It is a great time for start-ups in India with high-quality entrepreneurs, good ideas and the very important funding ecosystem in the form of angel investors, seed capital, growth capital and PEs.
With an increasing number of start-ups emerging into the consumer internet space, there is a demand for skilled and qualified talents. This triggers a huge number of opportunities for freshers and experienced candidates at all levels.
Hiring for start-ups is not only about sourcing, interviewing candidates, and getting the vacancy filled; it is looking for people who are motivated and enthusiastic about the idea.
What are the challenges a start-up could face while hiring?
- Finding natural leaders
- Start-ups need the right talent to reach their goals. With a small staff, the impact of hiring a great fit—or a mismatch—is magnified. They cannot afford to make hiring mistakes and lose time and money. Working at a start-up requires hard work and dedication at every step. Finding individuals who are proactive, problem solvers with a willingness to roll up their sleeves and get it done is essential for a start-up business.
- Finding motivated people
- Motivation comes before skills in a start-up. Apart from the right skills set for any particular role, it is highly essential to gauge the motivation of the person — where this motivation coming from and what is are the associated expectations, both short and long term.
- Cultural Fit
- A poor culture fit can bring down the entire venture, while a strong fit can strengthen morale, boost productivity and encourage innovation. The working environment in a start-up is dynamic and fast paced which may not suit applicants from traditional industries. Even candidates with the right skills and experience may not be the right fit. Start-ups cannot afford to spend extra time and efforts to align people with the organisation.
- Finding Agile, quick and adjustable people
- It could be difficult to find employees who are agile, quick thinking and quickly adjust to a new and changing working style. Professionals who have not worked with starts ups before could find it tough to adjust initially.
- Self-Thinkers & Executors
- In a start-up you need to think entrepreneurially, take a project and run with it. If you are going to work for an entrepreneur, you better start acting like one. It could be challenging to find people who are mature enough to manage their work independently without much supervision.
- Time Shortage
- The time gap between the decisions to hire to actual hiring is short in a start-up. Keeping the position open for too long or hastily hiring the wrong candidate can impact the business negatively. Making the right trade-off between speed and perfection is a constant challenge.
- Self-Starting and committed candidates
- Since work areas or responsibilities in a small start-up could be hazy, the challenge would be to find a multitasking, self-starting candidate who will be self-driven, motivated and would take up new initiatives and find work for themselves. There are the rare to find high potential candidates who will learn quickly and grow fast in their career.
- The right soft skills
- Almost always a start-up measure people on 4 things – attitude (to learn/grow/make things happen fast), existing skill set, maturity and communication skills. IT would surely be a challenge to find candidates with all of these 4 soft skills.
- Competition
- For starts up looking for employees with rare or specialised skills, getting the right person to join could be difficult as good candidates would also be pursued by other recruiters with competitive pay scales and work environments.
- Lack of start-up oriented hiring tools
- While there are several recruitment agencies, online job portals and social networking sites, very few are specifically directed towards start-ups. Traditional recruitment solutions like job portals do not provide quality talent and a lot of new companies, which lack a proper recruiting process, are often clueless on how to recruit.
At Select Global Solutions we understand the challenges and needs for hiring for start-ups. Our team is currently working with several start-ups to find top talent with the attitude, skills sets and enthusiasm to take their entrepreneurial vision to the next level. We also understand the different compensation structures that are unique to startups, and are able to explain to prospective candidates what ESOP schemes or other equity/stock option components are.
We are proud to be associated with exciting new ventures around innovative product, service, process or a platform by helping them connect to potential team members who share their vision.
(Source: Indeed, I am wire, Money Control, Entrepreneur)