As a small business owner, you may be wondering how to hire employees for a startup. Consider the fact that the average cost to hire an employee is $4,425.1 When you have a limited budget and need to manage costs, this can make the hiring process hard. So, you’ll have to get creative with your recruitment strategy to find great candidates.
Here are six innovative startup recruitment solutions to help you find and develop top talent for your business.
1. Learn How to Recruit Top Talent
The first step in hiring your first employee is knowing how to find them. As a startup, you likely don’t have the resources or brand awareness that more established businesses have, but you don’t have to just rely on traditional job boards to recruit top talent.
You can find potential employees by:
- Networking outside of the office: Outside business experts typically attend networking and recruitment events. This can be a good place to start your search and gives you an opportunity to get the word out about your business.
- Asking for referrals from friends and colleagues: Your connections may know people who could be a good fit for your business.
- Using social media: You can post a link to your job description to help broaden your search. The other added benefit? People can share your post with their own networks.
- Work with a recruiter: A recruiter who works specifically with startups can put you in touch with qualified candidates.
2. Understand Your Legal Requirements for Hiring Employees
It’s a good idea to make sure you’re familiar with local and federal employment laws, such as job discrimination laws. For example, make sure you know how to avoid job discrimination in your job postings. If there’s a chance your post has discriminatory wording, someone can sue your business.
Hiring employees for your business can leave you open to new risks. That’s why it’s important you have the appropriate insurance for startups to help protect you and your business. So, if someone does sue your business for an employment reason, your business insurance can help cover your defense costs.
3. Revamp the Interview Process
After you get applications, it’s time to narrow your search and move your top candidates forward to the interview process. The interview is an essential step when hiring for startups. Don’t just conduct a traditional interview and ask them questions. Follow some interview best practices to help make the most informed decision and find great candidates who are a good cultural fit.
You can conduct an effective interview by:
- Asking candidates to complete a task: A good way to check candidate experience is by giving them an assignment. It doesn’t have to be complicated, but it’s a way to make sure they have the skills needed for the job.
- Checking candidates’ backgrounds: When you screen job candidates and run a background check, it verifies the information in their application. It can help you come up with questions to ask in the interview and decide whether to move the candidate forward in the process.
- Checking references: You can learn more about your candidate’s work ethic and qualifications if you check references.
The interview should help you determine if the job applicant is the right fit. When you find the right candidate, you can make a job offer.
4. Solidify Your Onboarding Process
You’ve posted a job description, interviewed candidates, made an offer and now have your first employee. Your next step is onboarding the newest member of your team. A successful onboarding process is important for long-term growth, cultural fit and employee impact.
When you’re creating your onboarding process, decide if you want a flexible program or something more defined. For example, a flexible process may have your new employees going to a few meetings to learn about business culture. A more defined program would include a checklist of things for your employees to complete.
Your onboarding process should include information on:
- Company culture: This is where your employees learn important details to help them succeed at your business, like communicating clearly with colleagues and being collaborative.
- Training and development: This gives you an opportunity for mapping career paths and lets your employees know how they can grow at your company.
- Performance: Your employees should know what’s expected of them in their jobs. This information can include how to effectively give and receive feedback.
5. Build a Positive Company Culture
If your company culture suffers, it can affect your employees’ productivity and even cause them to leave your business. In fact, in a recent survey of 2,000 employees, 47% of workers were looking for new jobs because of company culture.2 From figuring out your startup’s purpose to encouraging a culture of teamwork, there are things you can do to create the company environment you want.
A positive company culture starts with startup leadership. In most cases, that means you, but it can also include other founders and CEOs. Let’s say you want to foster a performance-driven culture. Your managerial style and how you interact with your employees and customers will have to reflect that. Always be on the lookout for changes you can make to help make your business more positive.
Don’t forget to create a company vision and set company goals. This helps you execute effectively, makes your employees feel like they’re working for a purpose-driven company and gives them a sense of accountability.
You can also create employee incentive programs to reward performance and recognize your team’s hard work. These types of programs can go a long way in improving morale and creating a positive culture.
6. Continually Improve Your Startup Recruitment Process
As your business grows, your startup recruitment efforts will also expand. That’s why it’s important to make improvements to your recruitment, hiring and onboarding processes.
Here are some questions you can ask yourself to help in your recruiting process:
Which method brings me the most qualified candidates?
If you use a job site or recruiter to find candidates, you can see which method was the most successful. If you hired more candidates sent to you by your startup recruiter, you can continue developing your relationship with them so they keep sending you talented people.
What can my candidates tell me about the hiring process?
Whether it’s from your customers or potential employees, feedback is a critical resource for your startup. Talk to your current workers, and even those who went through employee termination, about their experiences when applying for a job with your startup. If there’s a common issue, you can fix it and improve the process for future candidates.
When is my busy season?
If you have an idea of when business will pick up and you’ll need the extra help, you can make your hiring process more efficient. Maybe that means cutting down on the number of interviews you hold, or moving candidates through the process quicker to fill openings as fast as possible.
1 Society for Human Resource Management, “2017 Talent Acquisition Benchmarking Report”
