Part 2 of 2: Successful recruitment of startup employees: most definitely possible mission

In the 1^st part of “Successful recruitment of startup employees”, we discussed about how to properly manage talents’ recruitment process by 3 key guidelines for recruiting employees:

1. Marketing the job to the candidate and creating value for a candidate to choose you.
2. Management of a precise and fast recruitment process.
3. Creating an experience for the candidate.

In This Part We Will Discuss About How Do We Begin? (Or: Ways To Reach All These Talents?)

Recruiting team members call this “Developing Recruitment Sources” – and this is a complete theory that we can elaborate on much more. Nofar Gotlieb, our recruitment manager, summarized for us the most effective recruitment sources:

1. A Friend Brings a Friend – True, it’s no secret that employees are our best ambassadors (especially when they are happy in their jobs), but you can manage it properly and make it the most effective and fast source for you. It begins with the employees knowing that you are recruiting. They need to know the open positions and share them on their networks, groups and forums. Many times it is a friend of a friend or someone who was with them in school. You should also clarify with whom they should share CV submitted, and if you share with them feedbacks throughout the recruitment process, it will enable them to feel meaningful in recruiting their friends – and they will bring many more. According to Nofar, our recruitment manager, your employees can also help you market the position or tell you if the candidate is hesitant and why, and by doing so you will be able to create a more successful dialogue with the candidate, one that will lead to signing a contract.
2. Professional Communities – the best people aren’t really looking for a job. But if they hear about a really attractive job – they’ll consider applying for it. Make sure you are present in the professional communities and networks relevant to the profiles you are looking to recruit (these can be found everywhere – LinkedIn, Whatsapp groups, Facebook, GitHub, Meetup, technological forums, etc.), and make sure to advertise the positions in an way that will attract them to get in touch with you personally, and this does not have to be a prize.
3. Investing in marketing and employer branding – even if you are a small start-up. Most start-ups emphasize recruiting developers, and usually postpone recruiting marketing team members for a later stage. This is the typical situation, but it is not necessarily the proper situation, since it is better to start establishing the brand from the very beginning of the start-up, even by hiring a part-time or per hour marketing consultant. Building the brand right from the start helps to attract worthy employees who want to take part in a well-known start-up that has good growth prospects. Therefore, it is better for the entrepreneur to position the start-up from the early stages by using the various media, lecture at appropriate conferences and take an active part in the relevant communities.
4. Employment agencies and Head Hunters – specialize in developing recruitment sources and they can save you valuable time by screening irrelevant CVs. Work with 2-3 companies that you trust to create value for you, and they will make sure you receive a pipe of candidates. Make sure to provide them feedback if a candidate is unsuitable so they can refine the search and pinpoint the next candidates they deliver to you.

So, What Do Talents Want? (Or: Money Is Not Everything)

In an ideal world, you would recruit, invest in and nurture employees and they would stay with you for many years. In reality, things are quite different. In high-tech, the average employee’s turnover is one year and 9 months.

We tried to characterize the key features that attract the talents to the leading companies in the economy:

1. Professional Challenge – Working with super advanced technologies, working on a product that has a significant contribution to the community, professional challenges across different interfaces, enabling employees to feel that they are part of the technological and business vision, and if the startup succeeds, they can be partners of the Exit or they can advance fast both in respect to the position and the pay.
2. Good working relationships – In the reality in which we spend most of our time during the day in the workplace, it is important to create a pleasant working environment and good relations with co-workers. Make sure you recruit pleasant people who will enrich the various teams, encourage team building, knowledge sharing and social gatherings while working. (The best part is the Happy Hour)
3. Professional Development – Allow your employees to take courses that interest them, test new technologies, bring new ideas, produce a discourse, and make them feel that they are advancing and have influence.
4. Work-life balance – The most common approach today is that there is an understanding and acceptance that the personal life of the employees are important and it is important to let them incorporate them with the work, as the assumption is that an employee who has the opportunity to invests in his or her personal life will be more meaningful to the organization, and will experience less burnout.

Organizations that allow flexible hours and on and off work from home – manage to attract more candidates.

5. Salary – it’s true that the salary is important, but that’s not everything, so it is at the end of the list. Most candidates rate the salary relatively low, provided of course that the other terms are realized.

What Convinces Good Employees To Stay With A Start-Up? (Or: How To Create Employee Engagement?)

Every organization wants its employees to be connected to the vision, the work, the product, and the culture of the organization.

If you give room to the following three cases, you will succeed in strengthening employees’ sense of connection, which will also lead to a situation where employees choose to stay in the organization for a long time:

1. Creating a sense of meaning – The more connected the employee will feel towards the organization, the more meaningful it will be for him or her. You can create a sense of meaning among employees by showing appreciation, whether verbally, by providing financial reward, consulting on important issues and listening to what they have to say. The more meaningful his or her role is in the organization, the more it will include significant interactions during the work day – the greater sense of meaning he or she will feel.
2. Good communication with the direct manager – A good, respectful and fair relationship, which includes the opportunity to learn professional matters from the manager, is one of the important things in creating a sense of connectedness to the organization.
3. Connecting to organization’s values – Connecting to the organizational values, vision and strategy, will create a sense of belonging. Listen to your employees, hear what is coming from the surface, and connect them to your values. This way, the employee will become an inseparable part of the organization while engaging in his or her personal contribution to the final product.

Glassdoor US recruitment website, recently published the results of a survey of 5,000 employees in four countries: USA, UK, France and Germany. The survey found that 77 percent of the participants in the survey take into account the workplace culture before applying for a certain position and 56 percent said that the company culture is more important than the salary in the context of job satisfaction.

In conclusion, recruiting talented employees to start-ups is a complete Theory. It is important to be focused, on the process and act quickly. Recruitment experts, us included, can help you make the process more precise, maximize it, and help you succeed in recruiting the talents you are looking for.
Remember that every candidate who met your product becomes your ambassador at the end of the process. Finally, make sure you recruit the best, and that the candidates you interviewed leave with a good taste and a wish to continue.

* Prodware Israel is the Israeli operations branch of the global Prodware Group. It helps organizations reinvent themselves in the era of digital transformation. It is a key player in the global IT industry.

Prodware has also collaborating with Brooks-Keret Company, and together they provide employee placement and outsourcing services with specialization in start-ups. Additional information is available on Prodware Israel website.

This Article Was Written By Keren Tirosh, VP of Human Resources & Nofar Gottlieb, Recruitment Manager Of Prodware – Israel.

Contact Them at ktirosh@prodware.co.il or ngottlied@prodware.co.il