I had the honor to mentor the Head of Engineering of a start up about to close their seed round.
The challenges are not unexpected, but also not trivial to overcome: They can't offer amazing salaries yet, everyone is quite busy writing code, there's no HR support for hiring yet and candidates do worry (rightly) that the company might actually be gone in 6 months.
Taking it one step at a time, we first looked into what it takes to make their life easier. They settled on visualizing the hiring flow in a Kanban board, to not lose track of the process and speed up turnaround time.
Examining the interview steps, I couldn't find anything to improve without spending money on screening services or similar offerings. Those are a great option of course, but not for a company that still needs to count every penny.
The final advice I left them with on finding talent, is to put themselves out there. They are excited about the company's mission and vision, so sharing this is a great way to connect and find like-minded people.
Building a narrative ("Start with Why" by Simon Sinek is a great inspiration here) and socializing around it is key to finding fitting candidates quickly and without large investments.
For this Head of Engineering it was out of the question, but people that find themselves able to hire workers remotely can tap into a larger candidate pool at potentially lower price points. It's not trivial to manage a remote team, but me and other experts are more than happy to help build a culture and processes that work.
As a last tip for those with trouble getting budget for hiring support: Calculate the hours you spend searching candidates, scheduling, rescheduling and coordinating the process. Multiply this by your hourly salary rate and you have a starting point to pick up the negotiation about budget. It's almost always cheaper hiring an expert to do the job.
The challenges are not unexpected, but also not trivial to overcome: They can't offer amazing salaries yet, everyone is quite busy writing code, there's no HR support for hiring yet and candidates do worry (rightly) that the company might actually be gone in 6 months.
Taking it one step at a time, we first looked into what it takes to make their life easier. They settled on visualizing the hiring flow in a Kanban board, to not lose track of the process and speed up turnaround time.
Examining the interview steps, I couldn't find anything to improve without spending money on screening services or similar offerings. Those are a great option of course, but not for a company that still needs to count every penny.
The final advice I left them with on finding talent, is to put themselves out there. They are excited about the company's mission and vision, so sharing this is a great way to connect and find like-minded people.
Building a narrative ("Start with Why" by Simon Sinek is a great inspiration here) and socializing around it is key to finding fitting candidates quickly and without large investments.
For this Head of Engineering it was out of the question, but people that find themselves able to hire workers remotely can tap into a larger candidate pool at potentially lower price points. It's not trivial to manage a remote team, but me and other experts are more than happy to help build a culture and processes that work.
As a last tip for those with trouble getting budget for hiring support: Calculate the hours you spend searching candidates, scheduling, rescheduling and coordinating the process. Multiply this by your hourly salary rate and you have a starting point to pick up the negotiation about budget. It's almost always cheaper hiring an expert to do the job.