You will no doubt have read many stories about how:
- Hiring is incredibly important in a startup
- Hiring is incredibly difficult as a startup
A lot of these stories are from North America, and whilst they are valuable the UK and EU culture is quite different. I therefore wanted to throw my hat in the ring as I have fresh experience of building a London-based tech team from zero to four people in four months.
The Challenge — Perceived and Real Risk
The first step is to understand the shape of your challenge, in short all startups are risky (so are bigger companies though!) but risk can have several dimensions. Everyone has a different set of priorities and if there is an overlap in the perceived risk of joining your business, and an important area of their life that they do not want to risk then you clash. Examples of perceived (or real) risk are:
- Low Salary — the opportunity cost is too high because of the lower salary you’re offering
- Equity — this is often misunderstood, or seen as have zero value
- Instability — you could go bust
- Waste of time — if your company is disorganised and ultimately fails, that employee could spend months learning nothing
- Lack of reputation — more mature businesses usually have a publicly accessible history, and potentially a great reputation. You, in contrast, have none (yet)
Risk is compounded if don’t have a reputation within the industry you need to hire from — this is probably the most difficult point to overcome. I have also found that UK and EU culture is more conservative that US culture, so even if there is no real risk (SalesTrip’s situation) and you go to great lengths to explain this, the word “startup” might be enough on its own to scare candidates away.
Selling Your Product — You
Risk exists everywhere, in startups and larger businesses alike however the types and sizes of risk can be quite different. You cannot remove all risk from your startup, and in some ways that’s part of the fun! So what can you do as a leader within your startup to convince people to join you?
- Be honest — don’t beat about the bush, don’t use corporate euphemisms or other “business” jargon, be open about your vision and let your passion shine through. If you love what you’re doing and believe you will be successful this will figuratively make you glow and potentially sell your dream to the person you’re talking to
- Be fast — one of your huge advantages is speed, you can be faster than any company larger (and sometimes smaller) than you because you don’t have extraneous processes in the way. Make your process short, make offers on the spot if you think the fit is good
- Communicate well — be polite, follow up quickly, talk about “The Why” as well as “The What”. Good communication is about listening, and if you listen well people will tell you exactly what they need from you in order to join
- Have a process — but keep it short, make sure you communicate the process well.
- Put in the time — scouring CVs, having dozens of meetings, reviewing code, being rejected; this can be incredibly time-consuming as well as being an emotional drain. Do what you need in order to re-charge, do it often and this will help you keep on pushing because you really can’t afford to stop
- Build out your channels — you should have a few good traditional recruiters, but I’ve also had great success with the likes of Hired.com and Talent.io
- Be creative, be flexible — the big guys are bureaucracy bound, you are not. Style your package and working conditions however you need in order to attract the right talent. Who needs a dress code, or to be in the office every day in order to achieve maximum productivity?!
- Take notes — you’ll quickly learn what works and what doesn’t, optimise your conversations based on this. You have a very short amount of time to sell a big vision, you need to be efficient.
- Startups aren’t for everyone — even when you’ve done your very best some people will turn you down. This is okay, and not a reflection on you or your business. In fact it’s a good thing because having the wrong type of people in your business can be an enormous strain on your team
It might take months, but if you’ve got grit and learn from your mistakes you’ll get there eventually. You will have a mountain of failed hires, but all you need are a few successes — and suddenly you’ll have a team.
