For any startup business, recruiting a team of diligent workers is one of the most important tasks in the early stages, and should not be taken lightly. The people within a business, particularly a startup business, will make or break the company within its first year.
If you’re in the process of launching a startup, considering the 6 tips below when it comes to hiring your first team, and you won’t go wrong.
Have a clear understanding of your recruitment goals and how to measure
Like any team within a business, the HR or recruiting team should have clear goals and methods to measure those goals. In terms of recruiting, these could include the time, resource and cost of recruiting an employee. Identifying and agreeing internally what these goals should be is the first step, but what’s just as important is how you measure these goals, and how you report on them and understand what’s working.
Having clear strategies and processes for employing new hires is vital. This will allow you to work in a specific system, which accounts for the time and resources spent on recruiting activity. You can then, after a certain period, measure how closely performance is to your original goals, in terms of the time and resource taken to hire new employees.
Don’t Waste Time on Manual Work, Focus on What’s Important
Img source: homebaseservices.com
Much of the recruitment process can be manual work, from having to create job ads, to respond to applicants, the time taken can soon start to add up. In order to work more efficiently and allow your HR team to focus on the more important things, consider using software that can help ease the load, such as CIPHR HR systems for example, which offers a range of tools and applications for HR teams.
Similarly, consider using job platforms such as Indeed or Monster, which offer inbuilt facilities that help to manage applications more effectively, but using templated responses and pre-screening potential candidates before inviting them to interview.
Build your Employer Brand from Day One
Building an employer brand is a great way to showcase your startup as a potential employer, what it’s like to work there and what the business is about in terms of its values and opportunities for potential candidates.
Many businesses have their own separate websites for their employer brand, which gives the room to really sell the benefits of working there and help to attract the top candidates, which can otherwise be difficult to portray in a single job ad or smaller section of a corporate website.
Have a Clear Understanding of your Target Candidate
Img source: cv-library.co.uk
One of the biggest ways of wasting time, effort and money in the recruiting process is by not having a clear and full understanding of the candidate you are looking to hire. It is highly recommended by leading recruitment experts to spend the required time, perhaps working with the management of the particular department, to fully understand the role and the right type of candidate to fill it. This means thinking beyond experience and direct skills but also considering the type of personality a particular role requires, such as a people person for a sales or customer service role or perhaps looking for someone who can work in isolation for a more technical role. Nowadays, psychometric tests in recruitment are a standard procedure that all major companies follow since it’s proven that efficiency rises when people are in a department compatible with their personality traits. You can visit TestPartnership.com to find different cognitive ability tests to help you with your recruitment.
Spending some extra time understanding exactly what type of person you’re looking for will always be worth it in the end, and save time and money in the recruitment process. Figuring out their strengths and weaknesses when it comes to finding a new employee is not an easy thing to do.
Spend Time Developing an Effective Interview Process
Once you’ve got your shortlist of interviewees, it can be tempting to jump straight into the interviews to keep things moving. However, an interview without a clear process is almost always likely to fail. Not only that, but it can look incredibly unprofessional to the prospective candidate, and result in them not accepting a job offer if given.
More often than not, you may need specific processes for different types of roles you are interviewing for. For example, if interviewing for a technical or development role, you may need to focus more on specific skills and experience, and allow the candidate a chance to demonstrate these skills beyond just talking, such as a test. On the other end of the scale, for a sales or customer service role, you may need to spend more time getting to know the candidate on a personal level and how they deal with certain situations. In this instance, it may be better to incorporate some form of roleplay to see whether they can keep their cool with difficult customers or clients.
Don’t Neglect the Onboarding Process
Img source: businessinsider.com
One of the biggest mistakes to make when recruiting for a new role is to neglect the onboarding process. It can be tempting to think that once a candidate has accepted a job offer, the hard work is over, however, this is not wise. It’s estimated that 1 in 10 people who leave a business is due to poor onboarding or a negative experience towards the start of their time with an employer.
In addition to wanting to give a good impression and keep the new hire happy in their new role, it’s also incredibly important to onboard so that the employee can actually do their job properly. A lack of training early on, as well as a proper introduction to the business, it’s people and systems is vital in ensuring the hire will be able to hit the ground running.
It’s highly recommended to spend the necessary time creating and developing your onboarding process so that new hires have a full understanding of the business, it’s processes and most importantly, their new role.
