If you want to increase the chances of your startup’s success, then you need to learn how to hire high-quality people as early as you can in your business building journey.
If you can figure out the hiring part right, you will have an excellent time building your business. But if you mess it up, then you will suffer big time on it. You’ll see the impact of bad hiring showing up everywhere in the business. Sometimes even to the extent of shutting down your company.
It’s close to impossible to recover from a bad hire at an early stage. It’s important to get the right people in your core team if you don’t then you are doomed. I learned this thing very early in my business that the most important hire you can make is the position of hiring a business partner aka co-founder.
Because building a business is the hardest thing you can ever attempt in your life, and you need someone who can support you in this journey of building and manage your day to day decisions in running your startup.
And it’s not only a matter of finding someone who is willing to work with you. You need to find someone who complements your skills and capabilities. But that’s the surface level. There is a lot that goes beneath that. You’ll get a lot of emotional, mental & psychological support which can help you in sailing through your bad days.
So the reason why I am writing this post is that I wanted to show you how I found my business partner on Facebook using a simple approach & how you can do the same and get similar results using a simple step by step approach.
Now let’s dive into my story.
I decided to build a car repair marketplace, and I was almost 6-7 weeks in the process of developing my product. I worked on building it with long extended hours and was giving my day in and day out to it. This kept on happening for some time.
After some time I realised that this was getting tiring I can’t keep working like this. With this approach, I can’t go far with building my product. I think I’d need some extra help on this, not like someone as an employee but someone who can out his blood and sweat into building this like I am was doing it.
I thought well maybe it is time to introduce someone as a co-founder in my business. The moment I realised this I didn’t waste much time. I started reaching out to my school friends, college friends, and other acquaintances who were there on my network. I spoke to them none of these guys were interested in joining me. They had their own share of excuses for not joining in. But as I met more people and talked to them I found out that a lot of people were interested in working with me.
But there was a catch to it.
They wanted to work on it but weren’t ready to commit to it full time. But I was pretty confident in my faith that for me the only sign of commitment was if someone will join me as a fulltime business partner and be 100% invested in the project.
I also realized that attracting someone for a full-time position that doesn’t pay them any money was a HARD task. I remember the occasions where I became so desperate that I even went to the extent of making those needy looking ” Looking for a co-founder post on Facebook. “
Now I don’t know if you have seen these posts or not, but you can go and see in the Facebook startups forums, you will find hundreds of people making such posts every week.
But even that couldn’t generate any results for me. 🙁
One day I was Googling around on finding co-founders I got to know about this man who used to help companies in hiring co-founders and senior level staff for startups. I quickly got in touch with this guy by the name of Nikhilesh who used to help founders who were running small and mid-level companies specifically.
I consulted Nikhilesh and got to realise of all the mistakes that I have been making till now. He showed me a simple step by step blueprint which he has been suing with his clients and that gets them results every time.
He started with helping me in refining my pitch to the level of perfection so that it attracts the right type of people for my startup. And using his formula within 4 weeks of my hunt I got a crazy amount of application in my mailbox.
By the end of the process, I had close to 200+ applications with me. And All these guys wanted to work with me and were happy to join me as a co-founder for full-time.
Now the process that I followed was very simple. If I can pull off results like 200+ applications, I am sure you can do it too.
It’s not something for me or a select few people. It’s for everyone who can use this process and get desired results from it.
But if I tell you that it all happened in this easy way, it wouldn’t be fair on my part. Coming to this point wasn’t easy.
I wasted a lot of time in going to conferences, meetups & pitching sessions in the hope that I’d be able to find a good guy in those meetups.
If I had to go back to the past and fix one thing, I would prefer not to go to these events.
The BIGGEST problem with going to conferences, meetups and pitching sessions is that you’ll notice that most of the people who come to these events are Wantraprenuers., so your chances of finding a good guy in these places is very bleak.
So it’d be better if you can spend your time in areas where you’ll get consistent hot leads with minimal effort.
Focusing on too many low-yield channels will give you too many low-quality leads. Instead, if you put your focus to high-yield channels, you will get great results from it.
A good idea to approach this problem is by approaching it like a marketing funnel.
You know how a funnel is? It has a Wide mouth on the top and a narrow one on the bottom.
The idea should be to push as many people as you can in your funnel. So that high-quality leads can keep coming in, and on the other end, you keep getting high quality hires.
A good way to figure out where to get high quality leads is through Facebook.
Facebook out of all the social networks has the best reach regarding audience.
So what you need to do is get your message out there in front of as many people as you can on Facebook. But before you start spreading your message it is important to understand that you create the right job description for your co-founder.
The more time and thought that you put in at this stage, the better you’ll have the chances of finding a co-founder.
Once you have created the perfect co-founder job description, then the next thing you need to do is you need to figure out all the startup and startup related groups on Facebook and join all of them.
Now, with this step, it might take you close to 7-10 days to get accepted in all the groups.
Try to join all the startup groups of your country, don’t try to limit yourself to the same city/state, seek to find the best ones in our nation and make your job description post over there.
Now, this process might take you 7-10 days to get accepted in all the groups.
Back when I did my job description post on Facebook. I joined close to hundred plus startup and startup related groups on Facebook before floating my job description over there.
One thing which you should keep in mind is that you should only join groups that have more than 300+ members. Because if you try to HIT a number less than 300, it will difficult for you get some action from that particular groups.
So try to find those groups which have these kinds of numbers. The more postings you make, the more people will view it, and it will increase your chances of getting more people in your funnel.
I followed the same formula, and my job posting became amongst the most popular job postings ever.
Please don’t copy my script word by word because what has worked for me might not work for you, so try to seek inspiration from this and build your case on your own.
Something that suits your personal and business working needs. Apart from group posting Another quick method which you can use it you can use Facebook ads and put $1 a day ad budget to it.
This way you will keep on getting high quality leads for a small amount of money.
If you put in the effort to make these two techniques work the chances are that you will be getting your results in a matter of few weeks.
When I made my post, I got
– 200 + applications.
– 52 emails
– 15 calls/ meetings
– 2 shortlisted candidates for trials.
– 1 Final recruit.
(this is how my stats looked like)
But again getting up to this point where you get lots and lots of applications mean you follow the complete process and build a crafty co-founder job description post.
And if you create a perfect post like this you can get access to high quality people on facebook.

And if you want to learn through the complete process of hiring a co-founder, then you can go to my ultimate guide on how to find a co-founder (which has all the word by word scripts and examples in it)

Try to use this method and let me know in the comments section if you have any doubts about it, I’d be more than happy to help if you need my help on anything.

See you soon.

Kirti

PS – I take one on one consulting clients for hiring co founders as well, if you need exclusive help, write me an email & my team will get back to you on it.

Congratulations – you managed to cross the hurdle of gaining a Series ‘A’ funding for your dream startup. While reveling in this ‘victory’, you realize that while you have all these brilliant ideas and sufficient resources, you do not have the human resources to implement. It is the time to put together an effective team, and hence an understanding of the hiring tips for startups becomes essential.

In today’s competitive business environment while it is critical to hire good people, it has also become increasingly tough to find the ‘right’ talent. Without understanding the hiring tips for startups, and in particular for your own startup, you could be in big trouble. Without a good team, it would be almost impossible for a startup to succeed or even remain in existence for too long. Irrespective of the founder and co-founders, a company’s reputation and success rests largely on its workforce. “If you think it’s expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur.” – Red Adair. This quote is possibly one of the best hiring tips for startups.

A look at some of the top hiring tips for startups:

1. There is a right time to hire

While a workforce is essential, the person responsible for hiring must decide whether it is time to hire, and if yes, which positions to hire for, and which ones can be filled later. Hiring simply because the startup has the funds, or because the business plan entailed it, are not the right reasons to hire. Startups should typically follow contemporary models, and hence hiring simply to fill vacant positions would not be the ideal method, since this is a traditional mindset. Among the best hiring tips for startups, is determining the true need to hire, post meticulous planning, and thrashing out all the details.

2. Commitment to Invest Time

After planning and deciding that your startup does need to hire, the next most crucial step is to commit time to the hiring activity. Hiring is time consuming, cumbersome, and can prove herculean even for the most seasoned recruiter. Startups must function at a speedier pace than established companies must. Hence, this aspect combined with fewer human resources, cutting corners for swift hiring becomes the norm. However, this is when bad hiring happens, leading to bigger problems moving forward. It is essential that the recruitment exercise is given due attention and an adequate amount of time to make it successful.

3. Learn the Nuances of a Role before Hiring for it

It would be impossible to hire the right person without actually understanding what a particular job role entails. Hence, understanding the intricacies and complexities of a role would be critical to hire right. It would be detrimental to the success of a startup if the top person hires someone at a leadership position simply because she or he does not have any idea of the job responsibilities. The top person must first know how to do a particular job, and only then lean on people to get the actual job done.

4. Hire for Attitude – Hire Effective People

It is always easier to teach someone a job and a skill. However, attitude is inherent and one of the successful hiring tips for startups (and all companies) would be to hire someone with a positive attitude. Hiring effective people means looking for people with a willingness to learn and practice their learning in their everyday job. Such people are more likely to have optimized work performance, consistently, and the ability to encourage their co-workers.

5. Hire through Cost Effective Means

Using personal networks and sourcing candidates through social media are two of the most effective and low cost methods. Getting recommendations from friends and business associates brings in the feeling of trust and shortens the hiring process. In addition, not all positions need to be on company rolls – the use of freelancers, consultants, and temporary staff is becoming increasingly popular. By using these ‘outsourced’ hires, a startup can save huge amounts of money, hiring only for a fixed period and on an as and when basis.

For permanent on-roll positions targeting passive candidates is a great idea, since this is a ‘pool’ often neglected by larger companies. Search for people with proven ability to work in new setups or those who may have been instrumental in leading a major project to their current jobs.

Also Read

6. View Hires as an Investment

Many established companies and startups view hiring as a cost. However, hiring the right person is actually a long-term sound investment, and would yield high results in the future. A company’s workforce is its greatest asset, and this should be one of the top hiring tips for startups too.

7. Keep Top Candidates Interested and Engaged

The lack of experience in hiring could result in the inability to keep the top candidates engaged and interested in working with your startup. The emphasis must shift from an assessment of potential top employees to actually communicating with them at a personalized level.

Also read: ONLINE RECRUITMENT TOOLS THAT WILL EASE UP YOUR WORK

Final Tip:

Setting and managing a startup is no mean task. The founders must remain aware of and be responsible for every aspect of it until they are able to recruit good people. It makes sense to invest in hiring software to conduct psychometric testing and assessment, such that hiring is more about personality fitment than experience. Hiring for a start-up is possibly harder since it is through interactions with the limited employees that the company would communicate with the outside world. Failure to communicate effectively could well be the downfall of a start-up, and hence it makes sense to assess the hiring tips and implement them very effectively.

If you’re looking to hire the best talent to scale your business, give us a call at +91 77188 73526 / +91 92204 51707 or email us at buzz{@]sutrahr.com now.

When it comes to handling the manpower of a specific organization, no matter how small or big it is, the Human Resource Department comes into the picture. There are times when the internal HRD is unable to handle the workforce requirement and thus, the organization hires a third party HR service provider so that its requirements are met and it has some of the best candidates for the final interviewing process. There are also times when some of the small organizations don’t have their very own HRDs and thus, they prefer hiring third parties so that their tasks do not pause.
It doesn’t matter if you belong to the internal HRD of a specific company or the external one, all that matters is that you host the process of recruitment in such a way that you know which candidates are required for which position and why.
As an HR department executive or manager, there may be a lot of things that you handle, but recruitment is that thing that you need to be very particular about. It is the action of finding (or head hunting for) new people in the organization. People often confuse recruitment with selection, but the former is nothing but the first step towards the latter concept.
If recruitment is one of the processes that are in your hands, you have got to read the following 12 tips to improve yourself in the field:
1. Before recruiting people from outside, check what you can do with the ones that are inside: There are a lot of organizations that build certain positions and then search for candidates to fill them; if you think there are internal candidates who can fill up the positions in an effective way, you can always reach out to them and have a word with them. A good thing about hiring internal candidates is that they are already known and trained.
2. Pay well so that you can attract better: What can attract smart headed people to the vacancy in your organization? A better pay, of course! You need to attract the best crowd for your company with the help of a fatter salary; in fact, the pay has to be better than that of your competitor companies. Only then, you would be able to get the best headed individuals for your floor.
3. Make sure you are popular as a great employer, despite the size of your business: If you want the best candidates to come to your doorstep, the best thing to do is treat your employees in such a good way that they popularize you in a positive way in the market. When you are known as a good employer, people find ways to approach to you so that they can work under the roofs of your organization. Comfort has to be built for your employees in your organization so that they talk only good about you outside.
4. Try to involve your employees in the process of hiring so that they get into head hunting too: If you don’t want to spend a lot of money in the recruitment process, you can tell the already existing employees to refer their friends or family members. You can lure them by providing them with a certain percentage of commission; they would surely get the best lot for you.
5. Use online portals for recruiting good candidates: There are so many online portals where employers and candidates connect; no doubt you have to invest a little bit of money on such portals, but it is worth all the time and money you pay for it. Such portals make recruitment process easier.
6. Host telephonic rounds so that the time investment is less on personal interview sessions: Telephonic sessions take time too, but not as much as you need to spend on personal interview sessions. Therefore, go for telephonic sessions so that you learn about all the candidates who have applied for different vacancies in your organization. You can then forward the applications of the best ones!
7. Check social media websites like LinkedIn, Facebook, etc.: Social media websites have gained immense popularity because of all those job opportunities that people are offered; if you don’t want to advertise yourself, simply look for people that can match the job roles you have put down on the paper.
8. Remember the old friends you once had; if you think they would want to work with you, why not give it a try by calling them? There can be nothing better than working with your old friends; call them and ask them if they would like to be a part of your business – but as an employee.
9. Use your strengths in order to recruit the best crowd: Have you ever looked at all the strengths that you have in your organization? Jot them down and advertise them so that the candidates can get attracted to all the things that they would be provided with, when they associate themselves with the name of your business. You can promote these strengths on social media websites as well.
10. If you can’t do it alone, find a team that can do it for you: There comes a situation when you are unable to focus on the workforce requirements of your organization; this is the time when you can hire external HR organizations. Also, if you have absolutely no idea about where to begin from, when it comes to recruiting candidates for different vacant positions in your organization, you can take the help of third parties.
11. Advertise yourself on social media websites by promoting your business and the link of your website: It is okay to invest a little bit of time or find a team that can do it for you – when you promote your business the next time on social media, make sure you put a one-liner that talks about the vacancies in your organization. When you do that on Facebook, Twitter and other such social media websites, people are bound to get attracted towards your business and send in their applications or bio-data to reach out to you or the team that handles the recruitment process for you.
12. Make sure you check references when you are recruiting: Have you ever thought of checking references when you are on the process of recruiting? If not, then this is your time to learn about how to check references. If you want good employees to work for you, make sure you get a feedback about them. All the organizations have started doing this and thus, they get the best applications.
13. Are the tips so simple? Well, they may seem simple, but they are quite difficult. Recruitment is far tougher than selection because the process has to be conducted in such a way that the process of selection is effortless. All the people selected during the time of recruitment have got to be smart, well-qualified and well-read and only then they can be sent further for the final selection round. When you use these tips during the process of recruitment, you are bound to get the best heads for your organization!