Recruitment Tips For Startups: Hire From Day One

Hiring processes have evolved tremendously across all industries due to a global competition to attract the best talent. If you're new to the market, these startup recruiting tips are likely to be helpful.

Usually, behind creating a startup, there is a unique value proposition; but to develop that unique proposition, you need to create a unique team.

When a company is created, the founding team has a double challenge: making the startup profitable (in the shortest time possible) and building a team that helps fulfill the dream.

Probably among the priorities of the first stage will be:

• Meeting minimum revenue to stay afloat.

• Keep customers happy as they come in.

• Develop a model that aims for profitability in a given period of time or accelerate the process in the next investment round.

What will help you achieve these goals?

Invest in building a great team

This advice will most likely seem premature if you are a startup. Besides, if almost 80% of hiring teams capture the best talent, how do you stand out from the already positioned competition in the job market?

We'll show you how to attract the candidates you need to boost your startup and fulfill your dream in this insight.

Hire from day one

If you are just launching into the entrepreneurial world, you and your founding team likely have an endless list of tasks. Maybe your proposal is still being validated in the market, you barely have clients, and you're focused on staying afloat. This is the scenario of almost all startups when they go to market.

So how do you go about "hiring from day one"?

It's just as hard as finding a quality research papers help service. Most startups don't think about hiring until they need to hire: they need to scale quickly after raising a round of investment, the product has been well received, and more people are needed for the sales team, or support, or customer success... or all of them.

This type of situation forces you to accelerate processes and hire quickly, running the risk of spending a lot of resources and time identifying candidates. However, you can prepare the ground and start recruiting long before you have the conditions to hire. Here's how to do it!

Build your employer brand from the start

Just because you're not in a position to offer new jobs from day one doesn't mean you can't start your hiring process. 

When you have already set out to attract the right candidates, it will be easier to know each other. For his part, the candidate will already know your organization, its values, and how it works. From the company's point of view, you will have one or more profiles that you will have followed up, and it will be easier for you to attract them.

There are many employer branding strategies that you can develop from the beginning with very economical actions. You can share the backstage of your company on social networks, the workspaces, testimonials from the team, useful content to build a community of followers (among whom your future hires may be found), etc.

Work with talent pools

"Hire all the time" is an idea that you should embrace and be able to convey to your team. It doesn't matter if you will be in a position to sign a contract in a few months.

If you can identify early the people you want to add to your team and work strategically to attract that talent, you will be more likely to fill the available positions with the people you want. That's what working with a talent pipeline is all about.

How can you do it?

Participate and encourage your team to join online discussions and events in your industry. This will help them prepare, make the brand visible, and perhaps make the first contact with future hires.

Also, if you want to go a step further, work from the beginning on your Career Site and use it as a priority channel to make your employer brand visible. Work on your web positioning and, even if you don't have vacancies available yet, share the offers you intend to publish soon. This way, future candidates will have an idea of the opportunities they can expect.

Create a hiring plan

Having a hiring plan can be very useful in setting goals and setting the course for your startup's growth. It helps to answer and map out actions based on these three basic questions:

• What needs to happen in the business to make a specific hire?

• How much time will you need to make that hire once the vacancy is posted?

• When should you start promoting the available vacancy?

It is a common mistake for companies to start promoting their job openings just when they need to hire. As I said initially, this leads them to rush the process, and they do not always consider whether the new hire meets the candidate profile they need.  

Think of job offers as you think of your product

It is likely that, even though you have generated a talent base from your employer branding strategies and other organic actions, you are considering running advertising campaigns to drive recruitment.

This is where many companies "get carried away" and replicate traditional models for new hires: Contact with recruitment agencies, campaigns on every job board out there, endless requirements to fill the position, and so on. However, candidates now play a much more active role in the labor market, bringing new strategies to the table to attract the right candidates.

Establish a starting point. If sales strategies are evolving and you are constantly considering new ways to make your product attractive, why not do the same when finding the ideal talent for your company?

Define your "ideal candidate" profiles

Should you have only one ideal candidate profile? In this insight, we offer you some ideas to don't limit yourself when assessing various candidate profiles. It might surprise you how valuable it is to bet on the diversity of talent in companies.

However, just as it happens when you define your ideal client, you must segment and identify the profiles that fit your needs. To define your Candidate Persons and boost an effective recruitment campaign, you must take into account:

• What technical skills are indispensable?

• What soft skills will you take into account to consider them?

• Should they have previous experience in similar companies?

• What aspects do they value in an organization, and how can you satisfy them?

• What characteristics do they need to meet to be "compatible" with the company's culture?

• What social media platforms do they consume?

• What communication channels are most effective for contacting them?

The answers to questions of this type will allow you to better focus your strategy and opt for techniques closer to inbound recruiting. Among the main advantages, two stand out:

You will be able to identify the most effective channels to promote your offers.

You will create ads better adapted to your target.

Don't turn the job description into a list of requirements

It's simple. If you are clear about who you are trying to hire, the description of your job offer and all the messages you use to promote it should be attractive to those profiles. Don't focus on the requirements. Instead, highlight what you offer your future employees and how they will benefit from joining your team.  

View onboarding as an investment

You've probably read a lot about the importance of providing a good candidate experience. Most companies are very clear about this and strive to ensure it. However, contrary to what many think, the candidate journey does not end with the hire.

The onboarding process is just as important to the success of new hires. Just as the recruitment and selection process focuses on attracting and hiring the best candidates, their retention depends largely on onboarding.

The reason is very simple. Think about all the time and resources you have invested in hiring that person. Make sure you give them all the tools to do their job and facilitate their onboarding process. The new employee must have more than one reason to want to stay in your organization.

Again, you must think the same way you do with your customers. Just as we trace a funnel to generate value around our product, new hires must go through a whole cycle until they can make significant contributions to your company. Taking care of the onboarding process will help you accelerate that process.

Bring an onboarding plan and get results in the short term!

About Author: This article is written by our marketing team at HR Cloud. HR Cloud is a leading provider of HR solutions, including recruiting, onboarding, employee engagement, and intranet software. Our aim is to help your company improve employee engagement, employee productivity, and to save you valuable time!