Recruitment and Selection for Startups: Key Steps to Hiring the Best

For startups, hiring employees may be one of the toughest moves you will ever make in your organization. Who you hire can either make or mar your organization. Sometimes, there could be challenges that they did not see coming. Hence, it is important to understand the key steps to hiring the best in a startup.

Some of the challenges recruiters face in hiring the best are:

• Risk of Hiring the Wrong Candidate

The visioner cannot build their business on their own. It would only take working with the right people, with the right skill set, and who are all out for that course to sustain the growth of the business. 

• Budget Restriction

Every organization should put things like training, payments of qualified employees, and benefits into effect before recruiting or keeping the best candidates. 

Unfortunately, a low budget usually reduces some startups to employing under-qualified candidates or hiring one candidate to do the job of two. 

• Risk of Failing

Many prospects would not want to risk sticking with a company whose possibility of a long-term establishment is bleak. This is why these startups will convince them by using other side benefits like stock options. 

The solution has to be strategic and creative. There are multiple steps to hiring the best employees specific to your company and its goals. What may work for one company may not be effective for another. I will be streamlining the steps to ten.

10 STEPS TO HIRE THE BEST EMPLOYEES

1. Develop a Strong Work Culture

Before any great potential candidate considers a company, they would have to research the company to know how suitable the work provisions are for them. 

Candidates will consider the friendly and conducive environment of your company – whether remote, hybrid, or on-site. Other ways you can build a strong work culture are by making provision for incentives, career growth opportunities, and strengthening the company’s reputation.

2. Establish an Employment Strategy

The first step to making any final decision on a prospective employee is by setting up a strategy for recruitment.Do your research and find out:

• The number of workforces required in a department.
• If and where local or international recruitment is needed.
• If an employee, contractor, or freelancer is more suitable for a role.
• The cost of labor in terms of benefits, salary, taxes, compulsory employment e.g. sanitation department.

3. Understand the Legal Restrictions

Every country has its rules and restrictions on hiring. As a startup company in Nigeria, you need to understand things like the method of payment, allocation of income tax, and personnel classification – this means that you should know what applies to a full-time employee differently from a contractor. 

4. Prepare Your Candidate Profile

Once the hiring plan is set, it is time to prepare a candidate profile. This profile includes details such as the candidate’s educational background, work experience, and qualifications. 

This profile will determine how to create job descriptions for certain positions needed to be filled.

5. Include Side Attractions

To get the best hands for your startup, you need something beyond an attractive salary worth pulling them in. This is because they have more than one option to choose from, especially with an established business. You will be contending with up-and-running organizations so, you need to bring your A-game. 

Some things that can attract them are:

• Development opportunities: This is a tactic whereby you bring more challenging work as a means to improve their skills.
• Training
• Benefits such as; stock options (link to, How to evaluate Employee Stock Options for Nigerians)
• Work culture, e.g. a conducive work environment

6. Work on Employer Branding

Prospective employees usually would check your company’s About Us webpage. They would want to see something that will show them what your company is really about and what makes your company invaluable to their career pursuit. 

For this reason, you need to be intentional with your job ads, job vacancies, company webpage outlook, newsletters, etc. Let them strategically show the benefits of working with you in any way possible. 

7. Set Up an External Team

As a startup, you don’t have all the money in the world to waste on a certain level. This is why hiring contractors or freelancers is a good option, especially for roles that can do without full-time employment. This way, you save costs. 

Also, some startups set up branches in another geographical location or country to attract qualified employees within that environment. As long as a business has local employers and has its registration linked to that particular locale, it has a higher possibility of hiring great talents there. 

8. Consider Remote or Hybrid Hiring

This would broaden your chances of attracting the best applicants from other geographical areas and countries. It will enlarge your scope and increase the possibilities for qualified applicants to jump on your offer. 

It is equally another medium of saving costs and getting the best at the same time. Funding a workspace for on-site personnel, yet paying what they are due can pose as a herculean task. So, why not pay qualified employees what they are worth without spending on unnecessary things?

9. Set up Outreach Channels

Companies these days participate in career fairs organized by some well-recognized organizations as a means to market themselves and reach out to the best prospective candidates to work with them. You can leverage on this too. You can also maximize other effective mediums like;

• Hosting webinars
• Engaging social networks
• Organizing Bootcamps
• Workshops
• Attending or speaking at networking events

10. Employ a Staffing Agency

A staffing agency can relieve you of hiring responsibilities. You can offer them a contract to take care of employee compliance, payrolls, and legal involvements correctly. This will not affect the day-to-day running of your company, or your employee being answerable to you directly. 

Usually, these companies are either established or have made a name for themselves where recruitment and efficiency are concerned. 

Some staffing agencies have a global scope, which means that they have an upper hand in recruiting staff in the countries within their reach. An example of a staffing agency is The CareerBuddy. 

For any organization to thrive, it needs hands – the best hands for the job. Unlike established companies, a startup cannot afford to risk recruiting just anyone. If you run a startup, following these foundational steps will save you from making mistakes that could crumble your company.