Agile recruitment process for startups

Every company has its own specific life path, in the start-up world teams usually grow fast and the quality of people joining the team is heavily influencing the future of the venture.

 Since we at C/MIND are specialised for tech recruitment , my focus will be process related to the hiring of tech team members.

 There are two sides of the coin here, what kind of abilities do you need for the job and how do you implement hiring itself.

 What do you need?

 Defining what you really need and having in mind that attitude can't be upgraded while skills can always be learned is important. Best approach for this stage is defining what kind of objectives new team member is supposed to be implementing in the first 6 months or so.

 This process will make the following significantly easier:

• Making job post and skills/requirements list
• Communicating requirements to the internal or external recruiters
• Interviewing process
• Making appropriate test for the position

 On top of everything, objective list can be used to evolve job position after a while, giving employee overview of growth that the position is providing along with clear expectations.

 THE PROCESS

 Every team wants people who are excited about what they are working on. Candidates, on the other side, would like to join team which is excited about what they are doing. Quite a puzzle, so what's the best way to solve it?

 This can be one way to do it...

Interviewing - Best thing is if the first interview could be done by the HR/recruitment specialist while the second should be tech oriented and conducted by either CTO or lead engineer who is in charge for the part of the team that candidate is supposed to potentially join.

Testing - While interviewing can give you good overview about the general knowledge and motivation, testing is important to ensure that person joining the team is capable of doing the job as expected. Recommendation is to transform some part of the project into short task(it should be doable within one week). With this, candidate will have better overview about how everyday tasks at the company look like, giving you real review of what the candidate is capable for.

Meeting the team - If candidate is located in another city or another country, it's always good to cover travel expenses and meet candidate in person. This shows that company really cares about who is joining the team and every candidate who is genuinely interested to join your company will appreciate this gesture. After the visit, you get extra layer of security that the candidate would be great or not so great as a team addition.

Closing stage - So far, candidate should have a chance to meet the team, founders and all the people that are important for the project. Final stage should be approached with precaution since it’s sensitive, it can make or brake the whole process.

Good practice is that CEO or CTO presents offer to the candidate and starts negotiation. If employee is satisfied, company is doing well, it's a rule of thumb. With that in mind, company should create general benefit package that is allowing team members to have comfortable life in order to have 100% focus on what the company is trying to achieve.

 If this process outline is implemented you will be sure that the candidate is motivated, skilled and genuinely interested into joining your team. On the other hand, candidate will appreciate opportunity to meet the team and be tested on the example from the real project.