Recruiting for your startup

by Startacus Admin

So, fantastic, you're at the stage where you need to take that step and begin to recruit for your startup. Well that’s great, provided that you know all you need to do to made the right moves, make the right choices and tick the right boxes in running a competent and successful recruitment campaign.

After all, while the processes may be similar, recruiting for a startup may differ quite a bit from any recruitment you may have had to do when working for a larger organisation. With this in mind, we thought it would be wise to look at the whole recruitment process, from the perspective of the startup hirer and all you’ll need to deal with - and as this is such an important duty of any startup, this themed post will run for the next few weeks at least! 

This week, before even the recruitment process itself begins, we start by outlining some of the things you'll first need to consider...

Space
Okay, this is pretty obvious of course, but where is your new recruit gonna sit and work? Perhaps if you have a team of 3-4 already, that answer is simply a case of re-jigging the office around a little. But your 'space' is also dependent on the type of 'space' you work in - be it your office, a co-working space, working from home or coffee shop. How are you gonna fit your new recruit in?

Equipment
Again pretty basic point, but it still needs to be considered. What work equipment do they need? What work equipment can they bring with them, and what work equipment will you need to give them or buy? After all, there is no point in someone joining the team and then not having the tools to do that job.

Legals
Legally where do you stand in recruiting a staff member? If this is the first time you are employing someone you will need to consider what type of work based insurance you will need. Also, even if you do have work insurance you might want to contact your insurance provider to check if you are covered for employing a staff member, or an additional staff member.

Processes
We’re perhaps getting a little ahead of ourselves here, but since you are Mr or Mrs "I do everything" founder of said business, you ain't gonna have some big HR team sitting behind you supporting every decision that you make. Therefore you’ll need to look at what recruitment process you will undertake to find your new employee and also what policies, training, terms of employment etc you should have in place once your new recruit starts.

Money
You should have already worked this out to be fair, but there are four main points. Firstly, how much are you going to pay said new recruit? Is that salary going to get you the type of person you actually need? Also, how are you going to pay your new recruit - on a weekly or monthly basis? Finally, are there any grants or support available to you from your local or regional enterprise body to help you pay your new recruit

What can you offer
Start considering this now because this is how you are going to hopefully be able to sell your startup and job opportunity to any interested job seekers. What can you offer that an established business cannot? We might go back over some of these points over the next few weeks. But as recruitment potentially will be an important part of your job role going forward as your startup hopefully grows and develops, expect this series of posts on recruitingfor your start p, to go on and on...(well at least for the next few weeks anyway!)

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Published on: 17th October 2013