Recruiting for Startup: My first impressions

It is a known fact that putting together the right talent for your start up is critical for your success. Startups face a lot of problems in attracting right talent for key positions primarily owing to inability to pay high salaries. This is because cashflow is always a constraint. For a product based startup, it is even more difficult as the revenues from product starting flowing in once it is ready for the market. So how do you go about finding the right talent. I would highlight 2 points which I feel are important to get the right set of people:

• Selecting right channel for recruitment: How would you let know others that you are hiring keeping in mind the constraint in terms of time and money. You don't want to be sitting on a pile of CVs shortlisting and spending time with each one of them. There are are lot of things which needs your time. In my corporate experience, the selection ratio has gone down from 5:1 to 20:1 or even higher, through the normal channels. Basically, you need channels which give you best fit profiles so that you can spend more time in understanding the compatbility. For me, it is very very important. I have been using venturewoods, pluggd.in, genportal etc to advertise my jobs. The response has been encouraging as I receive profiles which are extremely good fits with desire to work for the start up. And the bonus is that the numbers are very limited.
  


• Right Package- This section is more relevant for startups which are bootstrapped (read it as limited funding). Let us understand, why do people want to join your startup, even if they have the option of joining an established brand and earn comfortable salary. As I understand after talking to many people, these people are ambitious and want to make a difference. They want to enjoy the feeling of building an organization with their effort, which is rewarding both in tangible and intangible terms. These rewards, if defined correctly, will attract good people to your startup. So what should constitute the right package, well it can be a mixture of sustenance salary (not full salary), equity (spread over a period of years and target linked) and profit sharing. Share your wealth with the key people as that's the way you can taste success.

If you are interested to know what kind of packages we are offering, do get in touch with me. Will be happy to share it with you.

Cheers

Abhishek