Hiring the Best

Hiring is one of the hardest things to do at start-ups and without a strategy, it’s even more difficult. Once a company achieves some level of product-market fit the founders’ roles change from wearing multiple hats and being on the tools to three key areas 1) Setting strategy, 2) Getting the right people on the bus, and 3) Ensuring that those people have the right resources to achieve their goals, which are aligned with the overarching strategy.

Currently, it’s a great time to go out there and recruit the right talent because career prospects might not be as bright across the industry as they once were and there’s a reasonably good chance that competitors are looking at retrenchment. However, this begs the questions, “How should founders approach hiring? What’s the most efficient use of a founders time when they are hiring? How do founders create a funnel for talent?”

Pushing out a couple of job advertisements on LinkedIn might feel useful but it fails to generate any loops that will continue to feed into the overall hiring process. A handful of conversations with experienced recruitment professionals led to a couple of consistent takeaways that most founders could benefit from.

This article is about creating outbound opportunities for recruitment instead of relying on inbound recruitment channels.

Set the strategy

Firstly, you need to set the hiring strategy. The strategy will determine the message that’s being put out to potential employees. Established brands need to have a consistent message and cannot rely on a “perceived brand.” Even if you know what you’re doing and why the work is important, it’s unlikely that outsiders will understand this unless you explicitly tell them.

To do this, you should create a simple elevator pitch that includes:

1) What you are doing and why it matters;

2) Why you are doing it well; and

3) What’s challenging about the current phase of the business.

The “what and why” should be short and sweet. Think of it as a one-line pitch that can explain why the company’s mission is important.

The second element should include some information about the traction that you have been able to generate, which generally isn’t externally visible. This supports the initial proposition — “We’re solving a big problem and as a result, we’re generating a massive amount of traction.”

Thirdly, if you’re talking about technical challenges that you’re currently facing in the candidates area of expertise, you’re able to turn them into the hero. It also gives them some insight in to the kinds of things that you’re trying to do. John F Kennedy, delivered his famous speech about the space race in 1962 but the themes are pertinent here:

We choose to go to the Moon. We choose to go to the Moon…We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win, and the others, too.

People want to do things that challenge themselves. Things that enable them to sharpen their abilities and test their mettle. Demonstrating that you have technical challenges that will push them is far more interesting for a majority of candidates than trying to expound on the potential value of an equity grant.

Go to market

Once you’ve determined what your hiring strategy is, you need to go to market with it. You can share this message with your investors and should aim to get this message out any time you have an opportunity in public – when you’re giving a presentation, when you’re talking to customers, when you’re at industry events. Again, this is why it’s important to have a consistent message. If it isn’t consistent, there’s a chance that your message could be diluted when it is passed on.

You can then identify the nodes in your network — Aim to ask them about the people that they look up to in the same space. It doesn’t matter if they’re looking to make a move at the moment, either they or someone they know will be looking in the near future. This is likely more true now than at other parts of the economic cycle. Continue to follow the nodes and have conversations with as many people in your network of first and second connections to spread the message that you’ve developed.

Connect the nodes

Finally, continue to connect the nodes as you speak to people. Work out who is respected and capable. I recently heard a story of a consulting firm that would ask all of the graduating students that were interviewing who they would recommend from their class to triangulate the most capable and liked person. They would then approach the person that received the most references. However, this started to backfire after a while because the most popular person wasn’t necessarily the most capable in a given role.

The references should give you a direction for your next set of conversations. Keep a record of the people that you’re speaking to and what their intentions are. Eventually, an opportunity will present itself.

Conclusion

Ensure that you have a consistent message before you begin pushing your open requirements out to people in your network. You should have an elevator pitch for potential candidates that enables you to tell them what you are doing and why it’s important, why you are it doing well, and what the main challenges are that you’re currently facing.

Don’t treat the recruitment process as a claw game where you’re hoping that you’ll pluck the right candidate out of the pool that is LinkedIn. Create a more structured process, where you speak to potential candidates that could either join your team or potentially know people that could join your team.

Once people feel secure, they typically look for challenges, so let them know about the challenges that you’re facing and how they could help. If you focus on outbound instead of inbound, you’ll find that you’re able to find like-minded people to carry your contributions forward and you will no longer be at the mercy of the claw.

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