When you’re a startup, you don’t have the same resources as a company with more than 100 employees. You need to be creative and find ways to compete against larger companies.
One way to do this is by hiring top talents. These are people who are well-respected in their fields and have extensive experience working with other Startups.
As an entrepreneur, you might feel like it’s too much of a risk to hire someone who isn’t a full-time employee. However, if you’re looking for growth opportunities, then it’s worth considering bringing on some freelancers or consultants with expertise in your field of choice.
Hiring top talents can help you validate ideas that didn’t work before and bring new skills and perspectives into the organization. This tedious task can be much easier in case you’re using the right HR platform for recruitment.
As your Startup grows, you’ll need to hire people who can help you manage the growth — especially when it comes to building out your team and scaling up operations.
If you’re like most entrepreneurs, one of the biggest mistakes you can make is trying to take on all these responsibilities yourself. This is especially true if you’re running a high-growth business.
So how do you find these top talents? And what questions should you ask them during the hiring process? We’re going to cover this and more, read on.
5 Things You Must Do In Order To Recruit Top Talents For Your Early Stage Startup
If you’ve ever tried to hire top talent, you know how difficult it can be.
Even if you’re the CEO of a high-growth startup, the process can be daunting. The competition for top tech talent is fierce and so is the “war for talent.”
As an early stage startup, it’s even harder to compete against bigger companies who can offer more money, perks and benefits.
But as any SaaS founder knows, recruiting top talent isn’t just about what you offer — it’s also about what they want.
If you want to recruit top tech talent, here are five things you need to do:
1. Know what type of people you need.
2. Build a strong employer brand that resonates with the type of people you need.
3. Use data from your existing employees to understand what makes them stay or leave.
4. Use social media, LinkedIn in particular as a tool for recruiting (not just for marketing).
5. Create a culture where employees feel valued.
Common Struggles SaaS Entrepreneurs Are Facing When Looking To Hire Top Talents
You’re about to hire the first 10 people to work with you on your early stage startup. Here are some of the common struggles SaaS entrepreneurs are facing when looking to recruit top talents.
1. Not knowing what you really need.
2. Looking for someone who fits a “perfect” profile.
3. Wanting to hire people just like you.
4. Not paying enough attention to cultural fit and chemistry between founders, employees and customers.
5. Not being able to find candidates with the right experience or background.
6. Hiring too quickly without proper vetting of candidates leads to bad hires and high turnover rate.
7. Recruiting agencies can’t find the right talent either because they don’t know how to look for it or because they lack expertise in your industry / market segment.
8. Using job boards doesn’t work for SaaS companies as there’s no way for them to advertise jobs on sites like Monster or Indeed.
Proven Ways To Attract Top Talent As An Early Stage Startup
If you’re an early stage startup, you must be thinking how you can attract top talent to your company.
Top talent is always in high demand and many companies are willing to pay a lot of money for them. It’s not easy for an early stage startup to compete with these companies.
The good news is that there are creative ways you can use to attract top talent as an early stage startup. Here are some of them:
Tell your story!
If you don’t have the resources like big companies, tell the story of your journey from the start till now. People love stories and they identify with them easily. They will be more willing to work with a company that has passion for what it does and where they have been through ups and downs together. This makes it easy for them to believe in the vision of your company and trust you as a leader who knows what is best for their career growth.
Here are some creative ways to attract top talent as an early stage startup:
1. Make it easy for people to work remotely
2. Make sure everyone feels like they’re part of something bigger than themselves, make it about them not about you or your company, understand where people are.
3. Compensation and perks still plays a huge part when choosing a company, make sure you offer exceptional benefits upon joining your Startup.
4. Software and tools. Ensure that you can provide your future talents with the best in line tools and software so they can maximize their potential and show impact with ease.
It can be anything like using the best Marketing automation tools, CRM, CMS, and more that can help them make an educated decision about joining your Startup.
Sales, Marketing, Engineering, HR, How To Prioritize?
How to choose between Sales, Marketing, Engineering, HR, who should be among the first 10 hires for your early stage startup?
There are two main factors that determine how you prioritize hiring:
1. What are the core functions of your business?
2. Which roles will have the biggest impact on making those functions work?
It’s not an easy task to prioritize when you are a startup and your team is limited. You have to hire people that fit into your culture, bring value to your business, and can grow with you as the company expands.
When you’re starting a startup, you need to be efficient with your time and resources. If you’re going to hire someone for your company, that person should be making a significant impact on your business. When you don’t have much money in the bank, it’s important to make sure that every dollar is spent wisely.
As an entrepreneur, you may feel like you have too many responsibilities. You need to manage sales, marketing, engineering and HR. That’s why it’s important to prioritize your hiring decisions so that they make sense for your business needs.
Here are some questions you should ask yourself before hiring:
Is this role necessary? If not, consider whether there’s another way to accomplish the same goal without bringing someone on board for this particular task or department.
Do I have enough money? It’s crucial that you run your business like a profitable enterprise from day one — even if that means not hiring anybody until more cash comes through the door.
If I’m going to hire someone, who should it be first? Salespeople are usually high on most entrepreneurs’ lists because they bring in revenue immediately (or at least they’re supposed to!). But if you’re just starting out and don’t have much cash flow yet, then perhaps pushing.
So, ask yourself: what are the most important people for an early stage startup?
Sales – because it’s the only way for you to get customers, and without customers your business is dead in the water.
Marketing – because without marketing your sales won’t convert very well (or at all).
Engineering – because without good product development you won’t have a product that people want to buy from you.
And finally, HR – because without great hiring practices and culture, your company will not be able to attract the best talent and retain them long enough for them to become productive members of your team.
Summing Up
If you are a startup founder, you need to hire people who are passionate about what they do. Hire people with the right skill set and make sure they have a good attitude towards work.
Finding the right people to join your team is a critical step in building a successful business.
Whether you’re looking for an accountant, developer or marketer, there are plenty of things to consider when hiring top talents for your early stage startup.
Drop us a line if you found this article helpful, we would love to hear from you!
