a hybrid model will become the standard in the following years. All of this makes onboarding new employees and ensuring that they understand your company's culture, values, and goals even more difficult.
Staff must get regular, unambiguous communications from those at the top to ensure that they are completely aligned with the company's vision, direction, and goals.
