5 way to boost recruitment as a start-up

As a start-up, it can be easy to focus all your time on finding and securing your first customers. That’s understandable. But, after a while, you’ll soon realise that you have another equally difficult battle on your hands: finding, recruiting, and retaining employees.

When you start out, you’ll probably be surprised to find that companies invest so much time, energy, and, indeed, money into recruitment. But as a start-up, it can be very difficult to find talented people to join your business.

In fact, because you’re a start-up, in most cases, you will not be able to offer applicants the same big salaries, snazzy offices, or career development opportunities of larger competitors. In the face of that challenge, here are five ways to try to set yourself apart.

While you might not be able to compete with the big corporates on salary or workplace perks, you should be able to beat them on purpose, mission, and a sense of impact.

There is good research to show that employees feel lost and purposeless in good corporate megaliths. New employees start to feel like they’re tiny cogs in a big machine very quickly.

That’s not the case at all with a start-up: everyone plays a huge role in the success and growth of the business. Plus, many start-ups are initially founded because they’re trying to change the world or their industry in a positive, transformative way.

As you start to engage potential candidates sell that mission to them: you’re challenging the rest of the industry and as a smaller company, they will make a real tangible difference to the success (or failure) of the business. This will strike a chord with many applicants.

There is strong evidence to show that recruits don’t necessary want to work for well-known companies but, instead, they want to work for well-known and experienced people. They want to work for people who are recognised and respected within their industries.

This makes sense: people want to learn as much as possible at the start of their careers, and the best way to do that quickly is to work with successful people. It also becomes an accolade that they have worked alongside those people on their CVs.

Start-ups can take advantage of this by leveraging thought leadership PR to build the profiles of their leadership and, especially, their founders. This will give them a real edge when it comes to recruiting talent for big, corporate, grey organisations.

You might have a smaller brand as a business, but that doesn’t mean you cannot show off the quality of your founder and senior talent. Make this is a key part of your pitch to new recruits.

While you might not be able to compete with bigger companies on direct remuneration, such as salary, you might want to consider different forms of compensation. On one hand, this might mean promising new recruit a bonus if you meet certain targets in the start-up’s first year.

But, the most powerful form of compensation is equity. In practice, this means actually offering your employees an opportunity to have a stake in the business. This might only be a very small percentage of the business, such as 1 per cent or even a fraction of 1 per cent.

Not only could this attract top talent to your business, but it could also engender a culture of deep commitment to the success of the business.

Obviously this has to be considered carefully, and there are undoubtedly a lot of legal and administrative complications that will need to be ironed out, but if you want to attract a particularly senior hire, then this could be a good way to give yourself an edge.

If you have big growth plans for the business, make sure that you sell these ambitious plans to potential recruits.

Showcasing your growth potential is a good way to answer a potential recruit’s concerns and about professional development: while there might not be an obvious progression track at the moment within the company, if you’re going to double the size of the business, this will open up lots of career opportunities for people that get in early.

It is also helpful to have some evidence to show that this growth potential is actually credible and not just a pipe dream. This might be as simple as showing that you have grown from 1 founder to 10 team members quickly, or that you have already signed up some big corporate customers.

Finally, big companies are famous for moving slowly and new joiners are often swamped by painful, bureaucratic processes that slow down experimentation and dilute independence. Team members are not empowered to find new ways to do things, nor encouraged to innovate.

At a start-up, it is much easier to create a culture of innovation and experimentation. As a start-up, you move much faster and you’re willing to (occasionally) make mistakes. When you’re speaking to new recruits make sure to emphasise that you have all the advantages of a smaller business: adaptable, fast-moving, and creative.

As you start to build your business, do not ignore the quality of your team. Ultimately, the success of your company will depend heavily of whether you have a team in place that can move faster enough and work hard enough to deliver the goods in your first few years.