While making the first hires is an exciting and significant milestone for startup businesses, the process isn’t a walk in the park. This is a challenging time as new recruits can make or break your business. Hiring the right people brings along the much-needed skills and experience to grow your business. On the other hand, wrong hires put the success of your business at risk. That said, consider the following tips during your startup business hiring process.
1. Know Who You Are Looking for
Sourcing the right candidates is a serious challenge faced by both small and established companies. Fortunately, startups can use several strategies to improve the quantity and quality of candidates that they attract. Before looking for potential candidates, begin by creating a candidates’ persona for all your open roles. Personas will make it easy to determine important things about the vacant position, such as minimum skills required, experience level, location of potential candidates, and how and where you will find them.
Besides creating a candidates’ persona, you should also design your potential employees’ value proposition. Unlike the persona, the EVP should define attributes offered by your company to candidates and attributes that ideal candidates should exhibit. Outlining what you are looking for and your offers will put you in a better place to market your business to job seekers.
With these two defined, you can then create clear job descriptions with all details that job seekers need to know before applying for the position. Ensure that your job description highlights additional information beyond basic requirements, such as employee benefits and perks, that make your business stand out as candidates review the vacancy.
2. Know Where to Find Top Talent
Another important strategy for the hiring process is to consider is knowing where to find top talents and skills. Sure, you can train your employees but this costs money. While you may not have advice from employment experts, enough brand awareness, and resources to find good candidate, you shouldn’t rely solely on traditional hiring processes, such as job boards, to find top talent. Therefore, you can find good candidates by;
- Asking colleagues and friends for referrals
- Networking – you can meet top talents by attending recruitment and networking events
- Use social media – share links to your job description to broaden your candidate search
- Work with recruiters – employment experts can connect you with qualified candidates.
3. Understand Legal Hiring Requirements
Most businesses often ignore or underestimate the importance of observing employment laws when making their hires. However, hiring new employees often opens the door for new employment risks. Besides, the modern workforce is educated and understands their rights as employees.
Therefore, as you prepare to hire your first employees, ensure that you are well-versed with state and federal laws guiding employment. This includes discrimination laws in your job descriptions, laws guiding hours worked and wages, and more. Your hiring process needs to include all of this.
Note that contravening employment laws can lead to serious consequences, such as hefty fines, which can affect your struggling startup. As such, it is best to consult employment lawyers as you prepare to make your first hires.
4. Revamp Your Interview Process
As you get applications from various job seekers, you should narrow them down to top candidates to be interviewed. Interviews are a crucial step, especially for startups looking to expand their teams. Therefore, don’t conduct traditional interviews characterized by typical question and answer sessions.
You should observe some best practices when interviewing potential candidates. This will help you make informed decisions when making your hire. Some interviewing tips to consider include;
- Ask candidates to complete tasks – the best way to evaluate potential candidates’ experience is by giving them hands-on tasks. While the task shouldn’t be complicated, it is a sure way of ensuring that they have the right skills.
- Check their background – running a background check is also important when screening your applicants. This is a good way to verify information provided in their cover letters and CVs.
- Check their references – checking references is also a good way of learning your candidate’s qualifications and work ethic.
The interview process helps in sorting the right candidates. You can make job offers based on interview results or continue with other selection criteria. If you think you have found the right candidate, the next step is solidifying your onboarding process. A good onboarding process is crucial for long-term employee growth and cultural fit.
One important aspect of onboarding is ensuring that your new employees understand the company culture. This enables them to learn crucial details that will help them succeed in their roles, such as departmental collaboration and communicating with their colleagues.
The Bottom Line
While the recruitment process is typically hard, hiring for startup businesses is harder. For growing companies with limited resources, making the wrong hires can break your business. Therefore, you should be cautious with your hiring decisions to find the best talent.
