Ask any successful business founder about their top three priorities, and I guarantee they will mention “hiring the right people”. This is especially important for startups, as they depend on the quality of their human capital to grow. Each individual plays a strategic role in the efforts to make a startup successful. For this reason, it’s often argued that top talent is key to startup success.
Yet, hiring top talents is particularly difficult for them.
Major studies show that high-quality candidates tend to choose the security of larger, more established companies and are even willing to make compromises for stability.
Hiring the right talent is quite challenging. However, it often is the differentiating factor between a thriving startup and a struggling one. And, if that is so essential, what can you do to hire top talents for your startup?
Without further ado, let’s dive into 5 strategies for hiring top-quality talent for your startup.
Create Compelling Employer Brand
To get top talents in the door, they need to think of your company as an employer of choice. Startups and small companies are not well-known, so getting noticed by high-achieving candidates is challenging. And, because of that, it’s essential to have powerful employer branding!
Whether it’s stability or an impressive bonus system, big, well-established companies have many things to offer to high-quality talents.
But, for many high-achieving people, company culture, environment, and values are more important than compensation or other benefits.
Start by creating the company’s unique value proposition by focusing on your company's mission statement, vision, and culture. Make sure that your employer brand reflects your company’s true values.
Think about the reputation you want to have with employees, job seekers, and key stakeholders. Conduct an internal audit to find out what your current employees think about you. In this way, you will be able to know what your brand’s strengths and weaknesses are.
When you define your employer's brand, think about the ways to spread this information, and reach high-talent candidates.
Showcase Your Employer Brand
Creating an impressive employer brand is one thing, showcasing it is a whole different story.
How do we — a “small fish” in a big sea of successful organizations - show that we are a perfect company to work for?
Your employees are your best brand advocates, and your team members want to help you to find top talents. Why? Because that will make their lives easier too! So, give them something to share besides bland text documents on a hiring site!
Create things they will be proud to share with their friends or on social media - a killer recruiting video, not-to-be-missed work event, or you name it!
Be active on social media and showcase your employer branding there. Create posts about the success stories of your current employees and post videos about your company’s culture and working environment.
Be creative! Communicate your employer brands using all applicable channels. But for communicating to be effective, first, you should know who your target audience is.
Know Who You Are Looking For
Okay, let’s assume that you have a compelling employer brand and powerful communication strategies to reach the best candidates.
But do you know who you are looking for?
Long before you begin interacting with job seekers, it’s important to create candidate personas for each vacant position that opens . These personas will help you identify everything about the role. Include skill requirements, preferred education levels, previous experience, geographic location, and other characteristics in your personas’ kit.
After you have determined who you need, create an Employee Value Proposition (EVP). The value proposition is a type of promise the company makes to future employees. Top talents know what they want and what they need. EVP will show them that you have prepared all the information needed to help them evaluate the opportunity. And they will appreciate that!
Consider Hiring Remote Employees!
In the previous section, we were discussing candidate personas, and we mentioned geographic location as one of the criteria…
But when you are hiring remote employees, you are not restricted by geographical borders! This gives you a chance to find the best talent out there. Hiring remote employees substantially increases your pool of candidates.
Giving employees a chance to work remotely makes you more appealing to the candidates. People love working from home! A whopping 86% of workers who started working from home during the pandemic are interested in continuing to do so
Also, this option is very budget friendly. You don’t have to think about office space, utilities, space rent, and other details anymore!
If you believe that remote employees are not suitable for your startup, you can easily offer a working environment with flexible working hours, or the employees can work three days from the office and other days from their homes in a week!
Make Your Projects Interesting
Besides remote work, do you know what else top talents love? Interesting projects.
Even though this is not always possible, try to offer projects that people will find engaging, fulfilling, and challenging. Seek ways to add a unique edge to every opportunity. If the assignment itself isn't alluring, think about the benefits a person would have from working in that role?
Identify what skills your future employees will master in that position? What are the networks they will establish, and opportunities they might get in the future?
Top talents don't want to work on dull, mediocre, and mundane jobs. So, invest a bit of time in considering how to present the project and make it more appealing to your ideal candidate.
To Sum
As Startups, you should foster unique, innovative, and advanced solutions, approaches, and culture. And strategies for hiring top-quality talent for your startup should reflect that!
Show who you are and how employees can grow in your startup!
If it's about you, it's about us