Identifying & attracting the right audience for an early stage founder is as critical as being capitalized. Ideally, Founders should be investing 50% of their time into early stage recruiting & organization building. Here are 8 hacks on hiring for early stage firms. Pick whichever work for you and stay consistently focused on them.
1. Create your success profile!
We all generally believe that hiring “rockstars” results for a high caliber self-motivated team. However, not many founders are clear on what a Rockstar profile actually is for their company.
Hack — Before you start hiring, go meet with 2–3 leaders who have built teams at an early stage firm. Ideally, these are either founders or functional leaders. Treat this as a clinic to understand what team structures worked for them at early stage, what were the attributes of the most successful people in their teams, what to look for when you interview etc. People love to network and reaching out to such people should happen through your network and extended network. Example, investor connects. Once done, plot a success profile of the role that works for you, like must have’s & good to have’s!
2. Leadership — Punch above your weight!
Look at hiring people better than you. This is always a signal of a high caliber organization. It may take time to get to the right person however make sure you over-index on this. The leverage a CTO whose built from scratch to scale earlier can provide you is by far greater than what multiple Director of engineering can. If you find this type then don’t lose him/her!
Hack — Visualize what the team looks like 12 to 18 months down the line and set high benchmarks of assessment. Go for people who have been part of building something in their recent past (0 to 1 & 1 to 10). Explore networks of such people, once you find them and meet more people like them.
3. Hire for culture
“Culture” can be misleading & confusing. To me, early stage culture at a firm is a reflection of the personality of the founding team. Identify what you stand for and what are the behavioral traits that you admire, for example — perseverance, ownership, collaboration etc.
Hack — As a founding team, pen down each one’s own personality traits and while creating the success profile pick out the overlaps that are non-negotiables. That is your framework for assessment of traits and behavior. Look for companies who have similar cultures, preferably smaller ones, and go to their webpage, testimonials, articles written by engineers. This will give you an access to high quality talent who you can reach out to directly.
4. Know your USP
What you are building a unique. Relationships you have with your customers are unique. The value you add to your customers is unique. Your business is relationships which cannot be reproduced and hence the team that will build this will be unique.
Know your uniqueness, be clear about your vision and how is the firm going to add value! People like story tellers — whether it is who they choose who to work with (especially early stage) or who they like to follow in life.
Hack — This is similar to preparing a pitch for investors. Be clear about what you are building, how will it change the ecosystem around us and why no one else can do this better than you. Share as much information as you can with potential candidates. Make it easier for them to make a decision rather than leave them confused with half-baked narrative
5. Be a story teller!
Communication is not selling! Sharing transparently and clearly will help attract people. There is no better story teller of my life than me. Similarly, at early stage you need to be the person repeating your vision & story to the external candidates, one-on-one as much as possible. Personalize every experience. Last time it was difficult for me to say no to someone was when the person knew me very well.
Hack — Create a pitch video that can be shared over various content platform. This is the most effective way to reach out to talent over social platforms. Video is the new text!
6. Choose the right search partner to represent you
Founders have way too much on their plate hence any leverage they can get in finding those hidden gems is like gold for them. Choosing your hiring partner who will amplify your reach to the probable talent pool is key. Bad candidate experiences can have far negative repercussions.
Hacks while selecting your hiring partner:
a) Does the partner have a good insight into talent looking at joining early stage startups? Past experience of having done this for other clients will help. Ask them how do they connect with talent. Making calls is passé! This is an art and is not built overnight. The right partners will tell you 10 different ways of what they do!
b) ROI — Do not be pennywise, pound foolish! The right partner may be expensive however if they can get you the right people to the firm then you will benefit 100 times over rather than investing time in interviewing irrelevant candidates.
c) Make sure you meet the person who is going to talk about your firm over the first call with the candidate. People do not realize that they lose 75% of candidates on the first call because the person representing you does not have enough knowledge of how to share your story.
7. Closing offers
One of the major reason’s candidates accept one offer from the other is because of the offer conversation clarity.
Hack:
a) Make sure you as a founder are closing all offer conversations yourself and getting this done through your external partners or any other employees of the firm till you have hired the first 50 people.
b) Do not have ambiguity around esop. Be ready to share information around vesting, price, value creation, future grants and more.
c) Keep the financials as simple as possible. Example, joining bonus, milestone driven bonus, retention bonus, deferred payouts etc. all will confuse candidates and make it tougher for them to rule in your favor.
d) Be clear of your benefits policy and communicate clearly.
e) Make sure you close the offer conversation in favor or against within 48hrs of making the offer. No candidate needs more than that time, if they have been already talking to you through the process. Anything more is a signal that the candidate is negotiating elsewhere and you are a back-up!
8. Access to the right talent
There is not one thing along that will get you to the right talent. It’s a consistent process. Remember -Rome wasn’t built in day!
Hacks –
a) Channel surf — Example, engineers like to be part of specific channels / groups. Join these groups and get an access to people on that group. Once you find your engineer, reach out to him/her directly outside the group (else you may get blocked in that group)
b) Follow leaders — Prodigious leaders attract great following. Example, a Product leader whose scaled a firm to unicorn status will be followed by other product talent. Go follow them and you will get an access to people and you will be able to separate the good ones through their comments to tweets.
c) Piggybank on other’s brand — Example, some investors do these hiring events for their portfolio firms, with participation from early and growth stage firms. Use the platform to build your brand by enrolling for these.
d) Thought leadership — Write blogs and tweets around the business you are disrupting. Tag, thought leaders and you will get the visibility and the reach outs. Build your brand!
Happy Recruiting!
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