Four tips for hiring the right employees for your startup
Need to build a team to take your fledgeling business forward? Here are four tips for hiring the right employees for your startup.
When launching a startup, you need a number of critical skills. These include the ability to create an exceptional product or service and sell it, and to hire the right people to help you build a successful business.
So how can you find the right employees for your startup?
Many companies use job search sites like Gumtree Jobs to source the right candidates for job positions they’re looking to fill. Another option is to partner with schools such as Australis College to be the first to recruit fresh talent right after graduation.
But while you can use these sources to access a tool of the right people, how can you tell if an individual candidate is the right fit for your business? Here are four tips for hiring the right employees for your startup.
1) Assign the job of recruitment to a professional
Finding and hiring the right employees is a skill that not everyone possesses. So if you need to start building a talented team of people, one of the first hires you may want to make is a dedicated recruitment professional. (This can be a permanent employee, or you can outsource the work to a consultant.)
By assigning the work to a professional you can delegate the tedious but necessary task of sifting through hundreds of applications, knowing they’ll be able to spot the real gems amongst the resumes.
Not convinced yet? Here are three reasons why you should consider hiring a recruiter for your business:
- Time – the hiring process is a full-time job. If you’re allocating too little or too much time on this area of your startup, then you need someone to focus on this aspect. With this, you can concentrate on other facets of your company.
- Specialised positions – recruiters are trained to spot potential by just looking through resumes or reading cover letters of applicants. If you’re looking for specialised positions, they can study the requirements needed for the job to find the right candidate.
- Massive growth – hiring managers not only know how to spot exemplary talent, but they can also help you create projections on how many people you need to employ each month to keep up with your company’s growth without going over the budget.
2) Develop enticing benefits
As a startup, there’s a strong possibility that you won’t be able to compete with the salary grades of larger corporations. However, you can still attract top talent by providing attractive benefits.
For example, one competitive advantage you can offer your employees is a flexible working arrangement to allow them to balance their work and their personal lives. Research shows that “flexible and remote working practices are more likely to motivate staff and increase workplace productivity than financial incentives”.
3) Don’t put too much weight on resumes
While the previous achievements of your employees with their former employers are significant, you should not make your applicants’ resumes the ultimate gauge on how well they’ll fit in your company.
Instead, combine the resume data with other facets of the hiring process such as assessment tests and interviews so that you get a holistic idea of how well they would fit in the role.
Here are some assessment tests that can help you identify candidates with the potential to thrive in your company:
- Negative feedback test – this exam determines whether applicants can handle criticism and use it for personal growth. During the in-person interview, you can have a colleague deliver the negative feedback and assess how they respond to this unfavorable situation.
- Email test – an email test measures how well they communicate with their coworkers and your clients. This allows you to examine the way they write and structure their emails. Check if they respond promptly, too, as this is an essential skill for startups.
- Creativity and consistency test – here, you screen the candidate by asking them about assignments by asking them about assignments they had with their old company, what their ideas were, and how they executed the plan. Creativity is vital, but it should be paired with consistency and dependability.
- Proactivity test – an excellent way to assess proactivity is if they ask questions during or after the interview. It shows their interest and enthusiasm about the role. Being proactive is an indispensable skill when working for a startup because you need your employees to be able to have the initiative to make independent decisions based on what they think is best for the company.
- Personality tests – are a superb way to make the right decision when choosing between candidates and put them in roles that suit them and their personalities. Harrison Assessment Tests can help you to identify candidates’ job and task preferences, personality types, interests, and etc.
4) Be involved
While you may have delegated the hiring process to your recruitment department, or individual or outsourced professional assignment with recruitment, they’re only doing the preliminary round of eliminating those they deem unfit for the positions you’re looking for.
In the end, the decision of hiring should be up to you. So make sure you’re involved in the process so that you know exactly who is joining your team.
Photo by Clem Onojeghuo
