Advice for start-up hiring managers: What steps can your company take to give you an edge over your competition?
Having interviewed a number of business founders and hiring managers, we have been able to analyze and dissect what activities successful hiring teams take to attract and hire top talent.
Attracting and hiring top talent is essential for any successful business. However, with the highly competitive job market, it can be challenging for hiring teams to find and secure the best candidates. This blog post will outline the top four trends for successful hiring teams in attracting and hiring top talent.
Here are 4 common trends that came out of these conversations:
Know what your hiring for and make sure you’re interview panel does too.
Ahead of “kicking off” a new search make sure it’s clear to everybody involved in the interview process what it is you are hiring for. Candidates can very easily pick up on a disconnect and if two different interviewers have a different idea of what a specific position may look like, the candidate can be left confused and thus ask wider questions about the team/company.
Map out an Interview Process and Move Quickly.
A wise hiring manager one said “you should only ever be waiting on the candidate” when considering candidate Interview scheduling. In the current market, speed and interview turn around is becoming increasingly important for interviewing candidates.
Map out an interview process that allows you to effectively qualify candidates, in the shortest round of steps and timeline as possible. Top hiring managers at start-ups typically turn round first Interview to offer in <10 working days.
Best Offer First.
Most experienced candidates are running multiple interview processes at different companies, at the same time, meaning you’re typically going to have competition when considering making an offer to a potential hire. Making your best offer first (in the parameters of your company’s compensation leveling) signals to the candidate you’re serious about making a hire. Setting a realistic timeline for the offer to be accepted/declined is a widely debated hiring tactic, especially when making a strong early offer.
Executive “Sell Call”.
You’ve completed the entire interview loop, you’ve identified a top candidate to hire, and you’re working on the numbers to offer the candidates. Now is the time to bring in an executive within the org that you would be working in. At an early stage start-up, this should be a founder/co-founder, VC firm, or a C-Level exec. At a larger company, this should be an exec in your org, for instance, if you’re an engineer, the CTO would be a great exec to tag into the process. This demonstrates to a potential new hire the executive investment into said business function. It’s also a great opportunity for a candidate to ask high-level questions, including the future direction of the business and how their team plays a part in this journey.
