How do startups hire?
And how you can make the most of the system
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We caught up with seasoned recruiter Ellis Briery. Ellis is the former Head of Talent Acquisition at Triplebyte, Senior Recruiter at Atrium, a startup from the founder of Twitch, Justin Kan. Ellis has helped venture funds with talent acquisition and is an expert on how high-growth start-ups hire.
If you’re looking for a job and want to find out how tech hires, read on.
A quick look inside the post:
The best talent acquisition strategies
How to get into talent acquisition
How companies make themselves attractive to the best candidates
How do the world's largest firms recruit top talent?
The best talent acquisition strategy involves identifying the business problem, how the candidate will solve it, and the skills and experience they'll need to do so.
That forms the basis of the hiring plan template. The best hiring plans also have sign-offs from every part of the company, including the budget holders, so if you plan on getting into talent acquisition, remember to involve all stakeholders.
Factoring in the performance assessment of new hires as you go is key, too. If you find the hires aren't performing as you expected, your assessment scheme and interview process aren't working as it's meant to, so it's time to go back to the drawing board.
If you're looking for a role, you should consider how your skills and experience will benefit the company and focus on that in your application and interview. Structured interviews are on the rise too, where the recruiting team will evaluate you against answers using a marking scheme.
Making sure you give structured responses that include examples is key.
What should you look for in a startup?
Start-ups struggle to win on compensation because they'll never be able to compete with the likes of Meta, but luckily, those looking to work for start-ups tend to be more focused on passion than money. Instead, start-ups should focus on branding.
Branding to potential candidates is as important as branding to your customers, so having a strong brand identity and message in terms of the workplace is key. A start-up's digital footprint is especially crucial, from its online blog to its Glassdoor reviews.
Making a candidate feel like an individual and not just a number or a resume is also a must - the best start-ups can create personal connections with those they interview without being obtrusive. The same goes for the candidate expectation side - if a company shows no interest in you, it's a red flag.
Tips for recruiting for rapidly scaling companies
You'll encounter some unique challenges if you're hired to acquire talent for a rapidly-scaling start-up. Here's how to approach them.
Market conditions change rapidly. Be prepared to have to make quick changes based on external forces and stay flexible.
Record data. The more data you can collect, the better you can analyze where you went wrong when you struggled to hire or make the wrong hires.
Treat it like a product manager and a product. End users are both interviewers and interviewees. Sit down and do user research with the interviewers for quantitative and qualitative analysis. See what the data says about what is and isn't going well.
Do as much in-house as possible to start with. That way, you have greater control over the process and better data to work with.
How to build a career in talent acquisition
You have to be passionate, willing to grind, and, most importantly, be you. Most people start their careers in sourcing, so it's an excellent place to look for your initial role. It can be a little boring to start with, but it will help you learn the recruiting ropes.
It's more analytical than you'd think, too. Be data-driven, and you can make things up as you go, but only as a stopgap to get something out the door.. Data collection that you can analyze and use to improve processes will be more useful than you could imagine.
Looking for a job? Check out HackerPulse Jobs, where tech companies are looking for ambitious talents like you!