Getting a business off the ground is challenging enough, but an even more significant hurdle is jumping from two-person startup to rapidly growing company.
In this guide to recruiting for growth, we look at some of the common pitfalls of startup recruitment and how to avoid them, as well as useful tips for hiring when time and resources are tight.
Recruiting for periods of growth is a testing experiment for many startup businesses—recruit too quickly and risk bringing in the wrong hires and damaging your carefully cultivated work culture. While young startups often need to recruit faster during the transition from entrepreneurial business to C-corp there is a balance to be struck between mass hiring and good hiring.
Here, we’ll explore ways that recruitment for tech startups and UK startups can be made more efficient and successful. Discover how to bring the right people onboard while limiting the ‘panic’ factor of hiring in periods of rapid growth. We’ll look at helpful recruitment tech tools for screening potential candidates and AI-assisted interviewing, the often unsung power of direct hiring, and the necessity of advertising your company experience to entice your favoured candidates. Read on to find out more about:
01 - The Pitfalls of Recruiting Too Quickly
Startups are inherently risky, but YOONO that don’t you? The Kauffman Foundation conducted a follow-up study of companies that had appeared on Inc. Magazine’s 5000 fastest-growing companies, only to find that two-thirds of those surveyed had shrunk in size or gone out of business.
So, what causes the majority of startups to fail? While product and marketing might miss the mark, the point at which most young companies falter is the first wave of growth. Some well-known examples of startups which recruited too quickly include social gaming company Zynga, creators of Farmville and Cityville, which faltered when they started to acquire new gaming companies and staff who failed to match the success of their early outputs, as well as infamous blood testing startup Theranos. If you don’t know the Theranos story, you should watch The Dropout as a cautionary tale of the murky extremes of tech startup growth (and spectacular failure).
The stress of recruiting at speed, only to find that many of those brought onboard are not the right fit or not as fully invested in the business idea as the founders is a well-trodden shortcut to disaster. Add to the mix a knife-edge period when the business may be experiencing a mixture of successes and setbacks, and a vicious cycle of cynicism can set in. Initial entrepreneurial optimism is quickly diluted, people become overworked and disengaged, and employees start running for the door.
02 - How to Recruit the Best People…Fast
There’s an art to recruiting for startups, with the unique requirement to hire skilled and often specialised staff fast. Recruitment agencies for startups specialise in finding people who are well adapted to startup culture, and have the flexibility to occupy multiple niches within a developing company.
Cash-strapped startups might find recruitment agency fees to be a little steep, however, which is where hiring based on referrals can be invaluable. Direct hiring, which skips the agency middle man, is actually a great option for startup recruitment, especially if it’s possible to bring people onboard who have existing professional or personal connections with existing company members. So start asking around—your next best hire might be right under your nose!
Hiring graduates can also be a useful strategy for growth recruitment, offering businesses new or niche skills (particularly valuable within the tech sector) and the enthusiasm for novel working experiences that graduates often actively seek out. To retain elusive Gen Z graduates, it’s important to communicate the experiential values of working within your startup (but more of that later).
Finally, startups looking to hire great candidates fast will definitely find the ever-growing range of recruitment tech tools to be an indispensable ally in times of rapid growth. See our top picks for tech-assisted hiring below.
03 - Recruitment AI Tech Tools for Faster Hiring
So you need to hire faster, but still get really good people onboard—is it possible? With the right recruitment tech tools to hand, it is, and you might find that a clever use of hiring AI tech also unlocks new talent potential for your growing startup.
Three ways that expanding startups can use AI tech to recruit faster and smarter include:
Smart Background Screening
One of the reasons that companies can lack confidence in direct hiring, turning to a recruitment agency instead, is the need to verify and background screen candidates thoroughly. Background screening was traditionally something outsourced to a recruitment agency or specialised background screening company, but new screening tech is beginning to make the process far quicker and more accessible for employers.
You can use an AI-powered screening tool like YOONO to research candidates at a very early stage, as soon as their CV hits your desk (or before). Working like a smart search engine, YOONO scans all publicly available online content relating to an individual, to help you work out if they’re going to be a good fit for your team. So YOONO exactly who you’re talking to.
Automated Interview Scheduling
Take the time pressure off recruiting by automating your hiring admin. A new wave of AI-assisted admin tools are designed to hyperautomate time-consuming tasks, like interview scheduling and candidate communication.
AI Interviewing
AI isn’t just for admin tasks and chatbot messaging—you can also use smart technology to actually conduct interviews. Yep, that’s right—you can use AI software to hold an interview and ask questions, and many ‘robot interviewers’ can even cross-check answers with personality and skills tests to find the most compatible people for your team.
Try YOONO with no payment obligation and see how fast and fully informed AI screening can transform the way you hire for your growing business
04 - The Importance of Communicating Company Experience
In the midst of adapting for growth, finding the right people to join your business is only part of the challenge. It can be all too easy to neglect the actual goal of the recruitment process, which is to convince a candidate that working for you is going to benefit them as well. The passionate enthusiasm many entrepreneurs share can actually hamper proceedings, as it’s sometimes difficult for founders to understand why a candidate wouldn’t want to work for their company. They think it’s the bees knees after all.
Communicating the experience of working within your company is paramount for not only attracting talent but retaining employees. The job market is more open and fluid than ever before, meaning that it’s easy for candidates and recruits, particularly young Gen Z, to go where the grass seems to be greener.
Building a strong company brand experience and communicating this effectively online should be high on your to-do list when you are rapidly expanding. The high stress and up-and-down nature of working within a young startup needs to be offset by a good workplace culture, employee benefits and opportunities for socialising and skill-building. Build it and they will come…and stay.
05 - Seal the Deal with Smart Screening
One of the biggest pitfalls of recruiting in periods of growth is bringing the wrong people onboard. Whether it’s someone who performed well in an interview, but turns out to be lacking in the skills required for the role, or a recruit who simply isn’t compatible with your business culture, it’s not always possible to identify these bad hires when recruiting at scale.
This is where fast and reliable background screening becomes all-important. We’ve already mentioned the benefits of outsourcing background screening to clever tech tools, but it’s also worth knowing how specifically AI screening can benefit your growing startup.
Most background screening checks are done at the end of the recruitment process, after a job offer has been made to the candidate. At this point, a huge 85% of businesses report candidates failing screening tests. That means going back to the drawing board, again.
Expanding startups can’t afford to waste time on hires that are only going to fall at the final hurdle. With a smart screening tool like YOONO you can generate a report on a candidate in just a few minutes, and because it combs already public data you don’t need to request the consent of the individual. It’s quick, discreet and will give you a complete picture of what someone’s all about in no time.
