How to do the best recruiting for your startup

Recruiting is one of the most important tasks funders do, so be extremely cautious. Take note of our advice.

• Define the key competencies of the position.

• Take into account what type of hard skills and soft skills you require your applicant to possess.

• Analyze how much the company is going to grow and share it with the HR area, if you have one.

The personnel recruitment processes have changed qualitatively. A personnel recruitment and selection process is always a considered decision and responds to a series of needs on the part of companies. Previously, trends dictated that a hiring process should be based on the candidate's knowledge and experience, in this way the recruiter should focus mainly on hard skills , translated into knowledge, technical programs, years of experience, their school and work background .

However, startups cannot be hired by looking exclusively at these factors given their particularity of accelerated growth, it requires a team that can cover a profile that adjusts to the new needs of the company. Also, recruiting is one of the most important tasks funders do , so one must be extremely cautious. Sam Altman, former president of Y Combinator and current CEO of OpenAI, points out that if a startup does not have a good hiring process, it will not be successful; since companies are the product of the teams that the founders build. As an entrepreneur, you will have to dedicate a lot of time and energy to select the team that will take you forward.

For this, one of the best methodologies used is recruitment by competencies, focused on the analysis of soft skills to define the desirable profiles of the collaborators who will really adapt to the company and its objectives. Soft skills are intrinsically related to the personality of individuals, they are things that cannot be changed, it is part of their personality, their intuition, emotion management and, in general, the ability of individuals to adapt to new environments . Remember that a startup is in constant change and growth, so it requires a team that adapts to these needs.

That is why the human resources area (or the funder ) has to be much more analytical and less subjective. Today, many more tools such as competency analysis and people analytics are used , which allows organizations to be better prepared to face the dynamism of their operating environment and to be proactive instead of reactive.

If we think about how traditional job interviews are carried out, they are typically based on specific questions that respond to hypothetical situations such as: Where do you see yourself in 5 years? What are your strenghts and weaknesses? among many other examples that you know perfectly if you have ever undergone a similar interview process. The candidate's objective is to sell himself and he responds based on hypotheses; probably answer what the interviewer wants to hear. The " dark side " of his personality is rarely really shared.

On the other hand, take into account that if you are a startup and require an effective hiring, think first about the needs of your company. For example, if you consider that a milestone such as a capital lift and accelerated growth will soon come, you should look for the key competencies of one or two positions above; Your new hire should be able in a short time to fill one or two positions up in, for example, less than six months. Your team must be prepared to take that leap. Do not hire thinking that the position is static without measuring the accelerated growth of your company.

Therefore, to achieve an effective hiring process, we suggest:

1. Define the key competencies of the position.

2. Take into account what type of hard skills and soft skills you require your applicant to possess.

3. Analyze how much the company is going to grow and share it with the HR area, if you have one.

4. Whoever does this process must do it through an analysis of competencies and using more than one tool that helps reinforce the data obtained.

5. Consider that it is always more profitable and less expensive to develop your team than to be hiring recurrently due to a poor selection process or thinking about short-term hiring without doing a prior analysis of the company's needs.

6. Attract the best talent, retain it and develop it.

There are a growing number of tools that help the human resources area to make a much more assertive selection. Do not forget that you deal with people and that it is impossible to predict human behavior, that is why it is recommended that during a recruitment process several tools are used to have sufficient data for analysis and to be able to relate them. If you need to carry out a hiring process and you don't know how to do it, approach an expert.