18 Lean Hiring Strategies for Startups to Attract Top Talent Fast

startup team looking at resumes - Hiring Strategy for Startups

Recruiting is one of the biggest challenges facing startups today. With limited time and resources, it’s easy to make mistakes that lead to costly mis-hires. A smart hiring strategy can help you avoid these pitfalls. In this article, we’ll explore hiring strategies for startups to help you attract and hire top talent that aligns with your startup’s vision, culture, and growth goals, without wasting time, money, or compromising on quality.

AI Recruitment Tools like Noxx’s AI recruiter will help you implement these hiring strategies to achieve your objectives. With Noxx, you can quickly attract and hire top-tier talent that aligns with your startup’s vision, culture, and growth goals, without wasting time, money, or compromising on quality.

Why Building Your Startup Dream Team Can Be Challenging

After funding, the most significant barrier to startup growth is hiring, not having the right people in the right roles, at the right time. To help you make wise, strategic hiring choices and build a killer startup team, in this post, I'm covering the ins and outs of startup hiring, from the challenges you’ll face to creating a simple but effective hiring process.

Hiring Your Startup’s First Team

Hiring your first employees is a significant and exciting milestone for any startup founder. It’s also a challenging time. If you hire the right people, you’ll bring on board the skills and experience needed to grow your company and develop your product, but if you hire the wrong people, the success of your company is at risk. Growing your startup beyond the founding team can be daunting, particularly for first-time founders or those who have never been involved in the hiring process before. While hiring for any role at every stage of a company's growth is always challenging, for early-stage startups, growing your team is a particular challenge for three main reasons.

Every New Hire Changes Your Startup’s DNA

When your small team makes a hire, they’re not just adding a new employee; they’re inviting someone to help shape how your startup operates. In this way, every new addition to your team will fundamentally change your company’s culture.

Why Culture Fit Matters in Early Hiring

This is particularly concerning for early-stage startups, as a poor culture fit can undermine the entire venture, while a strong fit can enhance morale, boost productivity, and foster innovation. Indeed, as your startup grows beyond the founding team, every new addition to your team will fundamentally change your company’s DNA. New hires impact everything:

Product development
Company culture
Team morale
Work quantity and quality
Team capabilities etc

The High Cost of a Bad Hire

In a small team and the fast-paced, high-stakes startup environment, the impact of any mismatch in values, processes, or culture will be magnified. Hiring a good-fit team member can increase your capacity and skill set, as well as improve team morale. If your new employee is a poor fit for your team’s culture, they can harm the work environment and lead to a decrease in productivity levels, despite an increase in team numbers.

You’re Viewed as a High-Risk Opportunity

Working at a startup isn’t for the faint-hearted. It’s crucial to acknowledge that joining a startup will not be the right choice for everyone. For some, the opportunity will be exciting and energizing, but for other people it will be overly stressful and risky. Working at a startup is significantly different from working at an established company, and many skilled professionals will be reluctant to leave the perceived security of a job at an established company to join a startup with no funding and a limited track record of success.

Trusting Your Gut in Startup Decisions

As a personal example, when I was joining Cobloom as the first non-founder on the team, I received advice from many trusted sources, advising me not to take this job and stick with my ‘safer’ former employer. When you’re getting that advice from people whose personal and professional opinion you trust and respect, it can be tough to trust your instincts and go against that.

You’re Unknown

When nobody knows who you are, attracting top talent is extremely difficult. Unless you or one of your co-founders has a notable background, you and your company are relatively unknown, particularly if you’re bootstrapping or have yet to raise your first round of funding. This means you’ll need to work especially hard to attract good-fit prospects, and you’ll have to sell your company, your vision, and your existing team to them. Too many companies forget that hiring is a two-sided process; not only does the job applicant need to impress you, but you also need to impress them.

18 Powerful Hiring Strategies for Startups to Build the Dream Team

man holding a meeting - Hiring Strategy for Startups

1. Creating a Hiring Process for Your Startup

Having a clearly defined hiring process is essential to help you avoid expensive hiring mistakes that can destabilise your entire startup team. Hiring isn't something that early-stage startups do regularly, so you want to put a process in place as soon as possible, something to guide you through step-by-step so that nothing gets overlooked or forgotten. Once you’ve written a job description and started advertising your vacancy, you should begin to get applications coming in. To manage the hiring process simply and easily, there are five stages you need to follow, from application to making a hire.

Screening Written Applications

The very first step of your hiring process will be to screen written applications. Initially, this will involve comparing applications against the required skill set listed in your job description. Candidates who don't meet your 'must-have' requirements will automatically be counted as a poor fit for the role. Additionally, you may have identified other red flags that indicate someone will be a poor fit for working with you, that are linked to your startup's culture and values. Once you have identified good-fit candidates, you can progress them on to the next step in the process.

Practical Skills Test

To get an idea of how they work, it's a good idea to integrate some sort of practical skills test into your hiring process. This will vary depending on the type of role you're recruiting for and can be done either as part of the interview or as a way for you to further qualify candidates before inviting them to an interview.

Why Skills Tests Matter Before Interviews

For example, when I applied for my role at Cobloom, I was tasked with writing a blog post to demonstrate my practical skills, so that the team could assess whether I had the proper skill set to be a good fit for the role before inviting me to an interview. As well as confirming that candidates' practical skills are in line with your expectations, a skills test is a great way to get insight into less tangible traits such as attention to detail, their ability to work to a brief, and how they respond to feedback.

In-Person Interview

By the time a candidate reaches the in-person interview stage, you should be confident that, on paper, they're an excellent fit for the role. They will have demonstrated that they've got the necessary skills to succeed in the role and meet the requirements you laid out in the job description. Therefore, your interviews should be less about quizzing the candidate on their skills and knowledge of the job, and more about making sure they'll be a good culture fit for your startup's values.

Standardize Interviews for Fair Comparison

Your interviews for a specific role should all follow the same format, so that you ask the same questions to each candidate. This will enable you to objectively compare candidates and ensure you're not favouring one over another due to a perceived gap in one area, simply because it wasn't covered at the interview.

Making a Decision

We have a spreadsheet that scores applicants on culture fit (whether their values align with the company), practical fit (including travel time and salary expectations), and skills fit (how well they performed on the practical skills test). This enables us to be objective in our comparisons. You should involve other people in the interview process.

Evaluate Fairly Before Making an Offer

Take some time to individually evaluate each candidate before collating feedback. This can help negate unconscious bias and groupthink, and also prevent you from making decisions based on instinct. When you've identified the best candidate for the job, it's time to make an offer and to inform unsuccessful applicants that you won't be moving forward with their application.

Communicating with Unsuccessful Applicants

One often-overlooked part of your hiring process is responding to unsuccessful applicants. You must remember to do this in a timely fashion. There's no point in making applicants wait for weeks to hear back from you, only to find out they've been unsuccessful at the interview. Responding to unsuccessful applicants promptly, with helpful feedback from their interview, can make a lasting impression and mean that even if you don't hire them, they might recommend your startup to someone in their network, further down the line. Alternatively, they might be suitable for a different role, or the same role if you re-recruit in the future, when they have additional skills and experience.

2. Build an Attractive Company

Your first few employees are likely to come from your founders' extended network, and in this case, the hiring process is expected to be much more flexible than with subsequent hires. In these early days, before you worry about getting job descriptions spot-on or sharing my job adverts in the right place, you need to focus on building a company that people want to work for. That doesn't mean you need to invest in expensive employee perks or slick offices (though by the time you're hiring your first employees, it will look better if you're not working out of your garage or spare bedroom). Instead, it means clarifying your identity as an employer: defining your company's cultural values and maximizing your social presence.

Company Values

Your company values are one of the most critical facets of your identity as a company and an employer. It's essential to define these early and to share them publicly on your website and blog to help prospective employees get to know you. One standout example of a startup that has done this is Buffer, whose Open blog is an ongoing embodiment of its key values of transparency and openness.

Share Values to Hire for Culture Fit

Similarly, here at Cobloom, we have our Insider blog, where we share real-life examples of how our company values impact the work we do, the way we hire, and how we make decisions. Defining and sharing your company values is a great starting point from which you can evaluate prospective employees based on culture fit, a crucial aspect for building a close-knit startup team.

Online Presence

One of the biggest challenges of building a startup team from scratch is that in the beginning, you're a complete unknown, so you must make a conscious effort to create an online presence and identity.

Build an Online Presence That Reflects Your Culture

The first company I ever worked for had no website, no blog, and no social media presence, nothing. In hindsight, that was a major red flag: I started work there with no idea at all about the company, its values, or company culture, and it didn't take me long to realise I was a poor fit. While it's unlikely your startup will be in the same situation, it's worth taking a strategic approach to your website content and social media activity to create a consistent identity and presence across different platforms.

Compensation Packages

Competitive pay is crucial for attracting and retaining top talent. In the early stages of your startup, it's likely your employees will be underpaid, relative to the market rate for their skills and the work they're doing, as you won’t have the cash available. You must bear this in mind and work to bring employee salaries up to market rate as soon as feasible. In many cases, this doesn't happen until you've secured your first round of funding.

Use Equity to Attract the Right Talent

Additionally, it's common for early employees to be granted equity in the startup as part of their compensation package. Offering equity is a good way to attract right-fit potential employees. Many will be happy to sacrifice a portion of their salary and tolerate being "underpaid" for a while, in exchange for the ownership and long-term reward that equity provides.

A Note on Salary Negotiation

When you're thinking about compensation packages, consider implementing a no-salary-negotiation policy for all candidates across all roles. Salary negotiation is a significant contributor to the gender pay gap. Men are more likely than women to negotiate their starting salaries, but even when women do negotiate their salaries, they're viewed less favourably than their male colleagues. They are deemed "aggressive" and "not team players".

Eliminating Negotiations to Promote Pay Equity

Given the widespread and ongoing issue of diversity in tech, eliminating salary negotiations across the board can be a good starting point for creating a startup with equality as one of its core values.

3. Reaching Candidates

As a startup founder, you should always be recruiting. Even if you don't have the workload or resources to grow your team right now, you must be nurturing relationships and building connections for when a specific hiring need arises. Building an attractive company will help convince potential employees that they want to join your startup, and will attract inbound leads who are interested in your product, team, and company culture. When it comes to hiring the best people, you can't wait for them to find you, you need to look for them, too.

Fight Anonymity Through Real-World Networking

If anonymity is one of your biggest hiring challenges, there's a relatively easy fix. As well as sorting out your online presence, it's just as important to dedicate time to networking in the real world. Attending conferences, talks, or tech meetups a great way to grow your network. You might even meet your next hire there.

Sourcing

Think of networking as a passive way to reach potential candidates; in contrast, sourcing is the active way. If you have a good idea of the role you're going to be hiring for next, invest some time in identifying good-fit applicants within your extended network, and reaching out to them directly. Active outreach isn't just something for you and your co-founders to do, either. Your early employees are likely to all have strong networks of their own, talented people know other talented people. Share next-hire requirements with your team, and encourage them to reach out to any of their contacts who they think would be a good fit for the role.

Job Boards

When you have new opportunities, post them on specialist job boards to achieve distribution. For example, if you're a SaaS Startup, consider posting your job on The SaaS Jobs Board. There are specialist job boards available in lots of sectors, and these often receive significant amounts of targeted traffic. It's also worthwhile maintaining your own jobs board with open positions on your company website (there's lots of software that can do this for you, like Greenhouse)

4. Always be hiring

Networks are king. Ask any startup where most of their hires came from or ask bigger companies where their best people came from and the answer is usually the same:

Friends
Friends of friends
Ex-colleagues

It’s all about networks for one simple reason, and that is that good people know good people. Part of being a good CEO is building a great network with quality and reach. There are no shortcuts here; it’s real work. The better your network is, the easier your next hire is going to be.

Network with Purpose and Presence

If you don’t know the right person, you will at least know someone who does. Remember quality as well as quantity. It’s not just about having thousands of LinkedIn connections (although it can’t hurt). Are you working hard enough to be a genuine member of the community where your talent pool resides? If your tech is built with Ruby, are you taking part in the relevant meetups and hackathons? Are your developers known for their thought leadership and contribution in your sphere?

Hiring is Everyone’s Job, Especially Sourcing

Just as you look for candidates through networks, the best candidates are looking for their next job in the same way. Word of mouth matters. The best recommendation you’re going to get will be when someone you’d like to hire is told by a friend of theirs who is already on your team that your startup is a great place to work. If your team is proud of where they work, they’ll tell their friends.

Tap Into Employee Networks

What happens when your network runs out? Keep trying. There will always be someone you haven’t told that you’re hiring. You can go further by taking the time to sit with your employees one by one and review their online networks (LinkedIn is a good example). You’ll find good people, and you can get your colleagues to message them then and there. This is a time-consuming process, but it is worth it.

Boost Hiring with a Referral Program

There’s tremendous value in referred employees in the form of greater job satisfaction, higher retention rates, quicker applicant-to-hire conversion, all metrics that ultimately reduce the cost of recruitment, especially when hiring for rapid growth.

Pro Tip: Establish a formal employee referral program within your company, offering incentives to your current colleagues. You can even gamify the process to motivate employees further to refer people in their networks.

Get Out of Your Bubble

Your network can only extend so far, and the chances are your colleagues’ networks have a lot of overlap with yours. Plus, there’s the potential for bias, as the old saying goes, birds of a feather flock together. If you’re hiring friends of friends or former colleagues of existing employees, that’s a potential trap in homogenizing your workforce. Get out of that bubble and speak to new people, ask for introductions from your network so you can start tapping into adjacent ones.

Pro Tip: Sending your developers to the best conferences is a surefire way to grow your network, as well as encouraging them to spread the word through their online networks where they live and play.

How To Do Social The Right Way

If you’ve done most things right so far, you’ll start with an audience. This means you have something to bootstrap your social media recruiting effort with. Using social for hiring isn’t just about tweeting jobs and getting my colleagues to retweet. The companies that are most successful at social hiring have built up a relevant audience and target their tweets to influential people in their community. Not all retweets are created equal; you want to be discussed in context. You want influential people in your field talking you up as an authority.

Pro Tip: Netflix posted their culture presentation online in slides that quickly went viral, significantly boosting their employer brand and reputation.

5. Hire for fit, not just skills

Look beyond technical skills and assess cultural fit, alignment with values, and the potential for long-term growth within the company. When you’re hiring people early, they’ll need to wear multiple hats. Understand where people get their energy from and ensure they’re comfortable with what’s expected of them. Use the Hong Kong flight test. Would you spend 12 hours on a plane with this person? If performance is a 7/10 but culture fit is 10/10, that is better than the other way around.

Punch Above Your Weight

A startup is its team in the beginning. These are the people who will signal your ambition and set your limits. So, go for the people you think you can’t get. You’ll be surprised, and once you’ve got the first few heroes, it will become a lot easier to attract more of them. This is not a luxury. It seems obvious to punch above your weight, but a successful startup will continually shift up the weight categories. If you don’t get these people, you’ll get stuck.

Hire Deliberately

You’re not hiring to fill a job, you’re building a company. Make the first 20 hires deliberately with the future in mind. Don’t hire people just because they’re good in general and available. These kinds of opportunistic or bad hires early on in a startup’s life can sink you. The cost of a pointless hire can be astronomical. That’s money that most startups cannot afford to waste. Beyond the cost of getting it wrong, your first few hires will set the tone for the future. Getting it right will make something that’s intrinsically hard a lot easier.

Pro Tip: Avoid hiring a candidate who badmouths their previous employers and coworkers.

Hire for Potential

A successful startup will quickly outgrow everyone’s current skills and roles. If things work out as intended, it’s going to grow and morph unpredictably. So will the demands on your employees. One of the most exhausting aspects of startups is this constant evolution, or as some founders call it “keeping up with their own company”. While it can be pretty simple to assess a candidate’s current skills rating their potential is less so.

Look for individuals entering their professional prime. The past is a good guide, so take into account lifetime achievements, whether they’re jobs, schools or hobbies. With few exceptions, intelligent, decisive and hard-working people usually manage to go to a great school and do well in exams they care about. Look for high achievers.

Pro Tip: Include pre-interview assignments in the hiring process. Those who bother to go the extra mile will prevail.

The Culture Fit

This can be hard to pin down but it’s almost always important. It has its roots in the unfashionable word “congruence”, the fit between personality and organization. It means that you need to assess people on their behavior, mentality and match to the values of your organization. But there’s a straightforward rule, never hire people with a bad attitude. It only takes one to poison an otherwise stellar team. That little problem you noticed in an interview will be magnified one-hundred fold by six months of hard work in a small team.

Don’t Overlook It

Go for people with an opinion, people who can honestly explain what they like and dislike. The kind of people who believe in missions, values and visions. They care. Those are the people who will be telling the truth when you assure them that they believe in your startup’s vision.

6. Craft compelling job titles

Titles matter, but avoid inflating them to attract talent. Ensure titles accurately reflect responsibilities and career progression within the company. Ensure everyone understands their roles, responsibilities, and how their contributions impact the company’s goals.

Don’t Go With The Flow

Job descriptions could and should sweep candidates off their feet. But all too often, we’re content to lean on the old-fashioned and generic, with the result that most job ads are mediocre. We’re guessing you don’t want to be average. You’re not one of those guys looking for superheroes who are too lazy to craft a job description that might attract them.

Love at First Sight

We all know that applicants like to scan. They want to look at an opening and be able to recognize in the blink of an eye if it’s their dream job. Like all busy people, they have a thousand things competing for their attention, especially the passive candidates for whom you’re trawling. Make every job description seductive. Start with the job title, keeping in mind that most job boards work like search engines; therefore, candidates use keywords to search for jobs.

The About-the-Company part

This is your chance to make a good first impression, so start thinking about the distinctive characteristics that make your company special. The type of job description you publish is closely related to who I am as an employer. Give them a glimpse of my company that will charm them into joining your team.

Candidates need to be able to relate to job descriptions on a personal level. Tell them a story about your company that will make them sit back and picture themselves working with you. Start with an educated guess, with something simple, ask for feedback, and then optimize. Ask employees why they enjoy working for your startup. If you have a marketing department, lean on them for some content marketing advice. Hiring for rapid growth shouldn’t be done in isolation; it’s a team effort. You’ll need to put in some extra effort, but it'll be worth it.

The About-the-Job Part

You know that if you go with the flow, then your job descriptions will be deathly dull, but I’m tempted to do so anyway because that’s the way everybody is doing it. But it won’t help your company stand out; it will just add to the mountain of identical job descriptions that grows larger every day.

Write Job Descriptions for Humans

How are job seekers (let alone the precious, passive ones) supposed to spot that you’re offering a dream gig when it looks like a machine wrote your job description? It’s not necessarily because they’re not well-written; it’s because they’re presented as if they were not written by or for a human being. Do everyone a favor and stick to the important stuff. There are tons of job descriptions out there listing every tiny little task a future employee might perform. That’s not the point.

It’s All About Clarity

Start writing job descriptions that build businesses. They will attract the best talent and convert prospects into candidates. How?

Sell your company and its future in it in an engaging fashion
Get rid of the dull corporate tone
Keep it chatty and friendly
Use words that evoke feelings
Make them aspire and then act on that desire
Use “you” or “we’; drop the passive voice

To up the ante, you can also add a list of people the future hire will get to work with regularly.

The About-the-Requirements part

We’ve covered the basics in our “There’s a difference between what you want and what you need” blog post. If you’ve used Workable, you may have noticed the must-haves and nice-to-haves requirements.

Why Did We Add This Feature?

To make sure that candidates won’t get excluded from the hiring process just because they clicked “NO” on a secondary skill that is unlikely to be pivotal. Think about what skills would make sense, adding to the equation the fact that they are individuals and not miracle workers. Must-have requirements are the bare minimum: the can’t-live-without list. Nice-to-have requirements are the extras; they belong on the 'we can live without' list. Job seekers also have a hierarchy of needs that I need to consider as I craft the perfect job ad. If Maslow were alive today, here’s what he might think about your job ads.

7. Leverage recruitment tools

An Applicant Tracking System (ATS) is the centerpiece of any practical toolkit, especially when hiring for rapid growth and expansion. This is why we built one from scratch and consider it to be the best of its kind. When choosing an ATS, ask yourself how well it integrates with other tools that you’ll need. A good one will incorporate or at least play nicely with most of the software we recommend below. Even then, it helps to know which ones are tops in the market. We’ve compiled for you the 12 best applicant tracking systems to help inform your decision on purchasing an ATS.

Sourcing and referral platforms

TalentBin, Sourcing.io, 3Sourcing, and Gild are talent aggregators that offer searchable, often pre-evaluated, or classified profiles of individuals. Professional networks or communities, such as LinkedIn, GitHub, Dribbble, and AngelList, are good places to conduct manual sourcing. Zao is one of the best referral platforms we have come across. It’s based on best practices, optimizes matches across all companies’ open jobs, features a gamification layer that makes participation fun, and allows for extended referrals. Another one to consider is RolePoint.

Online interview systems

Interviewing has gone video, and this lets you record video questions and invite candidates to submit their responses, allowing you to review them. Set time limits for responses, pause to take notes, tick the ones that are a perfect match, and share if you’re not sure to get a second opinion. Workable’s Video Interviews can set you up for success here, particularly if you’re hiring for rapid growth in a short period and need to establish a standardized screening process with minimal breakdown.

Assessment tools

Codility is a niche, engineers-only database. These individuals are equipped with millions of engineers, both active and passive. Considering the gap between demand and supply, these guys are a treasure trove of prospects and a pretty straightforward tool to use if tech job boards aren’t cutting it. You can browse and filter data, collaborate with your team, and engage in social recruiting as well. Smarterer has revolutionized skills assessment. Just give them 10 questions, 2 minutes, and voila! You get a quantified skill. It’s a skills testing app, but different.

Test-Driven Hiring with a Culture Twist

All of its test content is crowdsourced from the individuals who take the tests. SHL offers ability and personality tests to assess critical qualities. They only offer science-based assessments and benchmark data. Weirdly, you have your cultural fit riddle all figured out. It’s a four-step culture assessment recruitment tool. Define your desired cultural profile, publish the vacancy, watch candidates complete the quiz, and select the right kind of weird.

Onboarding & Talent Management

KinHR excels in comprehensively and thoughtfully onboarding new hires. The new employee signs in and reads about the company, the team they’re going to work with, and what tasks they should start working on.

Zenefits is Good for Payroll and Benefits Management.

The shift to remote work also means onboarding remotely, such that you’re bringing people on board without them having met anyone on the team in person. Learn some tips and tricks of successful remote onboarding for you and your company.

8. Workplace Benefits and Compensation

You’re not going to compete on salary with Google and Facebook, but you need to get survival out of your mind. Even your earliest hires ‐ and that includes you, the founder ‐ will need to pay bills. Some startups go to extremes, trying to make their runway last as long as possible. Don’t build your runway on the backs of an exhausted and underpaid team. Your objective is not to delay the next round but to get to it in the best possible shape. Here are a few things you can do to achieve the right balance.

The Power of Perks

You’re not going to have the swankiest offices, but you can make them reflect why people came to work for you. You don’t need a big budget to create a friendly, informal, and energetic work space. Our environment helps to shape our mindset and reminds us who we are. Spend the time to make it attractive to your team, even if you can’t initially spend much money. There are many ways to make your company an attractive place to work, even if you’re in an “unsexy” location.

Pro Tip: Buffer’s emphasis on transparency led to their Open Salaries initiative, which has created significant buzz and increased awareness of the company.

Perks are Powerful and Cost-effective.

When you take into account tax and deductions, a $10 lunch is worth more to your employee than $10 on their salary. But it’s about more than a free lunch. Taking care of people’s needs makes them feel valued and cared for. This pays off handsomely in productivity and morale. That shouldn’t mean that you neglect traditional benefits. Before you start on the ping pong tables and games consoles, make sure everyone has access to health insurance. When people know the basics, like health, are covered, they’re more prepared to live leaner when it comes to salaries.

Compensating Risk

Equity compensates risk. It is a form of deferred reward. When deciding whether to join your startup, a prospect considers what they could earn at market rates for their skills over the same period. It balances it against a potential future return that should be several multiples of the income they would lose. It’s mathematics. All early employees should have a significant amount of equity. This ensures their sense of ownership and commitment to the mission. A properly structured stock option is also a commitment on the part of the employee. Equity grants usually vest over three to four years, and there’s a “cliff period” (typically one year) before a new employee earns their first tranche of shares.

Keep Your Best Before They Drift

This way, you’re not giving my company away. Instead, you’re binding the core team to your mission for long enough to make meaningful progress. With that in mind, don’t wait till the best people are restless. The best companies also give retention equity packages to fully vested employees. You need to think about this before your star performers do.

How to Research Market Rates, Equity Standards

Knowing the going rate for salaries and equity is notoriously tricky. A good place to get a benchmark is AngelList (for startup equity and salaries) or Glassdoor (for market rates). Ensure that you compare yourself to similar companies. For each hire, check what’s on offer for jobs they could take so you know what their other options look like. Especially when it comes to equity, it’s always better to err on the generous side. Rather than being hung up over a 0.1% more or less, think about whether this employee will improve your chance of success by that amount. A good hire will make it worthwhile.

9. Creating an interview process

One of the biggest mistakes made when hiring for rapid growth in a startup is to think that just because you’re small, you don’t need a process. If you believe “process” means doing things slowly, think again. Get the right tools, remember to hire as a team, and you will stay on track. The selection process is a funnel; you get a lot of applicants, you speak with some of them, you meet a few of them, you hire the one you like best. An efficient filtering process will save you and your candidates time.

Pre-interview questions

This all starts with the pre-interview questions, the questions you ask a candidate when they apply, that will help you decide whether to proceed with an applicant. Ensure candidates can reasonably assess their suitability against the requirements. Do you know anyone who will say “no” to the requirement that “must be hard working”? Neither do we.

Pro Tip: Have candidates complete an assignment or task related to the job as part of the pre-interview process. Pre-interview questions can only get you so far. They weed out the most inappropriate candidates and give you an insight beyond a basic resume. A significant factor in your hiring decision will be how well a candidate will fit in with your business. It’s personal, and you need to get to know the candidates.

Screening Assignments/Testing

Ever walked into an interview and known within 30 seconds that the candidate you’re meeting is never going to work out? Sure, most people have been there. The worst thing is that it wastes your time. You can’t just stop the interview after half a minute, so you go through the routine and waste an hour of your time. It doesn’t have to be that way. An initial phone call, Skype screening conversation, or asynchronous video interviews will prevent that scenario nine times out of 10. We use resumes, pre-screening questions, screens, and interviews to assess past performance as an indicator of future success.

But what if you want to understand better how candidates will perform in the job I’m hiring them for? One way to find out is to have candidates complete an assignment or task related to the job, in other words, a skills assessment. Hiring for a customer support associate? Test candidates by getting them to answer some hypothetical customer queries. If you are hiring developers, there are online tools like Codility that can assess their coding skills, allowing you to see precisely how they code.

Interviews

Have a plan. Don’t just ask the same questions over and over. Take the time to know who you are meeting before you walk in. Not just their name, and not just the job title of the role they’re interviewing for. Get to know them a little, check their resume, and note some questions in advance. Interviews shouldn’t slavishly follow a script. There are probably some standard questions you want to ask all candidates, such as whether they’re eligible to work in your territory. But these are just hygiene questions; you have to go further.

Interviews Aren’t Scripts—Make Them Conversations

Ask open questions that encourage a discussion, engage with the candidates’ responses, and consider follow-up questions you want to ask. If it’s boring, it’s not working. There’s nothing worse than the candidate feeling like the interviewer hasn’t read their resume and is just going through the motions: “Tell me about this job, now this job, and now this job…” No one gets much out of this kind of interview.

Interviews Work Both Ways

When you leave an interview, you should have a much better understanding of the candidate’s credentials and suitability. Equally, they should leave knowing a lot more about the role and the company. If you’ve screened your shortlist properly, then everyone you interview should be a real contender, which means it’s worth selling to candidates in interviews. Chances are, you’re going to offer them below market rate if you’re an early-stage startup. Generally, people don’t like getting paid less, so you’d better give them a good reason to be excited.

Pro Tip: Note down personalized questions for candidates before the interview, but don’t stick slavishly to the script.

Take a Deep Breath

If you have a nagging feeling that something isn’t right when you’re making an offer, don’t rush. Take your time to identify the source of that uneasiness. Talk it through with a colleague. Don’t be afraid to ask a candidate to go for another meeting. Chances are, if I have a concern, the candidate will likely feel the same way, and a quick conversation will resolve any issues. In the long term, a bit of caution will pay off. When you’re hiring for a function where you have little or no personal experience, it can be tough to assess resumes or know what to ask during interviews. You might want to consider bringing in some outside help. This doesn’t need to be paid help; it could just be a friend or ex-colleague who can help you out with the skills-based aspects of the hiring process.

Keep It Challenging

This is where you set the bar and show your rigour and ambition. A challenging interview process is a signal to candidates that your company doesn’t do average. This doesn’t have to mean a drawn-out 15-phase interview; even Google is moving away from the vast number of interviews they put candidates through. You absolutely should establish a thoughtful pipeline that allows the candidate to prove their mettle.

Pro Tip: Level the playing field by posing customer support queries for a tool most people are familiar with or can access easily, e.g., Facebook.

Taking references

Not everyone believes that references from previous employers are a practical way to determine future performance. Candidates are unlikely to provide a reference who they expect to say negative things about them. And many people don’t want to talk badly about someone, so even if your candidate was terrible in a past job, their reference won’t tell you.

This is not a reason to ignore references. It’s a reason to work harder at getting them right. Get more references. Successful entrepreneur-turned-VC Mark Suster recommends getting at least five, including people the candidate didn’t propose. If we assume people are smart enough to gather good references, ask yourself: “Are they glowing?” If not, why not? Ask candidates why they chose the referees they did.

Pro Tip: Get at least five references and make sure some of them come from people the candidate hasn’t put forward.

10. Sourcing 101: Passive candidates

Most people don’t know how to fish for talent that’s not looking for a hook. These elusive prospects are often referred to as passive candidates. Sourcing is the process of identifying individuals who are not actively seeking employment. Your starting point is to know what you’re pursuing and as much as possible about where you’re likely to find it. Think about what the ideal person looks like.

What experience do they need to have?
What kind of job are they doing now?
Which companies must have good people doing this job?

Start building a profile. The key to sourcing is figuring out what you’re pursuing and where it lives.

What is Sourcing?

You’re looking for established companies doing a great job at what you’re looking for (eg, selling to SMEs, content marketing). You’re looking for people trained by the best, whose options have vested, who are ready to move on to a new, exciting gig.

Vulnerable companies

Startups are volatile. When a company experiences a shakeup, there’s a window of opportunity. Signs to look for include the departure of a leadership figure, ventures that have gone 18 months with no follow-up funding, or rumors of layoffs. You’re looking for drift and discontent where the talent works, so mine the industry reports (Crunchbase, Mattermark, CBInsights, Owler) and listen to the gossip.

Events

Where do the best people on your shortlist hang out? Think about what kind of events they attend and make sure you’re there, whether they're virtual gatherings or in person. These settings give you the chance to meet people whom you may want to approach in the future. When the time comes, you will have less cold calling to do.

Universities

The very best talent is only truly unemployed once in their life, right out of college. Universities have structures that help you identify this top echelon. They’re at careers fairs, on internship programmes, or even doing work experience that contributes to our course credits.

Pro Tip: Look for companies 6-12 months after a seed funding round with no follow-up.

Make a Shortlist and Lean In

Now that we know what to search for, all these sourcing tools (LinkedIn, TalentBin, GitHub, Sourcing.io, and of course, Workable) become useful. Start browsing profiles and make a long list of prospects. Prioritize people whom you can reach out to through your extended network. If you can’t get an intro, then see if you can engage them on social media (Twitter) or engineer a chance meeting.

Pro Tip: Attend startup community meetups, design conventions, or hackathons.

A courtship doesn’t begin with leaning in; it starts with people getting to know each other. If you do this well, the prospect will have already gotten to know you before the conversation turns to a job offer. These are people you may not hire today, or even one year from now. They may also be the key to introducing you to your best hires in the future.

External Recruiters

This is where you turn when you’re short on time or confidence to follow the steps above. They can be a fantastic shortcut. It might look simple, but there are a couple of things to bear in mind. Look out for recruiters who have hired for small companies before and have a track record of placement in the role you’re looking for. Most startups use contingent recruiters whom you pay only when they deliver someone you hire (typically one-third of the hire’s annual salary). The upside is that you only pay for what you get. The downside is that your aim and the recruiter’s aim are not the same. You want to hire great people. They want you to hire someone. This subtle difference can cost you time dealing with uninspiring candidates.

Pro Tip: Pay your recruiter more than they ask for. They’ll think twice before referring the next high-quality candidate to another competitor or well-funded company.

A Nod to Ethics

You need to be competitive, but you also live in a community. Employee poaching can backfire on you, especially when you’re just starting. Getting the balance right can be as simple as being mindful of basic good manners.

11. Audit Your Hiring Plan Against Growth Milestones

Link every open role to specific business goals, new user acquisition, revenue targets, or product launches. Rather than a generic headcount increase, map out 6-, 9-, and 12-month scenarios so you can anticipate needs well in advance. Executive searches can take 65–90 days, so it's best to begin those processes early.

Forecast total cash burn: Factor in average merit increases of 3.3 % for 2025³ when modeling compensation budgets.
Set internal SLAs: Define maximum turnaround times for resume reviews, interviews, and offers (e.g., respond to candidates within 48 hours).
Use benchmarks: Compare against the SmartRecruiters 2025 Recruitment Benchmarks to see how you stack up by industry.

12. Diversify Low-Cost Sourcing Channels

With limited budgets, you can’t rely solely on paid job boards. Mix in:

Employee referrals: Referred candidates convert at a 34 % hire rate vs. just 2–5 % from job boards, while slashing time-to-hire by nearly 50 %.
Niche communities: Engage Discord or Slack groups for your target stack (e.g., React Native, Python) and offer referral bonuses or founder roundtables.
Global platforms: Snaphunt’s Startup Program combines AI-matching with a dedicated hiring coach, helping you fill specialist roles up to 40 % faster than traditional agencies.

13. Involve Your Team in Hiring

Diverse perspectives lead to better hiring decisions and stronger buy-in from your existing team. Invite representatives from engineering, design, and customer success onto interview panels, each armed with a standardized scorecard in your ATS (e.g., Snaphunt). This collaborative approach reveals insights into how a candidate’s working style aligns with your day-to-day dynamics and identifies potential culture mismatches early. It also turns hiring into a shared responsibility, boosting morale: when team members feel their input matters, they’re more likely to mentor and support new hires. Centralized feedback channels and a debriefing session immediately after each interview ensure that decisions are made swiftly and transparently.

14. Compress Your Time-to-Offer

In a tight candidate market, every day counts. Automate interview scheduling with tools like Calendly or Seqta to eliminate “email ping-pong,” and aim for same-day feedback loops, having your team reconvene within two hours of an interview to decide next steps. Establish a clear 7–10 day window from first contact to offer; data shows 55% of candidates lose interest if the process drags beyond two weeks. By setting firm deadlines for each stage (resume screen, first interview, assignment review, final chat), you signal decisiveness and respect for candidates’ time. When you move fast, you not only secure top talent but also reinforce the perception of your startup as agile and high-velocity.

15. Leverage On-Demand Recruitment for Bursts of Hiring

When you need to ramp from 5 to 20 people in a quarter or launch in a new market, consider on-demand services. This hybrid model embeds experienced recruiters into your team at 50–60 % lower cost than traditional agencies, giving you immediate sourcing capacity without long-term contracts. Your internal team retains candidate relationships and cultural context, while the recruiters handle outreach, screening, and interview coordination. As you scale your in-house talent acquisition function, you can smoothly transition the support off, ensuring continuity and avoiding dips in hiring velocity during the handover.

16. Understand Your Legal Requirements for Hiring Employees

It’s a good idea to make sure you’re familiar with local and federal employment laws, such as job discrimination laws. For example, make sure you know how to avoid job discrimination in your job postings. If there’s a chance your post has discriminatory wording, someone can sue your business. Hiring employees for your business can leave you open to new risks. That’s why you must have the appropriate insurance for startups to help protect you and your business. So, if someone does sue your business for an employment reason, your business insurance can help cover your defense costs

17. Build a Positive Company Culture

If your company culture suffers, it can negatively impact your employees’ productivity and even lead to them leaving your business. A recent survey of 2,000 employees found that 47% of workers were seeking new jobs due to issues with company culture. From figuring out your startup’s purpose to encouraging a culture of teamwork, there are things you can do to create the company environment you want.

Culture Starts at the Top—And Shows in the Day-to-Day

A positive company culture starts with startup leadership. In most cases, that means you, but it can also include other founders and CEOs. Let’s say you want to foster a performance-driven culture. Your managerial style and the way you interact with your employees and customers must reflect that. Always be on the lookout for changes you can make to help make your business more positive.

Purpose, Goals, and Perks: Building Culture That Sticks

Don’t forget to create a company vision and set company goals. This helps you execute effectively, makes your employees feel like they’re working for a purpose-driven company, and gives them a sense of accountability. You can also create employee incentive programs to reward performance and recognize your team’s hard work. These types of programs can go a long way in improving morale and making a positive culture.

18. Continually Improve Your Startup Recruitment Process

As your business grows, your startup recruitment efforts will also expand. That’s why it’s essential to make improvements to your recruitment, hiring, and onboarding processes. Here are some questions you can ask yourself to help in your recruiting process:

Which method brings me the most qualified candidates? If you use a job site or recruiter to find candidates, you can see which method was the most successful. If you hire more candidates sent to you by your startup recruiter, you can continue to develop my relationship with them so they keep sending me talented people.

What Can My Candidates Tell Me About the Hiring Process?

Whether it’s from your customers or potential employees, feedback is a critical resource for your startup. Talk to your current workers, and even those who went through employee termination, about their experiences when applying for a job with your startup. If there’s a common issue, you can fix it and improve the process for future candidates. When is my busy season? If you have an idea of when business will pick up and you’ll need the extra help, you can make your hiring process more efficient. Perhaps that means reducing the number of interviews I hold, or moving candidates through the process more quickly to fill openings as soon as possible.

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