How startups can attract and secure top talent

Step 1: Preparing your talent plan

Before you go to market, you need to know who you are trying to attract, why and how.

• Audit your current team to discover personality, skill and attitude gaps and requirements.
• Look to the future and where you want to be, building a talent plan requires forward planning.
• What order do you need to hire? Sometimes you will want to build a delivery team, other times you will start with the C-Suite.
• Understand why the best people in these areas want to join you and produce ‘candidate persona’ documents.
• Build a talent acquisition strategy to measure and track the successes and opportunities in your acquisition strategy.
• Finally, you need to map the market to understand where your target hires are currently working and what salary you would need to offer them.

Now it is time to shine a light on your market and secure your targets with a world-class Employer Value Proposition (EVP) and a process, that both screens effectively and creates a great candidate experience.

Step 2: Shine

Before you can secure talent, you have to convince the candidate that you are the business they want to work for. The best talent is picky, you have to showcase why you’re the right employer for them. In order to do this, you need to get your message in front of your prospective candidates. To attract the best, you should do the following:

• Careers page
• Glass door
• Founders video
• Employee videos
• Job descriptions
• Social media content
• Articles/blogs
• Job adverts
• Candidate packs
• Product launch/innovation events

Step 3: Secure

Now that you’ve attracted the best candidates, it’s time to close in on the perfect hire. Here’s what you need to do:

• Set interview questions, topics or competencies you need to screen for
• Ensure you have metrics/criteria to score the candidates against
• Train your staff on how to interview
• Ensure each person in the interview has a specific part to play
• Understand candidate motivations
• Consistent interview feedback notes
• Applicant tracking system
• An attractive, personalized job offer