[3 min read]
Less than 70 percent of the workforce is actively looking for a new career change. Unemployment is at a 10-year low, and startups are at a disadvantage hiring the talent they need within the right time frames. [data via Linkedin]
Or are they?
Roughly 87 percent of people are open to learning about an opportunity. [data via Linkedin] The catch? Only if you come to them first. Are they playing hard to get? No. They know their worth and the majority are happy where they are.
With history continuing to repeat itself, startups aren’t known for their acumen in the interview process either, and are usually assumed to offer less cash upfront and less upfront value for more work. Consequently, candidates gravitate toward other offers and, rightfully so, are very picky about their value and where they spend their time.
The key: You have to be the proactive one and approach candidates first.
Competition is fierce.
Workers are swapping jobs twice as fast. Not more, just faster. On average, candidates are vanishing from the market within 10 days. Carrots are dangled quickly, and if it appeals to a candidate, they’re gone.
Many times, they are scooped up by another company before you even have the time to reach out. This leaves you back at square one — a tough place for a startup.
You must offer a different experience from the first moment — before you even open the position.
How can you keep up with the market as a startup? The name of your company isn’t rolling off of the world’s tongues quite yet, and yet you have something exceptional to offer. I get it. I’ve been a Founder just like you.
At Pendulum, this is our wheelhouse. Our passion. Where we have succeeded, partnering with you.
Building a strong foundation before kicking the hiring wheel into motion is the new way to empower your company to hire and scale successfully. For a founder that is trying to keep up with her own work and managing her employees well, it may seem impossible to invest the necessary time.
Time? Who has the time? Maybe you think it’s too costly. It’s not.
What will it cost to lose candidates? What is the cost of lacking a quality pipeline for interviews? The cost of wasted time spent on interviewing rather than hiring? The cost of your hiring out of their functional role, spending more time than needed trying to hire without the skills to know how to get it right, as a team.
The upfront investment, to get your hiring process right, is minimal compared to the sum of those costs. Decades of startups before you can attest to that notion. Most, sadly, aren’t in business anymore., but the ones that are, can tell you – if they knew then what is available now, they would have invested earlier.
Here are some of the best ways to attract quality talent in this competitive market, while not breaking your bank and saving time, spend, effort and frustrated hiring teams.
- Frontload your hiring efforts by creating strategies and a plan to develop a talent pool. Craft a different candidate and interviewer experience, so that once you flip the switch, you can come out of the gate running.
- Be proactive. Rather than waiting for candidates to come to you, or accepting resumes from sources that aren’t the right match, hire candidates because you need to fill the need. Don’t hire them because you’re in desperation mode. It WILL NOT support your organizational goals.
- Shift your perspective. Change your mindset about who you need resumes from — these are humans. They want to feel like people, be seen, heard, and acknowledged.
- Use your network to build genuine relationships.
- Build a culture of employees who are ambassadors that proactively network for you. Create a strategy for ambassadors and reward them appropriately.
- Host target market (and fun) events to bring candidates to you.
- Build a reputation in the market for being an employer, candidates gravitate, not repelled away from.
- Partner with the right recruiting source who delivers quality (not quantity) humans, and one that has both yours and the candidate’s best interest in mind to ensure a genuine match.
- Invest in the right technology to support you (i.e., ATS, HRIS, etc.).
- Create a passive talent pool via sourcing strategies.
- Create a passive talent pool via sourcing strategies.
These are a few things you can do to support your efforts. You’ve taken on a big goal, so do what is required to support your goals in the best way possible.
Our approach at Pendulum is proactive, strategic, connected, and goes beyond looking at hiring as a game of “more resumes! We don’t do numbers and wouldn’t advise you to subscribe either. It’s not the quantity that matters, but the quality of your pipeline. Primarily, what matters is what your company has done to support your hiring goals by creating quality-driven strategic efforts, that produce quality results.
The old ways of recruiting, where startups lean on recruiters to do the heavy lifting and selling, is a thing of the past. The modernized approach – how leaders go about creating a solid talent strategy and hiring foundation, that will transform their goals into their #1 catalyst for success.
Taking action is defining. Taking no action is also an action, and it will also define your company. Your results.
What you do matters. What outcome do you want?
You can win in this market! Don’t wait until you flip the switch.
Written by Pendulum Founder, Alana Fulvio. “America’s top early-stage startup Talent Acquisition Strategist and Advisor.”
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