How to hire a recruiter for your startup

You may have launched your startup singlehandedly, but you can’t take it to the level you want to achieve all on your own. To grow and evolve, your company needs a diverse team with a range of skillsets, experience, and personalities.

As a startup founder, however, you can’t spare much time to build and hire the right team. So who can you turn to? Recruiters specialize in assessing your company’s needs, seeking out the best candidates, and negotiating contracts for you. That means you can contract a recruiter to help you build a dream team while you stay focused on what you do best. Find out what you should look for and how to hire a recruiter to grow your startup.

Like any group of professionals, recruiters have a variety of specialties, talents and interests. To ensure that you choose the right one to work with your team, consider the following qualities:

  • Marketing skills: First and foremost, any recruiters you partner with must have excellent marketing skills. You need a recruiter who can sell your startup to potential candidates, talking up the strong points, and find a way to make even the major challenges sound fun.
  • Industry know-how: Recruiters tend to specialize in a few well-defined areas, and it’s in your best interest to seek out one who knows your industry well. A general recruiter won’t be able to make the connections you need and probably won’t sell your startup effectively. Find the best in your industry, even if the partnership costs a little more.
  • Goal orientation: As a startup founder, you’ve already racked up tons of experience setting and achieving goals. When you don’t have much time to waste, you need a recruiter who’s similarly goal oriented. When talking with potential recruiters, don’t hesitate to ask for some of their stats. How many of their candidates tend to submit applications for a job, and what percentage are hired? How successful are they at negotiating deals for clients?
  • Solid communication skills: Since you already have a full plate of your own, you probably won’t want to micromanage your recruiter. However, you should expect regular communication at a frequency that works for you. Before hiring any recruiters, find out how often they tend to communicate with clients when actively recruiting for a position and ask them to describe their follow-up style. If you want detailed reports at the end of each week, make sure that’s a reasonable expectation.
  • Relationship building skills: Recruiting is all about making and maintaining relationships, and you want a recruiter with a large network that’s continually growing. Ensure that any specialist you work with has solid interpersonal and relationship building skills.
  • Creativity: Some recruiters use formulas to find candidates, but this method doesn’t always work for startups, which tend to be looking for employees who don’t easily fit into formulas. Ensure that any recruiter you work with takes a creative approach to your hiring challenges and knows how and when to take an individualized approach to hiring your team.

Hiring a recruiter takes a load off your shoulders, but taking this step doesn’t mean you can just sit back and wait for your team to arrive. Most recruiters deliver the best services when they get regular feedback from clients. Be prepared to do the following when you work with a recruiter:

  • Offer selling points: Any recruiters who want to work with you will already know what your company is about and what your mission statement says. That doesn’t mean they don’t want to hear it from you, though. Before they can pitch your company to candidates, they need to know how you see your company and what you think it offers.
  • Provide detailed job descriptions: You know exactly what kind of talent you need on your team, so be prepared to help with developing job descriptions for future employees. Some recruiters assist with writing or perfecting these notices, but you’ll need to provide the details.
  • Envision your team: Your employees are much more than just job descriptions. They also have unique personalities that mesh with each other to create a great team. Think beyond the skills and experience you want behind you and consider what personalities work best for your company.
  • Know your corporate culture: For millennial employees, a positive corporate culture can be a major deciding factor when weighing a job offer. Think carefully about what type of environment you want to create, whether it’s at a vibrant shared office space in Culver City or a dedicated office in a high-rise, and find out how you can make it happen.
  • Predict job growth: You may not be able to predict the future, but your business plan should reflect how you see your company growing and what your near-term and long-term goals are. These are all essential pieces of information for recruiters, who need to be able to tell prospective candidates how much growth they can anticipate and how long they can thrive when working for your startup.

Why should you hire a recruiter for your startup?

If you want to get your startup ready for the next stage of development, you know you need to build the best team in the business. But is it really necessary to hire recruiters to get the job done? Find out how you could benefit from hiring a top-notch recruiter.

Recruiters find the best candidates

As a startup founder, chances are you network constantly and you know the major players in your industry. However, recruiters make their livings networking, tracking the best candidates with a variety of skillsets, and having a sense of who’s looking for a new position. The best recruiters in your industry also know who to ask about finding top candidates and can introduce you to people you never would have found on your own.

Recruiters excel at negotiating

If your startup is as amazing as you think it is, you might not be worried about negotiating with candidates. After all, who wouldn’t want to work for your startup? Keep in mind that among all the candidates who might apply to work with you, only one or two is an ideal fit for the job. Recruiters ensure that these candidates don’t get cold feet when discussing compensation or hammering out other important details.

Recruiters fill positions quickly

Running a company pulls you in countless directions, and it isn’t always easy to give the hiring process priority. Hiring great candidates is the sole focus for recruiters, though, and they can fill positions much more quickly than you would on your own. Recruiters also know what to ask candidates and how to cut to the chase, so you don’t waste time courting a candidate who isn’t the right fit for your company anyway.

Recruiters help you save valuable resources

Having open positions can be incredibly expensive, as most companies estimate that employees generate value that’s equal to several times their annual salary. While recruiters come at a cost, they could be helping your company save in a big way by finding the right candidate as quickly as possible. Since recruiters handle everything from vetting candidates to tackling initial interviews to negotiating compensation, they also save you countless time and free you up to build your business.

Recruiters can temper your expectations

Recruiters who know your industry well understand the state of the market and the best case scenario for your company. If you’ve been assuming that you can hire a star employee for a bargain basement salary, they can adjust your expectations accordingly. They also excel at advising you about the probability that you’ll be able to sign that dream candidate, given the competition in the marketplace.

Recruiters keep your team operating at its best

When you truly want your company to be the best in the industry, you don’t stop building your team once you’ve filled all open positions. Recruiters keep the lines of communication open, constantly seeking out great candidates who could replace an underperforming employee or fill a position you’re thinking about creating in the future. When you have a recruiter on your side, you can feel confident that you’re constantly optimizing your startup team.

When you run a startup, your time is one of the most valuable assets you have. Use your time to run your company and consider hiring a recruiter to build the team that will take your company to new heights.

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