Ways to Hire a Rockstar Team for your Startup
‘A solo-entrepreneur swimming through a sea of hurdles’, ‘a one-man-army fighting against all odds to reach his goal of establishing a successful startup’ – these are all fairy tales. In reality, nobody who’s ever scaled a business from the ground up did it alone. A startup is a collective effort. It requires the talent of may bright, talented minds, working in harmony to be successful. Hiring a brilliant team is pivotal to your startup’s success. The quality of your team will have a direct implication on your company’s product quality and branding. The people you choose to work with have the ability to make or break your business.
Hiring is a tricky task, but hiring for startups can be even trickier. As a infant company with limited finance, hiring the wrong employee can potentially be the end of your startup. Therefore, you have to be very careful with your decisions and do your best to hire the cream of the crop.
Below you can find some suggestions on hiring the best startup employees.
Networking events are meant for meeting new people and building connections. Therefore, they are the hub for fresh talents who are looking for companies who can hire them. They provide a healthy environment for networking and interaction of like-minded individuals. You can initiate and expand your talent hunt by taking the time to speak at such events and meetups. Speaking engagements are great opportunities to promote your company’s vision and goals to potential employees and encourage them to apply for different positions in your company.
Fresh college graduates hold a lot of potential. They are in touch with academics, have a zeal to make a place for themselves in the corporate world and are looking for exciting work-environments which are also youth-friendly. Startups help fresh college graduates kickstart their journey in the corporate world with a sharp growth curve. It’s a friendly exchange in the sense that both the fresher and the startup can learn and gain from each other. Thus, collaborating with college/university placement programs is another good away of talent acquisition. Various rounds like written, group-discussion and personal interview give you the chance to carefully assess the lot and select the ones who seem suitable for your company.
Hiring via social media platforms like LinkedIn is also gaining momentum. LinkedIn and similar interfaces, allows you to have a textual conversation with your potential co-workers without the hassle and awkwardness of meeting them in person at the very start. This gives the potential employee a chance to build a rapport with you before the official interview happens. It’s comfortable, adds a personal touch to the conversation and helps you and your potential co-worker to warm up to each other before meeting under professional conditions.
Referrals are another great way of talent acquisition. In general, it can be hard to screen talent from a heap of candidates, all eager to please you and get in your good books. It can get very overwhelming to judge what’s good for your company in such a short period. This is where referrals help. When a trusted source refers a candidate to you, it makes your work easier. Since the candidate carries a reference of someone you have faith in, you can proceed with the interview with more ease. In most cases, entrepreneurs take their trusted source’s word for granted and skip the interview step altogether. In short, your work gets reduced to half and you have more faith in your potential candidate, thanks to the reference.