The kung-fu of startup hiring (4 of 7): Investing into a passive hiring strategy.
Many companies only think about hiring once they’re actually in a pinch, and after rushing to hire someone, they usually forget all about it, only to repeat their efforts once they again need to hire someone. Rinse. Repeat.
But what if I told you that there are ways to make sure that you’re attracting good candidates, even when you’re not specifically looking?
Even if you’re not looking to hire someone right now, the truth is that as a company, you should always be looking to attract top talent, and below, I will detail several methods that will make sure that candidates are coming to you. This methods also work really well in tandem with all of your other active hiring methods, to ensure that you are working on several fronts at once.
There are many things that you can do in this domain obviously, and some will work better than others depending on the kind of company that you’re running, the product that you may be building, who already works at your team, and the type of person that you’re looking for, but the general idea should be to basically create and nurture what’s called an “employer brand”.
Having a strong employer brand will help you in many things, such as drawing great candidates to your company, getting you extra promotion via word-of-mouth or through PR, or even acting as a perk for employees — everyone wants to work for a cool brand, just think of Google for example.
Many things will move the needle on this front, such as:
PR
People who read about your or your company’s story and identify with it will likely want to work with you, plus, PR tends to have a large reach.
Your Company Blog
Having a well maintained company blog where the people who are already on board can tell their story and talk about the challenges that they’ve faced at the company, as well as what problems they’re helping to solve — all of these will speak volumes to like minded people, as they’re getting a clear idea of what they can expect, should they decide to join your organisation. This also means that you will tend to attract people who already have an idea of what your culture is, which is a huge plus.
Industry events and public speaking
Much like PR, it’s very much about getting the word out there about your company, the kinds of problems that you’re solving and what kind of people are already at your organisation. People talk to other people, and many times you’ll get great referrals this way.
Invest into making an amazing Product
This one sounds ridiculous right? At @Hole19 we’ve had candidates tell us that they want to work with us solely because looking at our product tells them that we have a good team, that cares about the user experience and is detail oriented, and that’s exactly their cup of tea as well. I cannot understate how important this can be for a startup.
Thanks for this quick response. I really appreciate companies/people who give quick responses. Congratulations to you and all of the team, the processes look very organised. :)
I liked to talk with Hole19’s team. It was really interesting.
Good luck for your search!
Pay attention to your online (and offline) reputation
There are many sites nowadays where people can go and check up on what it’s like to work for your company (Glassdoor, Quora, etc.), and believe me when I say that a good candidate has options, and will always factor things like this into his decision process.
Back when I worked at Zomato, we found out that people are much more likely to make a review online if they’ve had a bad experience. That’s true for restaurants and work alike, and as much as we’d like to say that everything is rosy, the fact is that bad breakups sometimes happen and sometimes (especially if you’re moving fast) you’ll also make some casting errors along the way. Those sometimes lead to expectations misalignments and unhappy parties on either side, and people may feel inclined to share their not so good experience with others. They may even get a little creative if they feel they were wronged in the process and this is their one way to get back at the other .
Understand that this happens, and assume that your best candidates will read it. So, address this criticism head on, and make sure that there are several opinions out there to fully represent what it’s like to work in your company. If all people can find is negative feedback, they’ll likely assume that it’s mostly bad, so make sure that you’re also finding ways to get your happy colleagues to share their experiences in a true, unbiased manner. This also has the benefit of being a great feedback channel for you to understand where you can improve.
Ensure that you’re providing a top notch candidate experience
This one is probably the one that I find most important.
You should worry about how you treat the people that you want to hire — after all you’re trying to hire this person - and you’re very much in the courtship phase. But do you worry as much about the people that you don’t want to hire? Because you should…
Every time that someone applies to work at your company — regardless of the seniority level or position — you should look at it as a privilege, and you should treat it at such. It is an opportunity for you to represent your company, and you should make the candidate feel as welcome and as respected as possible. This means replying to people quickly — yes, even the ones that clearly didn’t read the job description but applied anyway. It also means valuing their time, and being respectful, honest and transparent with them.
At @Hole19 we always try to personally reply to candidates within 24 hours of their initial application, whatever the response might be. We also try to give them relevant and honest feedback in case we feel that there isn’t a fit between parties right now. And we’ve honestly received some great feedback from candidates that we didn’t go ahead with, and I’m sure that they’re likely to recommend us to their friends. There’s nothing else I could ever ask for.
We’ve all been on the other end, and I’m pretty sure we’ve all faced a bad experience as a candidate. Have you personally ever gotten one of these?
“We feel you’re not a fit for this position but we will keep your CV in our database and contact you should any future opportunity arise.”
Because I have…probably didn’t feel too good, did it? So: be better than that, and make sure that candidates feel great after they apply to work at your company, even when there really wasn’t a match between them and you.
Doing it right takes a lot more work, sure, but that’s exactly why you’ll be one of the few employers doing it, and reaping the benefits from it.
That candidate might not have been the right fit for your organisation today, but who knows about tomorrow? Who knows who he’s friends with? Who knows who he’ll be talking to in the next days, weeks, years? If you’re able to ensure that everyone who deals with your company comes out happy at the other end, you’ll have done more for your employer brand that you could ever imagine.
Getting employer branding right isn’t about doing one or two big things really well, but rather about doing many small things well, and you’ll see that those scale over time and across multiple candidate touch-points. If someone can read about you in an article, download your product and find out what you’re about, and then be able to read your company blog and all the nice things that others have to say about you, I’m sure that the next step will be an application to work with you! ;-)
