i.Meshed.Up

Hiring at startups is hard. You’re swamped, running in a ton of different directions and don’t necessarily have a big budget set aside for recruiting. But hiring top talent at startups is essential. You can’t afford to hire anything but A-players. Sadly, too few startups dedicate the time needed to recruit properly.

David Lefkow has a great article titled Recruiting Guide for Startups. It’s a must-read for any startup founders (or employees). It’s also extremely valuable for non-startups too — smaller companies from 200 people and down will have all of these issues.

I want to follow-up on David’s points with some extensions and a few others:

1. Get everyone involved in the hiring process. David rightfully says that the CEO must be involved in the hiring process. It’s surprising how rare this is in so many companies, including startups. I see the problem most acutely with slightly larger startups (once they get past 30 or so people), because they now have “department managers” or even the makings of an HR department. CEOs have to be involved in the hiring process, but so does everyone else! Most companies - when hiring a programmer for example - will have a developer conduct at least one interview. But I would recommend having the applicant speak to multiple developers (even at the same time) as well as people in other departments. In a startup, everyone has to work very closely together and be completely aligned, so get as many people involved in the hiring process as possible.
2. Recruit constantly. In David’s post he talks about having a talent pipeline. I agree 100%. The fact is that you and everyone at your startup needs to be recruiting constantly. This is one of our fundamental beliefs at Standout Jobs.
3. Build a positive reputation in the local community. Most startups hire locally because of the cost & time involved in hiring people from elsewhere. And one thing startups can do to help is build up a positive reputation and brand in their local community. Make sure you participate at local events. Make sure current employees are speaking openly about the work environment. Make sure people know your story as a startup, and where you’re headed. Get people excited. Get them feeling like they know your startup is a great place to work, even if they haven’t worked there. That positive reputation will work wonders to draw people to you.
4. Focus on personality and cultural fit above everything else. Startups live and die by the quality of the people. It’s as simple as that. And many things can be overcome - like a lack of experience - but you can’t fix a broken culture or team spirit without going through some serious problems first. It only takes one bad apple in a small startup to derail everything. So make sure the person you’re hiring fits in culturally. That’s a big reason to have lots of people involved in the hiring process. And don’t compromise on this - no matter how desperate you are to bring on additional people.
5. Don’t oversell stock options. All startup employees expect stock options. And they should be a part of a startup employee’s compensation package. But don’t try and oversell them. Don’t try and blow people away with the huge valuations you’ll get in the future, and how you’ll IPO for billions in 2 years and the soon-to-be-hired employee will be rich beyond his wildest dreams. It shows a lack of respect to candidates if you try and dazzle them too much with stock options. They’re there, every employee should get them, and I hope they’re worth something someday … but you better have more to sell candidates than that.
6. Don’t over-hire. As Mark MacLeod points out, salaries are your biggest expense, so you need to be extremely careful about your growing ranks. Mark makes the point that you should question every hire, and really be sure that the position you’re making available is a necessary one, and once it’s filled that will bring incredible value to the startup. If that’s not the case, don’t hire. Plus, the more you control your hiring, the more likely you’ll avoid hiring the wrong person.

Every hire in a startup is critical. Make a mistake in the first handful or so and you can literally destroy your startup in a flash. Recovering from bad hires early in the game is extremely tough. And costly. But hire the right people - get top talent in the door that gel beautifully - and magic happens.

Ben Yoskovitz is CEO & Co-Founder of Standout Jobs, a startup helping companies hire the best talent through marketing and promoting their employer brand and jobs more effectively. He also blogs regularly about startups and entrepreneurship at Instigator Blog.