5 things to keep in mind when hiring for your startup.
More startups are hiring everyday, infact there are more than 2,000 startup jobs posted on Craigslist alone - not to include other job sites. Competition for the best available talent in sky high and startups need to get creative and really dig deep to find people who can deliver when the chips are down. Hiring for startups has become so difficult, that we have started noticing a trend where some more established startups even acq-hire other startups just to get access to their staff, it’s nothing new these days.
To help you along in the hiring process, we have a number of things we believe you should pay close attention to.
1.) While “rock-star ability” is great, it shouldn’t come at the expense of team chemistry. Most startups often begin with very small teams, 1-5 people and as such, complimentary skills and being able to get along is very important. It is comparable to a team sport like soccer, having a player with amazing skill and ability can win you games but it will never win you the league title. It is a ‘team’ that wins you titles. Focus on getting people with the ability to do the job who can also fit into the company groove without causing a break in unity.
2.) It is never easy to find the best people. I have heard many HR people and startup founders who I talked to and surveyed before building and launching College2Startup talk about how difficult it is to find the right people and convince them to join. Just like you are chasing these crop of talent, there are hundreds of other startups after them too. It takes hard work, a long time to land these people. One big advice I will give is this: you must be able to sell your vision to anyone and get them to buy into it to. If you are able to do this, number 2 becomes less difficult all of a sudden.
3.) The best hires aren’t always those with 5+ years of experience. It bothers me a lot when I see all these startups posting jobs and for each listing, they require 5+ years experience as an absolute marker. Some people happen to believe that if you’ve been writing code for a company for 5 years, you are automatically better than one who is just graduating college. This may be true for certain positions, for example, a PR position. Often times, the 5 year veteran has honed their skill and also built a long list of contacts that could come in handy. However, there are some jobs at startups that don’t necessarily have to follow this route. Being a code wrangler at a company for 5 years doesn’t always mean you are better than the kid who just graduated. It’s a skill thing. Because a player has been playing professional basketball for 5 years doesn’t make him better than every rookie coming into their first season. Look at skill rather than number of years, consider projects done rather than number of full time jobs held etc.
4.) Target a larger (but targeted) pool of prospectives if you really want to capture the best. Most startups today find their new hires based on referrals of people already working there or referral of friends. There are only so many people you can reach out to by doing this. Targeting a bigger group always means you are increasing your odds of getting better talent on your team. This is why we started College2Startup. There are currently over 7k highly targeted people looking for startup jobs on the site and growing. That’s 7,000 prospectives to select from. Your odds of improving the quality of your team is better.
5.) The best talent out there want to see potential for growth. Show that you aren’t running a lifestyle startup for life. Very few of the most gifted web developers, designers, marketers etc will settle for ‘startup pay’ and ‘lifestyle’ forever. Their biggest motivation is often the desire to grow a small project from alpha to it’s best possible valuation and/or exit. Show you and your company can do that and you improve your chances immediately.
Have you hired for a startup in the past or currently doing so? what are some important things you’ve considered during the process?
