Of all the challenges faced by startups, finding the talent they need is one of the toughest to crack. Traditional methods, such as engaging recruitment agencies and trawling job boards, can prove costly in terms of time and money, and startup founders have little of either to spare. More and more are coming up with alternative hiring strategies that are unconventional but proving effective.
The LinkedIn profile 'giveaways'
When people update their online professional profiles on platforms such as LinkedIn, it’s often an early sign that they are looking for a new job. And Growth Tribe, Europe’s first growth hacking academy, has developed a way of detecting those tell tale signs that is helping it meet its own talent requirements.
The Amsterdam-based company, which runs growth marketing training courses, created a script that regularly scrapes and monitors the professional profiles of a pool of candidates they are interested in, and looks for any changes they make on their profiles.
Co-founder David Arnoux says: “We calculate how many changes are made in a period of time, waiting for any irregularities. When a person makes many changes over a small number of days it might mean that they are looking for a new position and that the time is right to make contact with them, and we then reach out to them to discuss recruitment opportunities. So far we have successfully recruited three people this way."
Turn your customer base into your talent pool
Campus Society is a collaboration platform for students, enabling them to network and share knowledge with others around the world. It aims to break down the barriers in education and remove borders between universities.
Shortly after launch its founders discovered that the tried and tested route of enlisting commission-hungry recruitment companies to find talent on their behalf wasn’t the best approach. Instead they adopted a more organic strategy, and focused on the people who were using their platform.
“They can relate to our audience and they know our product from the inside out,” said the firm’s founder and CEO Rashid Ajami. “This way we have been able to source fresh talent, people with drive, passion, and ambition; the three things I feel are imperative to our success.”
Campus Society has made four new hires using this strategy, and so far Ajami insists they have not encountered any drawbacks. “The key element is finding the right person for your business," he says. "It doesn’t matter how you find them. Unconventional hiring is irrelevant to the quality of the hire.”
Get leavers to help hire their replacements
When recruitment firm ReThink Group needed a new regional director, they called on the outgoing director, Christine Christodoulou to help find her replacement by presenting a video on behalf of the company.
Managing director of ReThink Recruitment Rob O'Callaghan said: “The video was created by our in-house marketing agency and then pushed out via sponsored social posts on LinkedIn and Twitter, as well as a low budget campaign, costing around £800 ($990), with industry magazine Recruiter, which embedded the video in their daily newsletter and also Tweeted about it.”
The move generated a good response; the video was viewed 531 times by the target audience, and the company is now in the final stages of interviewing prospective successors.
“Given the really strong ROI of this campaign and the incredible feedback received about our forward-thinking approach, we are now planning to use this type of campaign across all areas of the business,” says O’Callaghan.
Harness the hiring power of social media
Rosie Davies, founder and director of two businesses, The London Fashion Agency and PR Dispatch, hired her entire team of three full-time staff and two part-time staff through social media.
She says: “We use a lot of social media and digital PR in our business, and always post any vacancies on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. We also use Instagram stories to show any further details surrounding the role. By advertising our roles on social platforms we attract candidates that understand the importance of a strong social presence. There is also a community on social media that encourages and supports people aspiring to break into fashion and creative industries, and our vacancies are often shared across social media by members of this community.”
The two businesses have a combined social media following of around 12,000. Davies says that the best applicants are always the ones who discovered the role on Instagram. “They have a genuine interest in the company and an understanding of the business,” she says. “In addition, I post on creative job sites, such as Creative Arts and Fashion Workie, but it is rare for interview candidates to come via these channels, as the calibre of applicants never matches those we get from social media.”
