HR Building Block #1: 6 Key Tips Start-ups Need to Hire and On-Board Exponentially
Ever wondered why some start-ups that seem to be growing rapidly run into multiple roadblocks or get derailed midstream? One reason is that successful scaling simply does not begin or end with hiring.
While most founders dream of exponential growth, how an organisation grows is almost always as important as sheer rate of growth. Indeed, periods of rapid growth are pivotal moments to put the right infrastructure in place to sidestep common pitfalls.
After working with more than 100 start-ups, the directors of ConnectOne and two successful entrepreneurs share six key principles to guide your hiring, on-boarding and people strategy. No matter what stage your company is at, here is how to prime it not just for exponential growth, but more importantly, sustained growth.
#1 Translating Company Vision Into A People Strategy
What happens when your business grows faster than you can hire or your team can scale? This remains one of the key questions Evereden’s CEO and co-founder, Kimberley Ho, grapples with
In 2020 alone, despite the global pandemic, the New York-based family skincare brand recorded phenomenal growth of 500% year over year. “Having the ability to hire fast enough to accommodate growth ensures the team’s bandwidth and morale is not spread too thin,” shares Kimberley.
In such situations of phenomenal growth, what should guide your key hires?
“One of the first things to consider are your goals for the next 12 to 18 months. Do you want to grow in the area of B2B enterprise sales? If so, do you have enough people in the organisation with the Rolodex to accomplish it? Are you trying to raise funds and break into a new country? If so, do you need country manager, and what kind of success profile should you look for?” asks Joanna Yeoh, director of ConnectOne. These questions will help you put a sound people strategy in place.
#2 A Winning Employee Pitch
Before you begin the hiring process, figure out how you would pitch to potential top talent. Like an investor pitch deck, the employee pitch deck is designed to attract the best talents to propel your start-up. Indeed, even more established brands such as Transferwise, Airbnb and Glints put great emphasis on communicating their vision, mission, purpose, values and culture to attract top talent.
“Having launched in Asia a year ago, Evereden had been looking for local talent with some challenges, especially since they had to compete with global MNCs and top local internet companies with a war chest of cash,” shares Elena, founder of ConnectOne.
“I realised that what was missing was a convincing and consistent pitch to top talent. So I worked with them to develop a talent pitch including a narrative and short deck that showcased the background of the founding team, vision, revenue growth to date, and plans for the Asia market. Armed with this and my career transition coaching experience, we hired some key leaders to lead Asia alongside the co-founder”
#3 Putting Your A-Team Together
That said, hiring is not the only way to meet your people goals. Employers may adopt a “Buy, Build, Borrow” model. “Buy” refers to hiring talent, “build” refers to training existing employees for new responsibilities, and “borrow” refers to hiring consultants or freelancers.
Once you have figured out the key positions to fill and whether you will “buy”, “build” or “borrow”, it is time to source and select your candidates. Do consider technical skills and experience necessary for the role; soft skills such as personality, attitude and culture fit; as well as the individual’s motivation.
“Building a company is incredibly difficult so having negative people who are only dialling it in for a nine-to-five gig will never work. In a fast-growing, ever-changing start-up environment, you need people to constantly punch above their weight and achieve things they did not think was in their skill set before,” says Kimberley.
Companies may also consider hiring globally and managing talent remotely, as Milan Reinartz, CEO of Intelligent Video Solutions (iVS) suggests.
“Though our industry was affected by COVID-19 budget cuts from major spenders, we pulled off significant growth in 2020. Part of our secret was efficient remote team management and collaboration. We found that we worked so efficiently from home in the early stages of the circuit breaker that we gave up our Singapore office and are now permanently working remotely. We’ve become less worried about location, giving us much more flexibility in accessing the best talent,” he shares.
#4 Your Interview Strategy
Though crucial, the interview process can be long and tedious for both the interviewers and candidates. To simplify things, employers should try to agree on what they are looking for, the interview process (number of rounds, who to interview, purpose of each round, etc) so that candidates do not end up repeating themselves multiple times till interview fatigue sets in. It also makes sense to keep a scorecard to rate each candidate in different categories to ensure consistency and transparency. It will reduce candidate bias and reduce what is known as voodoo hiring.
Good interview techniques combine both behavioral-based questions to uncover how candidates acted in specific situations, as well as hypothetical questions that put them in imaginary situations to assess their critical thinking skills.
Another good practice is to keep the tone of the interview consistent across different interviewers and reflective of the company culture, be it friendly or aggressive. “I had a top talent turn down an offer because he was disturbed by the differing interview tone of each co-founder. He viewed it as a lack of consistent leadership style and culture,” shares Elena.
#5 On-boarding To Super-boost Productivity And Retention
A common mistake in the start-up world is that many founders only focus on recruitment, and neglect on-boarding. Even if they have an orientation programme, they may try to cram the entire programme and vast amounts of information into a few short hours
“On-boarding is not orientation. You are trying to make sure the new hire has enough information about the company, its people and the culture to have a positive experience; ensure that they have the tools and information to hit the ground running; and continue the engagement and retention process for close to one year”
- Joanna Yeoh, Director at ConnectOne
Research by Click Boarding, an on-boarding software company, shows that a structured on-boarding programme may increase staff retention by 69% over a three-year period. Indeed, start-ups simply cannot afford high turnover rates, especially when they are hiring their immediate leadership team. Moreover, the US Department of Labour estimates that it costs 33% of a new recruit's salary to replace an employee.
“Many people think that on-boarding starts on day one, when the employee joins the organisation. I think it should start the day someone accepts an offer,” adds Joanna. Employers could ask new hires to sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) and involve them in strategic meeting, send them information ahead of time, and get them to meet team members so that they feel like an important part of the team.
A bit of social engineering will also make a significant difference. A combination of online and offline experience such as company events, team lunches, and a buddy system may help the new hire better assimilate, acclimatise and get a jump-start on networking.
#6 Ensuring Role Clarity
If you think that a one-page job description is enough for your new hire, think again. According to Joanna, one of the most common problems with start-ups is confusion about roles.
Within a single organisation, there may be multiple marketers, or multiple senior staff that each junior staff may be reporting to. One versatile framework to effectively define the key stakeholders of any department or project is RACI.
“R” in the acronym stands for those responsible for deliverables, “A” stands for authority in the final decision-making and veto process, “C” refers to those who need to be consulted, and “I” refers to those who simply need to be informed.
As things change very quickly in a start-up, it is useful to make this part of your on-boarding process whenever new people join the company.
“The beauty of having a small number of people at the initial stages of a start-up is flexibility. However, as an organisation grows, the key is to find the right time to put key human resource infrastructure in place without sacrificing flexibility,” says Joanna.
This enables your team to scale quickly while building a strong company culture that unleashes the full potential of new hires, lays the groundwork for company loyalty, and transforms employees into your strongest brand advocates.
Check out the rest of our 5-part series as follows
Overview: HR Building Blocks for Series-A Startups
HR Building Block #1: Hiring and On-Boarding Large Numbers Quickly
HR Building Block #2: Building Culture and Value as You Scale
HR Building Block #3: Engagement & Communications
HR Building Block #4: Optimizing Performance