As a startup founder, success relies on two crucial ingredients: a brilliant idea to begin with and a capable team to execute it. The first part rather comes naturally to startup founders, but the latter is where most struggle.
Recruiting in a theoretical sense seems more of a simple chain of tasks, but it is far more complicated than that. Things can be easy to miss from wanting to reach out to the best candidates to make sure that they are evaluated objectively.
To avoid, here are some things to consider making sure that your startup hiring is effective and helps you achieve your venture’s goals.
Define your hiring process
The overall objective of this exchange should be to simplify things for your startup and your potential applicants. We’ve all been on the other side at some point, and almost all of us had experience dealing with companies that have been unclear with their hiring process; you never know where you stand with them even after multiple tests and interviews. After the initial screening, have a maximum of two interviews focusing on different applicant skillset levels to keep things simple.
Complications in the startup hiring process arise when you have more questions about the applicant and the temptation to add more interactions after these stages. A proper hiring process will ensure that you get all the information you need in the respective steps laid out. To achieve this, you need extra help.
If you do not have experience managing human resources, you might want to hire a human resource consultant or reach out to people with this skillset through freelancing websites. They could help fetching out the exact policies and procedures required for getting the right talent on your team. Fortunately, if you have experience in this department, you still might schedule an appointment with another expert (an outsider) to watch out for any blind spots. You would be surprised how much a different brain to the table could improve and polish your hiring process.
Clear timelines go a long way
As a startup founder, it is not uncommon to be so swamped with work and new projects that hiring decisions might just be put on the back burner. While that makes sense, for the time being, it slows down your overall operations because you are delaying hiring the people you need to excel. To avoid this, have external deadlines for the applicants and internal deadlines for wrapping this in time.
This guideline seems rather easy and intuitive, but you would realize how much brain space it can occupy. The candidates who do not fulfill your requirements get them out of the way right away. Work with your human resource person to develop a clear sense of how and when you plan to filter down the applicants. They will guide you with efficient ways of doing this task.
A little communication goes a long way
To stand by your commitments, let the applicants know when they will hear back from you so that everything stays on track and you do not leave anyone hanging. This will prevent you from ghosting your applicants, which is very important if you want skilled job seekers to work for you.
Not only that, even when an applicant does not follow through for whatever reason, you will be ending on a note where it will be much easier for you and them to reach out if there is any appropriate future opportunity. It is important to leave the door open and express that clearly to the applicants. People are generally understanding. You will have a pipeline of candidates that prefill most of your requirements with this. It saves time and gives you time to focus on other things.
Share the burden
As established above, there is a lot of nitty-gritty involved in doing your startup hiring right. While you can have temporary consultants and other external experts on this subject, they will not always be there to guide you.
With human resources, the nature of tasks and issues is not always predictable, which is why sometimes startups fail before they even launch just because they could not deal with an unforeseen human resource crisis.
For instance, a simple miscommunication could lead to a lawsuit. However, with an organization on board that knows its way around dealing with it or even preventing such a thing from happening, you’re more likely to avoid such an occurrence.
Get more diverse candidates
Another reason to freelance your startup hiring is expanding your applicant pool.
You get people from diverse backgrounds, which is unlikely to be done independently, as company-led hiring calls are often concentrated in specific groups and areas. This reduces diversity and, in the long term, also affects the creativity that your startup is likely to have if involves people who are not similar.
Sometimes as founders, your focus could be more on the technical skillset in your future hires. With that, you would be running into the danger of not hiring well-rounded people. This means that your staff could lack soft skills like being a team player and engaging in conflict resolution. Many of the startups have learned this the hard way.
This is not a realization you want to have after your respective hire is way deep into their time in the company. Freelancing websites for hiring help you avoid that and much more.
Having mentioned all that, the biggest reason you should outsource your hiring is that it helps you develop synergies with other industries. One way you benefit from this in the short term is by making connections, and in the long run, your startup gets the opportunity to expand in ways it did not think it could.
Hiring does not have to be a daunting process, and a freelance platform will help you achieve that with minimal effort and maximum returns. However, if you wish to take this upon yourself, at least get connected for initial help that turns your startup hiring process seamless and successful.
