Every start-up founder recognizes that building great teams or employees is the only way to become successful. You can be the most brilliant of CEOs or founders, but without the start-up right team hiring, you cannot expect to scale up operations, revenues or success.

Start-ups face a peculiar problem as compared to other big and more established businesses. They need employees that are willing to do and excel at more than one core function. To become scalable, start-ups require multi-skilled employees for hiring.

After funding, which is the biggest problem, the second one is hiring the right people for the right roles. Smart decisions, strategic thinking, and optimized hiring processes can help assemble the ultimate team for start-ups.

In this article, we look at some of the best practices, challenges, and mistakes start-ups make in their hiring processes.

Start-Up Hiring Guide: Best Practices of getting the right team

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We begin the article by highlighting some of the best practices that start-ups can adopt to optimize their hiring.

  1. Outsourcing the requirements to a Hiring Agency-

Most start-ups do not have the time, skills, or resources to find people who would be the right fit. In such instances, outsourcing recruitment requirements to a skilled agency like Success Human Resource Centre is the smart choice. Specialized hiring agencies can list job portals, filter applications through proper screening, and even help with the onboarding processes.

  1. Creating a Positive Company Culture-

No one would want to work with you if they do not have enough information or knowledge about the company. Start-ups need to pursue strategies that will help present themselves as attractive places to work at. This will then help in building credibility and awareness about their existence. Sharing positive company values on social media is a great way to do this.

  1. Prioritizing quality over quantity in the hiring process-

Start-ups are unlike established businesses that can afford to give six months to new employees to get their act together. Every start-up wants quality employees that can start almost immediately. This is why it is essential that quality is prioritized over mere numbers. Quality employees will be able to always do more in terms of their outputs and productivity.

Challenges Start-Ups face in the Recruitment Process

There is no doubt that hiring the initial team of your start-up can be a nerve-racking experience. What if you do not get it right the first time around? There is no denying the fact that start-ups face numerous challenges when it comes to recruitment.

  • Firstly, a lot rides on the hiring process. This is infinitely more for a start-up than it is for some well-established business. experts point out that every new hire has the potential of either making or breaking your future. Given the stakes involved, every mistake in the recruitment process can prove to be disastrous.
  • Secondly, start-ups are not viewed with the same lens of credibility as some other businesses are. Successful professionals are wary of joining one because they fear it might close down sometime in the near future. In professional circles, start-ups are termed as ‘high risk’ businesses. Everyone will try to dissuade you from joining one.
  • Thirdly, awareness is another major challenge for a start-up. No one has heard about your brand organically, and this makes it difficult to find the right talent. Unless people do a quick Google search on go on social media platforms, they simply do not know you exist. Creating awareness requires money and history that start-ups do not have.
  • Fourthly, start-ups are restricted in terms of offering cash compensation to the best professionals. Given that most of the money is from the founder’s own savings, it becomes difficult to use bigger packages to attract new recruits. Post funding this challenge might get addressed, but before that, it severely cripples the start-up.
  • Lastly, start-ups are unable to offer perks and benefits to experienced professionals working in bigger companies. Qualified and experienced professionals who have gotten used to the same do not want to give it up. Issues like bonuses, medical coverage, car benefits, etc. are things that start-ups simply cannot afford in the initial stages.

The Bottom Line

If start-up companies tend to take on all the hiring recruitment challenges, it will become difficult for them to concentrate on anything else. This is why most experts recommend that in the initial stages, and even later on, leaving the hiring to professionals who know what they are doing or using Agile ATS recruiting software is the best possible approach. This can help the founder and senior management concentrate on other important areas of growing the company.