Embracing the growth of your startup is always an interesting challenge. This is specially true when it comes to IT and engineering. Change is a constant in the tech world, which makes it specially challenging to hire people who will be able to evolve and grow as your startup matures.
You need to figure out how to accurately describe the stage your company is in and its culture. Your engineering needs will be constantly changing, so you’ll need someone who’s able to adapt constantly. As a SaaS recruitment agency in London, WunderTalent can help you in every step of the way by understanding your tech recruitment needs. However, the stage your company is in right now is important to determine how we can help.
Read on to understand better the various stages your company goes through and how they determine your engineering hiring needs.
The Angel Round
At this stage, it’s easy to get candidates through referral from other employees and through your connections on LinkedIn. However, the difficult part is convincing them to move to your company. After all, you don’t have all the infrastructures a larger company has, nor their perks or reputation.
When someone is looking for a new professional challenge, they’re going to do so by trying to get a step ahead, not backwards. However, you can make your candidates understand that by joining your team they’ll be shaping future procedures, they’ll have further opportunities to grow in their career… Whatever your company has going on that the right person will see as an excellent challenge is a major selling point in your strategy to stay afloat.
At this stage, it is important to recognise you candidate’s needs and desires: what makes them tick. If you got that from the first round of interviews, you’ll see that it becomes easy to offer them what they want. Most engineers aren’t looking for perks (although everybody loves a little bonus), they’re looking for a chance to learn and evolve through great challenges. Adapt your company pitch to the candidate you have in front of you. Find out what are their main goals and show them how your startup can help you achieve them.
Series A
Now your company’s outgrowing their team. You need more fresh hires to keep on taking more work. You need more serious candidates that will be able to join you quickly and integrate the team. This is a time for experimentation: however, it will be useful to start developing a hiring strategy for your company. Getting referrals from your network will not do anymore.
Your company has bigger needs and requires a greater amount of human resources. This might be a good time to get in touch with digital recruitment specialists which will empower your company to grow faster and in an effective manner.
Cold calling engineers you find on LinkedIn won’t work either. You might call dozens of possible candidates, only to get one person with the right skills to answer and accept your proposal. This will take you a large amount of time and get you so few results it’s a strategy we wouldn’t recommend.
You’ll have to structure your interviewing process so that you know you’re asking the right questions. Does your job brief really specify what that person is expected to do? Which skills are relevant for the tasks expected to be performed? What type of personality do you want on your team? It’s also of the utmost importance to know the main factors for hiring or rejecting a candidate.
Know when and how you’re gonna pitch that job to the candidate. You also need to figure out how to test that candidate for his or her tasks, and how to make sure your new hire will fit well in the company’s mindset. These are all factors to have in mind while you’re drafting your script for each round of interviews.
You’ll also need to set up a few points that will drive candidates to your company. These can be things like it being easy to deal directly with the directors, being able to participate in all phases of each project, less bureaucracy, or being involved in all the processes that your company’s still developing for managing daily tasks.
Series B
This is the point you can say your company’s really growing! From a startup’s rocky beginnings, you’ve reached a point of more stability. Your team and your product are steadily evolving now, without having to worry anymore about the main features of your product or service.
However, this might have left you with issues in your product that still need to be solved because you have spent more time making it actually work than perfecting its look and secondary functions. That’s the time to fix your technical debt.
Now you’ll have to get candidates to solve those issues. Your company’s main selling points from Series A might not apply now. Your new hires might not have as much of an easy access to the company’s CEOs than your older hires had, just as an example. However, by this point you’ll have the growth in your company that will make your candidates excited. You have to keep on the lookout for new selling points, though.
It’s at this phase that it becomes crucial for your company to have a steady candidate source. If you’re in Europe and looking for SaaS recruitment, rely on WunderTalent to provide your company with a constant source of new applicants with the right skills you need for the job. It’s more important at this point to help grow your team fast than it is to focus on outbound strategies each time you have a HR deficit on your company. It’s time for fast growth.
Series C
By this point, you’ll have your hiring process pretty much streamlined. Does it mean you can just sit back and enjoy? Unfortunately not. You’ll still have to adapt constantly to new trends, notice your employees’ needs, and meet them. You’ll also have to be on the lookout for the competition – what are they doing right that you should implement as well? How are other companies in your sector managing talent?
It’s highly important to stay on top of this issue. Even as your company grows bigger than you ever expected it to be, you still need to know how to deal with hiring and talent management on your team effectively. You can count on WunderTalent’s help to develop new strategies in tech and SaaS recruitment in the Manchester and London areas, and all over Europe. Staying in touch with a digital recruitment staffing team will help your company grow seamlessly and stay steady along the years.
