ultimate guide to hiring the best team for your startup
TRANSCRIPT
Anne St. Hilaire
www.recruiter.com
YourStartup
for
The Ultimate Guide to Hiring
BestTeam
The
What’s Inside
Intro . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
What Should You Be Looking for in
Potential Candidates? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Remember: Hiring Will Change
as Your Startup Grows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
How Can You Get the Best Candidates
to Work With You? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
3 ©2015 Recruiter.com | The Ultimate Guide to Hiring the Best Team for Your Startup
When your startup is just getting off the ground, you need to make some
careful hiring decisions. You probably don’t have the resources you need
to hire all the employees you’d like to hire. Instead, you have to prioritize.
So, where do you start? Who do you hire first? How do you convince
great candidates that your startup is the company to work for?
If all of these questions seem familiar to you, you’re not alone. It’s tough
to determine how to go about hiring for your brand new company - but
we’re here to cover everything you need to know about growing a team
of hard-working individuals who want to push your company to the next
level. Here are some important things to consider...
4 ©2015 Recruiter.com | The Ultimate Guide to Hiring the Best Team for Your Startup
There has never been a more exciting time to be
an entrepreneur. In fact, being an entrepreneur has
moved from the status of ‘mad scientist’ to officially
cool, thanks, largely to a string of explosive
entrepreneurial success stories that now dominate
the media, many of which now hold lofty positions
in the Fortune 500.
Banks, angel investors, venture capitalists, celebrities,
TV personalities, TV shows—and everyday folk who
have accumulated wealth during the recent boom
years—now queue up to seed fund the next powerful
start-up. In the US, SMEs now account for nearly half
of GDP and 85 percent of the jobs created in the
EU between 2002 and 2010 came from SMEs.
But, the entrepreneurial dream does have a dark
underbelly. Startup failure rates are, of course, high,
with reports suggesting UK three-year failure rates
to be around 30 percent, and in the U.S., these three-
year failure rates are at 44 percent.
So, entrepreneurs have a lot of things to get right
when starting and managing their business idea to
ensure success, one area of which is the hiring of top
talent, which can be a key differentiator in those
critical early years.
But it’s not just about finding top talent, it’s about
finding people that are culturally suited to that
unique, energetic, random, chaotic, post crash,
generation two startup environment where there
is now a more cultivated expectation of real
What Should You Be Looking for in Potential Candidates?Based on “6 Must Have Qualities for a Startup New Hire” by Kazim Ladimeji
5 ©2015 Recruiter.com | The Ultimate Guide to Hiring the Best Team for Your Startup
success as opposed to just overinflated valuations
and futures that never arrive. In today’s startup
environment, talent must have more than just ideas,
passion and energy; it also needs commercial
thinking, calculated risk taking and an unswerving
focus on delivering tangible results against an agreed
business plan.
To help employers and recruiters who may be
staffing up for a startup, we have set out a list of six
ideal qualities you should be looking for in your
startup recruits to help maximize your chances of
realizing your dreams.
1 . Flexibility
There may be a lack of established processes and
procedure in a startup and the environment can
become chaotic as you turn left, then right and then
left to respond to customer’s needs and a changing
marketplace, which you may be acutely sensitive too
at these early stages. Change will be constant in a
startup environment and employees who are not
flexible and adaptable will struggle to be effective in
a startup; so, always hire candidates who are open
to change.
2 . Customer and Interpersonal Skills
We live in a world of mass customization; customers
are more sophisticated and fussy and want products
and services that are more tailored to their
preferences. This means organizations are having
6 ©2015 Recruiter.com | The Ultimate Guide to Hiring the Best Team for Your Startup
to become more customer focused and become
better at communicating with customers and
understanding their needs. If smaller firms are to
compete with bigger firms in these area, they need
all hands on deck, meaning all employees must be
able to effectively engage with customers. There’s
no hiding place in small companies. Always hire
employees who understand the customer and who
you can take or even send to see a client if need be.
3 . Loyalty
Loyalty takes on a disproportionately large
significance in a smaller company. If a company
of 50 loses one person in a year, it loses 2 percent
of its workforce. Yet, a company of five loses 20
percent of its workforce, seriously eroding its ability
to deliver against client commitments. Loyalty is
one of the most important qualities to look for in
a new startup recruit.
4 . Creativity
In a startup environment, there will be very few
established procedures and you’ll be facing many
internal and customer problems for the first time.
You’ll need employees who are used to solving
problems and coming up with original solutions
and, they must be capable of doing so with limited
resources. Problem solving and creativity are key
skills that you should screen for.
5 . Passion for What They/You Do
In a startup environment, you might not have all the
correct HR procedures in place to motivate your staff,
yet you’ll need them to be completely driven. Try
and hire people who are borderline obsessive about
what they do, that is they spend their days and nights
thinking/doing it, and then all you really need to do is
channel it. This kind of raw passion can be the engine
of startups.
7 ©2015 Recruiter.com | The Ultimate Guide to Hiring the Best Team for Your Startup
6 . Can Be Channeled and is Commercially Focused
The quickest way to burn through your seed funding
without return is intense, uncontrolled creativity
without any short, medium or long term focus. This,
of course, works for a while but can’t go on for ever.
And there is much less patience for it in this post-
crash generation 2 startup world. So, while it is
important to hire passionate and creative people,
also make sure they are, to some degree,
commercially minded and understand the value of
delivering a usable, customer-focused end product
at some discernible point in the near future. You must
find enthusiastic talent, which can be channeled.
Although we understand that you may not be able to
get the perfect balance of each of these qualities in
an individual person, at the very least you should be
able to generate a balance of these qualities across
your entire team.
8 ©2015 Recruiter.com | The Ultimate Guide to Hiring the Best Team for Your Startup
Hiring the right employees is crucial to your startup’s
success. It’s important to know the type of worker
you need for each specific stage of your company’s
lifecycle, as your company’s growth will rely on
different traits and strengths as it grows. Here’s a
simple guide to hiring the right employees for every
phase of your startup:
Stage 1: The Jack of All Trades and Individual Contributors (1-10 Employees)
The onset of a new business is the most volatile stage.
Your team will be dealing with the highest levels of
uncertainty, and the challenges you all face will
change dramatically on a day-to-day basis. Thus,
at the beginning, you’ll need to hire people with
versatility — those who thrive on creative
problem-solving and strategizing.
These initial employees will be developing your
mission statement, product, business processes, and
more. They are the inventors, designers, and R&D
types who have experience developing new products
and businesses, as well as the confidence to take on
projects themselves with little to no supervision.
Stage 2: The Managers, Builders, and Improvers (11-50 Employees)
At this stage, you’ll need people who can grow your
business at a fast pace and manage the rapid rates
of change that accompany launching a big new
product or service. I’d advise looking for managers
and builders — people who can take the initiative
and who demonstrate strong organizational skills.
Remember: Hiring Will Change as Your Startup GrowsBased on “Hiring the Right Employees for Every Phase of Your Startup” by Matt Faustman
9 ©2015 Recruiter.com | The Ultimate Guide to Hiring the Best Team for Your Startup
Since you’re a startup and are building your business
from scratch, it’s best to catalog certain aspects of
your business as you grow. All of the nitty-gritty work
should be documented and organized so that when
new employees are onboarded, they have a solid base
of knowledge from which to learn right off the bat.
In addition, you’ll also likely need improvers — people
who understand how to reengineer and enhance
inefficient processes; people who can ensure your
growth remains sustainable. By adding scalability and
structure to your company’s systems, improvers
can enforce direction and stability by eliminating
unnecessary bureaucracies and gridlocks. The best
candidates for these improver positions are detail-
oriented and will deliver exceptional customer service.
Stage 3: Experienced Managers and Specialized Contributors (50-200 Employees)
One of the many upsides to this stage (if done
correctly) will be your ability to predict your business
needs further in the future. This means you can start
hiring qualified managers — people who can follow
established processes and who have histories of
repeated task execution at high-quality levels.
It’s also best to hire in-house counsel and contractors
to build the executive team. This in-house staff can
help you accomplish specialized tasks in an efficient
and knowledgeable manner once they’ve been
integrated with your team and understand your
business and legal needs.
10 ©2015 Recruiter.com | The Ultimate Guide to Hiring the Best Team for Your Startup
Stage 4: Specialists (200+)
Once you’ve made it to this stage of your business,
you’ll need to start hiring much more specialized
employees. Hire a VP of talent, along with specialized
recruiters for each company division; public relations
and social media specialists are also great additions to
your business, and they can develop the company’s
brand and image in a variety of spaces and platforms.
This stage is the most difficult to hire for because
you’ll need people who can accomplish highly
specific tasks (and do them well). You may have to
look far outside of your established employee
networks to find the right candidates.
Throughout every stage of this process, remember
this: at no point can you compromise on hiring the
absolute best people for the job, nor can you sacrifice
building great company culture in the process. It may
take a while to hire the right people, but these people
are going to ultimately be the determining factor in
whether or not your business succeeds. So put in
that work — and good luck!
11 ©2015 Recruiter.com | The Ultimate Guide to Hiring the Best Team for Your Startup
Startups can be a tricky hiring environment. You need
to balance hiring good employees and workers who
have an entrepreneurial spirit. Melding the two to form
the best startup team might be harder than you think.
TechRepublic.com says, “The team behind your idea is
the most important piece of the startup puzzle. Once
you choose a great co-founder and go as far as you
can with just the two of you, it’s time to start building
the rest of your team. If you are a non-celebrity
entrepreneur, you will have to do some determined
recruiting to convince the right people to fill the
roles on your team.” Unless you’re Dr. Dre or Kim
Kardashian, keep reading.
Hone Your Time
Katie Hughes, director of talent at VC firm Draper
Fisher Jurvetson, told TechRepublic the top hiring
challenges are, “Lack of time and a less-than-
inspiring story.”
What that comes down to is enabling others in your
company to do the recruiting for their departments.
“Referral programs, function-specific recruiting
teams and consistent feedback metrics are cost-
efficient ways I’ve seen founders offset recruiting
responsibilities by empowering their employees,”
Hughes said.
How Can You Get the Best Candidates to Work With You?Based on “How to Hire the Best Startup Team” by Keith Griffin
12 ©2015 Recruiter.com | The Ultimate Guide to Hiring the Best Team for Your Startup
TheGlobalRecruiter.com offers some good
perspective on hiring that is relevant to startups.
“Very few companies have any effective means of
working remotely or of capturing information at
meetings with candidates … Firms that build a
portable IT resource that is fully
compatible with, and connected
to, the main office infrastructure
will save hours,” the article says.
Be prepared to get out of the
office to recruit. Just make sure
you have the right tools with you
to make the process time efficient.
Experts also say that it’s important
to stick to your guns when hiring. Don’t settle for
people who meet 90 percent of your needs because
that is 10 percent below your company’s needs.
Good Benefits
“Startups are risky for everyone involved. Convincing
people to drink your particular batch of Kool-Aid is
one thing, but you also have to acknowledge that
they have something to lose,” the article points out.
There’s also more to employment than Foosball
tables and free cappuccinos. As
TechRepublic observes, “As you hire,
focus on the personal and
professional growth of your
employees. This is the best way to
show employees that you care and
that you see the value they add to
your team.” There’s a need to make
employees, especially at high-
turnover startups, want to stay there
for the long term. Turnover is always
disruptive but even more so at a startup company that
more than others needs consistency during its volatile
first year.
One good example of personal growth would be no
vacation policy. That doesn’t mean no vacations for
13 ©2015 Recruiter.com | The Ultimate Guide to Hiring the Best Team for Your Startup
employees but, instead, allowing employees to take
time off as needed with the understanding that their
accomplishments justify the policy.
The no-vacation policy goes back to the point that you
hire people who are 100 percent in sync with your
organization’s needs and culture. You’re not going to
hire slackers who abuse the vacation policy and they
will appreciate your trust in them.
Another benefit to consider is free food from
breakfast through dinner and including snacks. An
obvious benefit is it keeps employees at the office
and, ideally, eating nutritious food instead of fast-food
fare to keep employees healthy. Plus there’s the added
benefit of freeing up their personal time. Errands can
be accomplished during time spent packing lunch or
buying it. It makes for a less stressful personal life.
Finally, one last benefit for professional growth would
be putting the right tools in employees’ hands. Don’t
enact a top-down policy on acquiring technology. Give
employees a budget and let them find what works
best for them.
Make Hiring for Your Startup Enjoyable
All in all, hiring for your startup can be a challenge, no
matter what positions you are looking to fill. Startups,
like many other organizations, have to look at many
factors when it comes to a desirable candidate, such
as keeping up with ever-changing work environments,
transferable skills, and a work history that proves they
are the right fit.
But if you make sure that you are pinpointing the
right strengths and looking in the right places, finding
hard-working and innovative individuals to join your
team will be an attainable (and even fun) task. You
will find that in your recruiting you will meet many
individuals that can help your company grow and
connect you with the right people, which makes the
entire process worth it. Use these tips when hiring for
your startup and you will see a strong, dedicated and
passionate team form right before your eyes!