Recruitment is a subject of great importance for startups. Their future depends on it. They need to find the right people, with the right skills and who adhere to the corporate culture. But most startuppers are not recruitment specialists. It’s not their job. So how do they go about recruiting? How do they overcome their incompetence to recruit and the lack of financial resources?
These are the questions you are asking yourself and we answer them in this article. We want to show you how startups recruit.n
Barriers to recruitment
Startups use new technologies and computers. They are then looking for collaborators with a high level of competence. For such small structures, they are very demanding. Their needs are especially felt in R&D, IT development and marketing. But in order to be able to attract such talent, startups face problems such as :
- The cost of recruitment. Indeed it is an expensive operation to recruit a collaborator. But this barrier is lifted by the various investments you can benefit from.
- Lack of visibility is a second obstacle. Startups are looking for high-skilled talent. These talents, on the other hand, are looking for a well-paying position in a large company that matches their skills. However, a startup is not very stable, small in size and not very visible because it has no reputation. The startup does not have an employer brand. Startups must make themselves attractive and visible. They must build an attractive corporate culture and communicate on it. For more details, here is a white paper from BPI France on different practices to boost your attractiveness.
- The recruitment process is the major obstacle for startups. It is time consuming and above all requires specific skills that startupers do not have. By recruiting themselves, project managers must know how to evaluate the skills of the candidates, especially when it comes to technique. They risk recruiting the wrong people if they are so tempted that they manage to attract candidates.
How do startups recruit
The practices
The founders of the startup choose an intern for their first recruitment. They justify this choice by the lack of means. They thus benefit from their skills at a lower cost. But this internship is also a pre-employment period where the trainee will have to prove himself. If he succeeds in these assigned tasks, he proves to the founders his skills for the position but on a permanent contract. It is like a hiring but not expensive. This way of acting is used for promising trainees.
Then startups call in freelancers when the task requires expertise. This is the case of IT development, which is very popular in the startup world. This means is economical compared to a permanent employment contract.
With these two means, startups manage to hold up to a certain level of development of their offer. Then comes the fateful moment to recruit a collaborator who will be an integral part of the project. This is actually the first real recruitment of the startup.
The channels used to recruit
When the founders are faced with the fact of really recruiting a collaborator who will carry the project with them, they are aware of the risks. If they recruit the wrong people, their future is at stake. For such a small structure, recruitment is critical.
- So the founders called for the jobboard. Not being able to ensure a qualitative recruitment, the startup outsources the task. There are several jobborad like Indeed or Monster but the favorite of the startups is Welcome to the jungle. But it is not the most used way by startups.
- When faced with recruitment, startups turn to their relationship networks. This is the means most used by project leaders. It allows them to ensure the quality of the candidates’ skills thanks to the confidence they have in their network. Thus, startups get candidates through their personal network but also through the relationships they have with schools. This is done through partnerships with faculties. Some project leaders work in these universities and recruit directly among their students. Nothing replaces the network!!
An alternative to recruitment
We have seen that recruitment is tricky and that startups rely on their network to overcome this. The place of the network is central. Why look for ten candidates when you know one. And when you’re a startup without a network, it’s a handicap. This is the case of startups that come to settle in a new territory. I’m talking about foreign startups setting up in France.
To remedy this, we are building an offer for foreign startups. Through future partners and their relationships, we would like to provide foreign statups with this much-needed network that will enable them to recruit competent employees. These partners will allow us to recruit bilingual people, speaking French and English. This will be useful for foreign project leaders who do not necessarily speak French.
If you are a foreign startup and you find this offer useful, please let us know and help us improve it.