How to build a recruiting process and consistently hire top talents.
By Arnaud Meunier, Entrepreneur In Residence at Partech
A hiring framework for your startup
From seed stage startups trying to get their first key hires, to venture stage companies looking to aggressively grow their workforce… What does an efficient recruiting process look like? And how can it help you hire and retain top talents?
My hope with this post is that you walk away with a good recruiting framework in mind. So that you can build — and continuously adjust — your very own recruiting process. Each step / section (sourcing, interviewing, closing, etc) would deserve a separate deep-dive. I’ll focus here on the overall process, to keep this post (reasonably) short.
Is your startup attractive?
It mostly boils down to your company mission, its core values, and the people it’s currently made of. On that note, I touch a bit on these subjects here.
A couple questions you need to ask yourself: How is my brand perceived on the market? Is the company mission clearly articulated? What’s the higher purpose every employee in the company is hoping to achieve? What about core values?
Last but not least, is all of this reflected in my recruiting process, and in my employees behavior? People tend to work for people, not for companies. And your company culture is pretty much defined by who you hire (and fire).
Candidates perception of your company will evolve during the recruiting process. And guess what? They’ll talk about it with other potential candidates. They’ll talk about the kind of people that work there, what you’re trying to accomplish, and your way of growing the business.
The best recruiting webpage or sourcing effort could be ruined in a single interview. Strive to provide candidates a good experience, aligned with what you stand for. It will help you along the way. Probably more than you think.
Which roles do you need to hire for?
Just like everything when it comes to execution, focus your recruiting efforts on what your company actually needs.
Just like everything when it comes to execution, focus your recruiting efforts on what your company actually needs.
Recruiting should be an integral part of your company strategy. Prioritize which roles you need to fulfill, at which stage, in order to reach which milestone.
To give you a couple examples:
As a young startup CEO with budget constraints, you might want to assess if you need another engineer to clear your backlog? Or rather hire an SDR to increase your sales dealflow? Or if you should actually step down and scale through a VP Sales, that will then decide if (s)he needs an SDR?
As your startup grows, your thinking might then revolve around hiring for an existing role that either changed or grew in scope, and that is no longer a fit for the person occupying it. The CTO might need to scale through a VP-Eng, focusing on tech rather than struggling with teams management?
Just like you have a Product and Engineering roadmap – because you can’t develop and ship everything overnight – plan for the reality that you can’t hire all the people you want overnight. Trying to do so will lead you to miss your goals, and/or hire the wrong people.
Read the full article on Medium.