What? But how can we scale if we don’t receive volumes of resumes?
As John Ruskin perfectly said: ”Quality is never an accident. It is always the result of intelligent effort.”
In early to mid-stage startups, lost or bad hires take up a disproportionate amount of time. Each hiring team member is not only taken out of their zone of genius but their happy (and retained) place. Missed hiring opportunities deplete revenue margins faster than any other operational area.
Most companies cry for “more resumes” as a fear-based solution to ensure their success.
If founders seek quality in the shirt and long term, it begins with the hiring team and their ability to deliver in 2 areas:
- Sourcing quality candidates with relevant experience, skills and culture fit.
- A talented team that can work as a unit and deftly assesses the quality of each person they interview.
The cry for more resumes is a method of desperation, not quality focus.
What is at risk?
Opportunity cost, cultural breakdown, reduced labor efficacy, and turnover are the primary impacts.
Most startups come from a quantitative perspective, which is understandable since this is how’s it’s been for decades past, yet this methodology has been proven to degrade the speed of hiring progression and ability to build a WE culture of high performing employees. Due to unforeseen or unattended gaps in the pre-hire expertise and expertise of the hiring team, startups have the high potential to fall behind in the market.
Here are some easily implementable and defining keys that you can’t avoid:
Treat resumes as they are, HUMAN: Hiring the best means positively connecting with candidates, knowing what makes them tick, and extracting that information. The best know what they want.
Consciously create your culture: Define it. Create it. Build it. Sustain it.
Know how to retain your talent: Retention is your fuel for sustained success.
Be differentiating: Offer an opportunity and challenges that is unique.
Hire good leaders: Ensure your leaders are the change-makers who will support your employees’ growth and dreams, not compete with them.
Train your hiring leaders: It’s not the quantity or quality of resumes received by hiring managers that make the difference in the end. It’s what they do with them in the interview that is the defining factor for candidates.
Systematize your hiring process: Create repeatable processes and align your teams in them to reduce time, effort, and spend.
Deliver a differentiating candidate experience: What a candidate experiences in the hiring process defines over 92% of the time whether they will accept your offer, or not. Invest in crafting one that honors them, stands out, and is efficient.
Create an employer brand that works for you: Invest in creating a brand that aligns with your hiring process and strategy.
Ensure you are compliant: Knowing the facts and arming both your strategy and team with the right information will alleviate costly legal issues.
There is a misguided narrative in the market that startups don’t have the time or resources to ramp up and acquire quality talent or develop an impactful talent strategy.
I don’t subscribe to this narrative.
I’ve seen the results, first-hand, from teams that chose to leverage their current employees to hire their future colleagues. Startups that are willing to invest time in evaluating how to get hiring right, emerge successful in the long-term more than not.
The goal is to succeed with minimal spending, time, and impact on the bottom line. Delivering the results of high-performing WE cultures along the way is the goal. Ensuring you have all of your bases covered doesn’t have to take significant time, nor does it have to deplete your funding or revenue.
The highest quality hires come from the most proficient, and intelligent, hiring teams. Success follows. Period.
Written by Alana Fulvio, Pendulum Founder.
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