What mistakes do startup founders make when hiring?
Max Kolysh
CEO @ Dover
August 27, 2024
•
5 mins
Your startup has a great mission, benefits and a competitive salary. So top talent is going to be chomping at the bit to join your company, right? Many founders assume that the perfect candidate is going to appear early in the hiring process and that they won’t have to source extensively or do many interviews. But, this isn’t typically the reality. Finding a perfect candidate right off the bat is rare, and interviewing more people will help you better understand what your actual definition of a “good candidate” is.
A better approach is to expand your top-of-funnel for hiring and focus on achieving job-market fit. This means understanding how top candidates respond to the role and iterating on that information to further refine your pitch and job requirements. While it’s tempting to rush to get that perfect candidate on board, this process of iterating takes multiple revs to get right. The more interviews you take and the broader your pool of candidates, the faster you understand what you’re looking for and what the market can offer.
Many founders feel they have to have control of every little detail in the hiring process, especially in the beginning stages. In theory, doing this allows founders to understand how the hiring process should look and how to evaluate talent. This experience can be valuable, but that doesn’t mean founders should continue to handle all of this work indefinitely.
In reality, roughly 80% of recruiting work is critical but not strategic. Founders have to leverage the time they have to do more strategic work, rather than getting bogged down in the small details and tedious daily grind of the recruiting process. Instead, founders need to delegate this busy work to make the hiring process more efficient and effective.
There’s no need to reinvent the wheel when it comes to sourcing, coordination and process management. Instead, hand this work off to your Chief of Staff, operations generalist or even outsource to a recruiting partner. Then, you can spend around an hour per week iterating on the process and conducting interviews, so you can still be involved without wasting your time.
Your startup might be the best place to work, but there’s no way for outside talent to know that if you don’t build an employer brand. It’s important to show quality candidates why they should want to work for a company if you want to compel them to apply. Most founders settle for a basic careers page or generic job description, which isn’t going to get people on the hook.
Instead, think of how you attract new customers. Customers can easily look at case studies and understand how your company would bring them value. To attract top talent, you need to showcase why employees will love working at your company. This means sharing real employee stories and backgrounds to paint a vivid picture of your company culture and workplace environment. Another great way to do this is by sharing employee blogs.
When you get your employer brand right, you can strengthen your talent pipeline. This also means more referrals from the top candidates you bring in.
4. Relying too heavily on referrals without any process
Referrals are one of the best ways to find quality talent from a source you trust. You automatically get an introduction to a strong candidate. It’s why many founders ask their team for referrals anytime a new role opens up. While you might get lucky with this referral method every now and then, referrals need a process to be truly effective.
Without structure, you can see referrals stall as employees get too distracted with work to prioritize referrals or if they simply don’t have an idea of what you consider a good referral. Instead of leaving referrals up to chance, systemize the process by:
Setting aside time each quarter to bring referrals up to your team. Remind them of the roles you need to fill and what you’re looking for.
Have guidelines in place that include ideal candidate criteria and the best way for employees to approach you with referrals.
Incentivize referrals with bonuses, gift cards, team rewards or some other system to encourage participation in the process.
Taking these steps can help you make the most of your referral process and get more high-quality referrals regularly.
5. Failing to run structured interviews
A lot of founders assume they’re naturally good at interviewing and that they can simply wing the interview process. Just talking with candidates, asking about their backgrounds and throwing in a few technical questions might seem like a good way to go about interviews, but there’s no consistency in the process. Without a clear structure, interviews can veer off course and make it difficult to have a clear rubric of what makes a good candidate. This style of interview will likely also fail to predict actual job performance.
Instead, it’s best to create a well-crafted interview plan that includes:
Explicit evaluation criteria for every stage of the interview process. Determine the specific skills, traits and experiences that make a “good” candidate.
Come up with questions that align with these criteria. Dive into each candidate's experience to see if they meet these standards.
Share resources like a question bank, desired responses, rating guidelines and best practices with everyone involved in the interview process. This creates consistency in how everyone evaluates candidates.
Define what constitutes strong, medium and weak responses to key questions. This helps prevent bias in the hiring process.
By implementing a rigorous interview process, your team can quickly reach alignment on the quality of each candidate, avoiding heated debates and ensuring that key signals aren't missed.
6. Not closing candidates quickly enough
This is a weird one because most startup founders like moving as fast as possible – until the candidate gets to the offer stage. Some startups may cause distrust and let top candidates fall through the cracks by not closing the deal quickly enough. Getting hung up on sending the offer over details like compensation and start time is a huge mistake. Instead, you should set out to significantly expedite the time from a verbal offer to signing the deal.
Some good ways to do this include:
Get hiring managers and key stakeholders on the same page about compensation and other last-minute details so there’s no hemming and hawing once the ideal candidate is found.
Empower the right people to finalize these details.
Make the goal of signing candidates within 72 hours of extending a verbal offer.
Top candidates often have competing offers, so the key to winning them over is to move decisively, value their time and provide clear next steps.
7. Failing to conduct reference checks
Key takeaways for startup founders
Work with one of Dover’s hiring experts!
It can take some time to refine your hiring process, so why not bring in the experts and make great hires right away? Dover’s recruiter marketplace can connect you to top, full-cycle recruiters who can help you with every step of the hiring process. Check out our Recruiter Marketplace today!
