Top 6 Insights on Recruiting in Startups

Whether you’re a founder or HR specialist, you know that without the right people in your organization you’re not going anywhere. To discuss HR in startups, a diverse crowd of seventy people made their way down to Q11 - Deutsche Bank’s Innovation Lab on Tuesday, April 26.

After grabbing a drink and mingling with fellow HR enthusiasts the crowd sat down to hear from a panel about “HR in Startups - Recruiting Tech Talents” hosted by Setting and Deutsche Bank.

The event was stacked with an experienced group of individuals moderated by Darja Gutnick, Founder and CEO of 12grapes. Panelists included: Raluca Moldovan, Tech Recruiter at Delivery Hero; Emma Tracey, Co-founder at Honeypot; Jenny Jung, VP People & Organisation at EyeEm; Sina Haghiri, Head of HR at Blinkist; and Timothy Khoo-Jones ,Global Head of Recruiting at SoundCloud.

So if you’re in awe of the panelist and ready to learn how these startups are successful in recruiting and keeping the right talent, read on for our top 6 insights.

1. Transparency is KEY
What does this include? For the most part, every single thing. Companies should be transparent about their job description; key messages; the way interviewees communicate and even providing candidates with a preview of who they’ll be working with (getting to know the team to see if it’s a fit on either end). If you want people to be attracted to your company and stay, the candidate needs to know what the company stands for and what to honestly expect. Sina from Blinklist laid it out perfectly by saying that “ if you don’t feel bullshitted, you are more drawn to the job” and we think most people agreed with the sentiment!

2. PLAN and PIVOT
Many startups can agree that it’s more of a challenge to find senior people to fill roles and so as much as planning helps, you have to be ready to change tactics. A  long term strategy of how you can attract or target the right people is necessary but you need to always re-evaluate your goals and how you may get there - aka what can you do on a daily, weekly or monthly basis to get candidates in the long term. Raluca from Delivery Hero let us know that she “sets daily goals and tries new strategies and then re-evaluates them if they don’t work.” She provided us with an example of how she’s messaged 100 people in one day and then evaluated the strategy. So set those goals but be ready to pivot and try something new, working at a startup you have the advantage of being more creative and less rigid in comparison to more established companies.

3. HOLACRACY is the new buzzword

It may not be the easiest word to say (try to say it 5 times in a row quickly, we dare you) but startups are learning what it means and implementing it to attract the right employees. Holacracy comprises of flat hierarchies and providing employees with more freedom and flexibility in their job, which apparently is extremely important to job candidates, especially tech developers. Emma from Honeypot.io specializes in tech recruiting and has also done a lot of post-hiring surveys and said that outside of a base salary you can convince people to join by focusing on “flexibility, allowing remote work and independent decision making on the hardware used and open source code” for example. So after a certain salary, more choice is what people are yearning for.

4. Create your own COMMUNITY
Timothy from SoundCloud really touched base on this topic, creating your own strong community within a company will attract the right candidates. So yes, you can focus on what other startups are doing but you should strongly ask yourself what it takes to be successful within your startup first. How do you start? Timothy said that “ organizations need to be as inclusive as possible and not use the term cultural fit.” And if your employees feel a strong sense of community within the company, they are likely to talk about it outside of work which will draw even more interest and passion to be part of the workplace.

5. EARLY organizational development needs to be done RIGHT
Jenny from EyeEm noted that  “you need to bring the right HR team or recruiters in at the beginning stage of a startup to find the right people.” Creating the culture you want from the beginning is key, as backpedaling and rebranding takes more time and resources. What are ways to rebrand if you need to? If you are a tech company try to get published in certain journals or websites and get your CTO or developers to speak publicly about what you are working on. In general, this approach can never harm your brand but hopefully you are not forced to take this route if you invest in HR professionals from the beginning.

6. Data is your FRIEND
Don’t run away from it, use it to improve your hiring process and engagement scores to track against industry standards. Everyone on the panel mentioned that they are taking a more data centric approach and a few have already adopted a program called Peakon to help them track engagement. Having data to back up your position is always a good idea! Of course candidates want to see anecdotal information about your startup but wouldn’t it be additionally compelling to know the data behind why people are so engaged at their job?

Okay so those were 6 big takeaways, only somewhat summarized - we tried to keep it short but there were so many interesting points, it was hard to do so. And since the audience really seemed to enjoy the panel discussion and had a lot of questions,we plan on creating another more targeted and intimate HR event to continue to cultivate the community. So if you have a burning HR question or topic you would like answered, email us and we’ll try to make it part of our next event.