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Startup recruiting – How to succeed in it

10.11.2015 | Mika Räsänen | Read time 4 min
We had a great time at Slush sparring employers and employees at the Recruiting Area. If you didn’t catch us at Slush, check out our top tips for Startup Recruiting!

How to prepare for a recruitment?

You need to plan the recruitment process and the recruitment schedule as concretely as possible. Make sure that everyone who is involved in your organization has time to participate in the recruitment process (for example in defining the candidate profile, screening applications and interviewing candidates). You need to plan how you will attract potential candidates, decide what kind of channels you are going to use for reaching these potential talents and what kind of methods you are going to utilize for evaluating candidates (a CV, a motivational letter, phone-, video-, face-to-face- and/or case interviews), and plan how many interview rounds you are going to make. You also need to discuss who the decision makers are – does someone, for example, have a veto if he/she doesn’t approve the candidate all other team members love?

Why is it necessary to get all the decision makers in the company involved in the process?

It is crucial that all the decision makers have a common understanding of the candidate profile and the key characteristics of the position before the recruitment process begins. If the decision makers don’t have a common agreement about the profile, there is a huge possibility that the company makes a wrong recruitment or that the whole process turns into a big hassle.

How long does a recruitment process take?

The ideal recruitment process takes one month but can vary from few days to few months depending on the schedule and for example how many interviews the process includes. We recommend keeping the recruitment schedule quite tight – just to make sure that the candidates don’t get frustrated or take another job offer because your recruitment process was too slow.

Why is it important to make no-thank-you phone calls for candidates who are not selected?

How the candidates are treated during the recruitment process is how they will judge and advertise your company to their own networks. It is important to treat all candidates fairly and respectfully – No-thank-you phone calls are an important part of that respective treatment if you have met with the person face-to-face. Even though these candidates might not be suitable for the position or for your company right now, they might very well be potential employees or clients in the future. How you treat these people during your recruitment process has a huge impact on your employer image! This might not be of any interest in the early days but can backfire terribly when your company is growing.

At Slush aTalent helped startups survive the challenge of recruiting their first employees after the key team members are in place.

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