What You Should Know About Creating a Dream Team for Your Startup

If you want to be the best, you need to hire the best. Unfortunately, that’s easier said than done—especially for startups just getting off the ground. Budgets are smaller, reputations are younger, and competing against industry giants can feel like an impossible task. It’s totally possible to create the dream team for your startup company, you just need to arm yourself with the best hiring advice. Here are our top tips for attracting and hiring impressive employees.

• Recruit Top Talent

As a startup, your company probably doesn’t have a ton of exposure. Candidates can’t apply for a role their not aware exists at a company they’ve never heard of. That’s why you should invest time and money into recruiting top talent, rather than assuming they’ll find you.

Posting job listing on sites like Craigslist is free, but that won’t get you the best batch of candidates. Instead, you should hire a professional recruiter or pay a small fee on sites like Indeed that can attract more serious job hunters.

• Incentivize Your Candidates

So, an applicant has made their way to your ad—why should they apply to yours versus all the other ones they pass by? Out of all the companies they can work for, you need to show off why yours is the best. A positive work environment is a huge selling point for job seekers, so talk about your company’s culture and what a day at the office is like. If you can’t offer benefits and a retirement plan quite yet, sweeten the deal with flexible work schedules, dog-friendly policies, team building events, and the occasional happy hour.

• Establish Qualifications

Within the job description, be sure to list the hard qualifications that the role demands. Usually, this includes education, employment history, relevant experience, and applicable skill set. Establishing these upfront can save you and your recruiter a ton of time during the resume review process, as you won’t waste time reading over applications from under-qualified candidates. You might get a few applicants who didn’t read the job requirements in full, or ignored them altogether, but you’ll receive significantly less than if you were to leave the qualifications ambiguous.

• Soft skills matter

Don’t narrow your qualifications down to experience and education, though. That sort of tunnel vision will leave you with candidates who are highly qualified, but may lack in terms of interpersonal skills. You need someone capable of doing the job, but they should also have the capability of connecting with your customers.

According to data compiled by Harris Interactive, friendly employees are what make a memorable experience that causes consumers to stick with a brand, for 73% of customers. If you want loyal customers, your staff should be warm and engaging with strong communication skills. Positive interactions can make or break a customer’s experience, so hire employees who will deliver top-notch service each and every time.

• Don’t skip pre-employment screening

Once you have a pool of applicants you feel confident about, you might think that your hard work is over. Go one step further to ensure you’re bringing on the best of the best with pre-employment screening. A FCRA compliant background check can tip you off to inconsistencies and red flags that might indicate a risky hire. Third party screening services will cost a bit upfront, but the money you could save by avoiding employee turnover will be well worth your initial investment.

• Motivate Your Work Force

After passing the background check and accepting your job offer, it’s important to make your employees feel valued. Prioritizing your employees’ wellness and happiness should be high up on your list since a happy team makes a healthy company! One sure-fire way to increase employee satisfaction is through the potential of upward mobility. They don’t want to feel like they’re just showing up to work every day; they want to feel like they’re working towards something and that the harder they work, the bigger potential their reward.

Motivate your workforce by clearly showing them the path to growth and upward promotion. Give verbal and written employee recognition when a job is well-done, and check in with your team quarterly to establish goals they can work towards.

Pretty soon, you and your dream team will be taking your business to all new heights!