Your Startup is Ready to Start Recruiting? Great! Just Steer Clear of These Common Pitfalls
A successful startup is a beautiful thing and knowing you need to start recruiting is exciting. It shows the world that the business landscape is not completely dominated by huge multinational corporations. It demonstrates to those aspiring entrepreneurs trying to make it behind you that their imagination, hard work and endeavor can pay off.
However, with success comes growth, and while growth is a natural consequence of success, it also brings with it its own set of challenges. If they’re not careful, small businesses that are used to being small can find themselves tripping up over their own proverbial feet. Today, we’re going to focus on one example of how growth can hobble small businesses and that’s in the field of recruitment.
Growing to the point where your startup is ready to start recruiting is an inherently exciting prospect. You’ll be meeting clever, imaginative and passionate new people who want to bring their drive, zeal and ambition to something you’ve created.
How cool is that? But don’t let yourself get giddy at this crucial juncture. The recruitment process is exciting, but it also represents a degree of risk which must be mitigated. The right new recruits can help your business to soar.
The wrong recruits and the wrong recruiting process can torpedo your growth and undo all the goodwill you’ve generated among your target market.
With this in mind, let’s take a look at some common pitfalls that your startup will need to steer clear of. Avoid these and you’ll enjoy a brisk, cost-effective and satisfying recruitment process that gives you top-tier talent with a minimum of fuss…
Not knowing what (or who) you’re looking for while recruiting
This is a very common issue for new small businesses. New startups tend to expect their new recruits to have multifaceted duties, and have a diverse skill set. Essentially, they expect mini versions of themselves.
Multi-skilled and driven individuals who can effectively be monkey wrenches and immerse themselves in whatever aspect of daily operations require their attention.
If you can find one of these recruitment unicorns, great. But you might spend quite a long time looking for one. Why? Because they’re not looking for work in nascent startups. They’re trying to start up businesses of their own.
You’ll have a much smoother and less stressful recruitment process if you start with a clear job description and person specification. Make sure that you know exactly what the recruit will spend their time doing. Of course, they can be expected to perform reasonable duties which diverge from this, but the clearer a picture you have of what their typical working day will look like, the better.
When you know what you want, it’s much easier to know who you want. When you understand a recruit’s operational duties, you can start to try and find people with the skills and disposition to shine in that role.
Casting the net too wide
It’s hard to explain to someone who hasn’t undergone it (from a recruiter’s perspective) just how long and involved the recruitment process is.
If you have absolutely nothing to do with your day other than recruit new candidates, it’s a chore. When you’re managing it on top of the myriad duties that come with running your own business, it can be an outright nightmare.
You might be tempted to cast a wide net in order to increase your chances of finding a suitable candidate. However, the wider you cast the net, the more time you’ll spend trawling through dozens or even hundreds of applications from people who are woefully unqualified.
If your person specification and job description are accurate, you won’t need to worry about casting the net wide.
Failing to carry out background checks on new recruits
You may fall head over heels (professionally speaking, of course) for a new candidate at interview. They may say all the right things and their references may be utterly glowing. But without the proper background checks you could be setting yourself up for some very nasty surprises.
The good news is that background checks can be carried out quickly and affordably using a service like Checkr. Such applications are designed with the needs of busy small business owners in mind and help you to recruit the best candidates in a time efficient manner.
Not having a clear onboarding process for recruiting
Onboarding is the means by which you’ll transform a recruit into an employee. Needless to say, your onboarding process should include specific training, but that’s only the beginning.
Onboarding is not just about imbuing candidates with the skills to do their job well, it’s also all about helping them to acclimate to your workplace culture and engage with their duties, their colleagues and the values and ideals that your brand represents.
It’s about giving them a program of ongoing professional development so that your enterprise can help them to meet their career goals and better themselves professionally.
A clear and effective onboarding process can help immeasurably with employee satisfaction, team cohesion and employee retention.
Being ill-prepared for interviews
Each of us has a story of a particularly stressful job interview. One where we had to do hours upon hours of preparation and research. One where the recruiters asked us questions that made us really glad we’d done our homework.
Where we’d have been certain that the recruiters weren’t laughing at us as soon as we shut the door… If we hadn’t somehow landed the job.
Yet, as fresh as these memories may be in your mind… Don’t make the mistake of thinking that the candidate has to do all the heavy lifting. Preparing for a job interview as a recruiter is a very different process to preparing for one as a candidate.
Make sure you know which questions you’ll ask to get a snapshot of how the candidate would respond to the challenges of their daily duties. Make sure you know what kinds of skills and experience you’re looking for and how to qualify it at interview.
If you’re a naturally verbose person, you’ll also want to stick to the script. Otherwise you’ll wind up talking way more than you listen. While this can make for a pleasant interview experience, it can leave you with precious little useful data.
Keep all of the above in mind, and you’ll enjoy a pain-free and efficient recruitment process that betters your business.
Did This Blog Help You? If so, I would greatly appreciate if you could comment below and share on Facebook
Facebook: facebook.com/coachmikemacdonald
Email: [email protected]
Considering Starting a Home Business? Apply For A Free Coaching Call Here
“I help coachable and teachable professionals become Financially Free and Live Full Time! Helping you create a better tomorrow through a better you!”
P.S. If you don’t yet have a home business but are looking to start one and would like to work directly with me and my team click here to learn more.
If you enjoyed this post on Your Startup is Ready to Start Recruiting? Great! Just Steer Clear of These Common Pitfalls, please retweet and comment below.
