How to find good employees for your startup? Pretty tough, right? Read on and find out tips from successful startup owners on finding good people to work on your startup!
Finding and hiring good employees can be quite a challenge. If you can make it, then you can probably win. If you are terrible at it, it could be a total flop for your startup. Before you start posting job ads for a vacant position, you need to have a clear idea of how to find good employees.
Why Do You Need Good Employees
What’s so great about finding good staff for your startup? You can simply create a job posting and wait for the first applicant to call. If it were that easy, companies wouldn’t have to formulate a foolproof recruitment process and strategy.
However, don’t take recruitment for granted. Remember, your employees are the blood and veins of the company; they are the ones that keep it running and growing. If you have quality employees in your startup, it would only be a matter of time for it to reach the next stage.
Good employees are a better choice than hiring a lot of employees. Sometimes one staff can outdo the job of three employees. You can save a lot of money from wasted payroll and lost sales. If you have one good worker in your company, it’s as good as mining a diamond.
But how do you find good employees for a small business? How do you spot a diamond among the rocks?
Qualities of a Good Employee
You certainly have interviewed one or two people to work for your startup. For each applicant, what quality rings the most to you? When you are choosing the good employees among stacks of profiles, you only need to be alert in spotting three basic qualities:
Responsible and reliable
As a startup, you stumble a lot along the rough road of entrepreneurship. That is why you need someone reliable and responsible to be with you in your journey towards success.
When we say responsible, your candidate should possess the skills that you need. What does that mean? Matt DeCoursey, CEO and co-founder of Full Scale, often mentions that the key to hiring is finding someone who has great knowledge on subjects or processes that you have limited knowledge about.
If you aren’t in sales, then find someone incredibly good at selling. If you aren’t tech-savvy when it comes to marketing, then hire an expert in digital marketing.
When you have a potential employee with the skills you need, here enters the value of reliability. Since this applicant has the skills of your weak points, make sure that they have enough experience in the industry.
You are taking your first steps as a startup, so you need an employee with less supervision, someone you can leave alone and still do a good job. You can’t hover and focus on them all the time, you are too busy for that. A responsible and reliable employee has the appropriate skills and is well-organized to do tasks efficiently.
Passionate in what they do
Passion for work has everything to do with productivity. Passionate employees are mostly engaged. Meaning, they constantly aim to do the best at their jobs and vests interest in the success of the company.
The founders of Full Scale make sure that they hire not just good employees but passionate people as well. Full Scale’s main workforce is the software developers; these are people who continually solve problems. For a job that consumes a lot of brain activity, you need to be passionate and dedicated to incessantly do a good job.
Dynamic and teachable
A dynamic and teachable applicant is the perfect touch to paint the image of a good employee. Unlike large companies, startups need to utilize every workforce they have. They can’t afford to hire one specialist to do just one task. You need an employee that is fast on their toes and willing to learn along the way.
“Experience can be taught if you are willing to put the time in and willing to kind of let someone possibly fail a little bit on your dime. But if you mentor and nurture them correctly, it’s so much better in the long run,” says Andrew Morgans.
How to Find Good Employees
Job postings, here and there. Reviewing profiles, resumés, and portfolios. Screening every applicant and interviewing each and every one of them. If you do all these processes for over fifty applicants without a recruitment plan, you can feel the overwhelming pressure rising.
Before you know it, you’re having a recruitment meltdown. Or worse, key factors may slip through the cracks and you end up hiring the bad egg from the clutch.
That is why some startup founders shared their knowledge and experience on how to get the best employees for their startups:
Hire someone with experience
Heather Steppe emphasized the importance of experience and industry knowledge when it comes to finding and hiring good employees. You can start by narrowing down the content of your job postings. Create a list of qualities and experience levels that you are looking for.
Never place vague job descriptions. You will end up with a bunch of applications that do not meet your qualifications. By being specific, you screen your applicants even before they grab a phone call.
An internship program
Hiring full-time employees are not the only option when you need good employees in your startup. Pro tip from Marknology founder Andrew Morgans, there are some instances where there is no urgent need for a full-time employee right away.
In Marknology’s case, they accept interns in their company to see if these budding talent is a good fit. If they are, they bring them in. This approach works well with them and is quite effective with Marknology growing constantly in the industry.
A company is only as good as its employees
Matt DeCoursey is always successful in finding good employees—some are even the best—for Full Scale. His secret is being hands-on when it comes to recruitment. DeCoursey personally handpicks each and every employee hired. For successful hiring, you need to embrace the hiring and recruitment process. Scrutinize every profile, every interview made.
When you are involved in the process, you figure out who and where the best people are. Getting to know your employees at a closer range is also a big bonus with this approach.
Go with your gut
Believe it or not, but this technique works for Hernan Sias of Business Bros. Your gut will point you in the right direction in dealing with applicants. As they say, never believe everything you read on paper and hear in interviews.
Not all of them are reliable. If your guts alarm you that the applicant is a bit shady, then be wary and do more research. It can take a wee bit of time but it is better than hiring the wrong person. Yes, you may be wrong at times, but most often, your gut will tell you the right employees.
Hire Slow But Hire Strong
And that is how you can find good employees to help you grow your startup. All you need to do is keep their qualifications in mind. Furthermore, the abovementioned tips are from successful entrepreneurs who are up and running in their respective fields.
One or two approaches may work for you, and some won’t. All these are simply to guide you on your journey. The next thing you need to think over is how to find and keep good employees in your company.
But this is not all. You can find a lot of success stories, entrepreneur tips, techniques, and startup inspirations in Startup Hustle TV. This is an awe-inspiring web series that features real startup founders who paved their way towards success.
You will surely learn a lot of things about entrepreneurship, starting a company from scratch, marketing, sales, and many more. All you need to do is visit their Youtube channel, click subscribe, and be notified for more video updates.
