The recruiting process is indeed an uphill task even for global giants and well-established organisations. According to the Society for Human Resource Management, the average time it takes to fill a vacancy is 42 days.
The recruiting process becomes much more complex and challenging for startups even after raising early-stage funding from top venture capitalists. Employees remain doubtful about the long-term prospects of any startup. Hence, it is tough to get people on board in the initial phase.
Here are some of the obstacles that startups face during their recruiting process.
Lack of hiring Policies
Unlike developed companies, Startups usually, don’t have hiring policies and the traditional recruiting practices in place. Due to the lack of predefined background check policies, documented interview process or even corporate culture, most startups face challenges during the hiring process.
What can be done?
Before you begin the hiring process for your startup, map out the recruitment policy by answering the following questions:
What type of employee you are looking for?
What skills your recruit would bring to the table?
How will the verification process be done on the background?
So based on the above questions, what would be the steps of hiring a candidate?
Retaining the Talent
Organisations, especially startups, receive most of the applications from college graduates, where the idea of working with a startup is incredibly exciting. However, most startups are ventures put a majority of the profit back into the company, so the chances of getting high salaries, great perks and work-life balance are slim to none. Retaining employees become a challenge for the recruiter.
What can be done?
The young professionals can be retained by providing them with an exciting working culture by giving them flexible working hours, by making work from anywhere system. Also, offering higher positions and unique work experiences that other established companies can’t provide the same.
Search for Best Fit
In a typical startup, the roles and responsibilities of an employee are not confined to a single role. To achieve a high level of teamwork, innovation is required in a startup. Not everyone is the right fit for a startup’s work culture
Since the majority of the start-up workforce consists of young college graduates, it becomes difficult for them to survive this kind of work pressure.
What can be done?
Search someone who can withstand the job pressure and at the same time handle the job responsibilities well. Think of hiring someone who has previous startup experience, someone who can handle the startups’ pressure and fast-paced work environment. Once again, these niche job openings can be outsourced by the recruitment consultancies with a dedicated team of experts to provide the best talent for open positions.
Competition with Major Brand
The majority of leading companies are known to make it harder for startups to operate in the market. For example, world-renowned startup Snap, the parent company of Snapchat, is still struggling to compete against tech titans such as Facebook. In the same way, startups are competing for the best talent with big corporations. That is because start-ups are usually considerably limited in their financial resources at the very early stage of development and simply can not offer their potential professionals a good salary rate. Meanwhile, leading firms are willing to offer more attractive benefits packages and higher wages.
What can be done?
In fact startups have a great many advantages. It is important that you as a business owner identify the benefits of your business in particular and make sure that potential employees are aware of those benefits. One of these benefits could be rapid potential growth which is exactly what most applicants are looking for. Also, equity can be shared with the employees to give them enough motivation.
Lack of Hiring experience
Most new businesses simply don’t invest their limited funding in the HR department, which is leading to a serious challenge. Instead of focusing on business development, business owners themselves waste their time receiving huge numbers of unqualified applicants. Additionally, young entrepreneurs with no hiring experience have no time to assist the skills and professional knowledge of potential employees. Startups usually fail because of the lack of a well-balanced team.
What can be done?
Networking is one of the potential solutions to the issue surrounding the lack of skilled recruiters. Networking refers to creating relationships and is regarded as one of the best strategies from the ground up to discovering new talent and developing a dream team. Networking also plays a role in a sales tool and helps you get as much revenue as you can.
Conclusion
Statistics indicate that nine out of ten startups fail because the young entrepreneurs frequently recruit wrong workers who are unable to manage a particular project. That is why it is so important to pay special attention to hiring and retaining talent for a startup. Precaution is always better than cure.
