5 Recruitment Mistakes All Startups Make But Can Avoid

“You don’t build the business, you build the people and then the people build the business” – Zig Ziglar

The real credit for the journey of the startup, from being nothing to the big beast of the market, goes to its team. Truthfully, employees are the fundamental part of any organisation. They contribute their energies and value into the organisation and help it multiply bit by bit. They have the power of either making or breaking the brand. 

For startups, hiring every single employee is extremely crucial. It comes out as a big responsibility. So recruiting mistakes can prove to be more expensive for new enterprises than for the well established ones. In this blog we’ve highlighted the major common mistakes startups make during the recruitment process and how they can be avoided. 

1. Irrational Hiring: The risk of hiring irrationally is too much for a startup because of the limited capital at hand. Lack of proper job description for the open position, undefined goals of recruitment and not preparing for interviews with proper training may lead to hiring of unqualified candidates. Who may later leave the job due to an unsatisfactory environment, too much overburden of work or any such other reason.

This can be corrected by preparing a list of immediate members required in the company like- marketing head, finance head or operations head. They can in return lead into hiring of qualified job candidates by specifying the actual requirement of work to be done by the recruited employee and other necessary objectives.

2. Hiring inflexible employees: Startups need more versatile employees than any other organisation. It should be in search of people who can multitask and can handle more than one job role at a time.

For example, it can hire someone who handles digital marketing, graphic designing as well as content writing, all in one rather than recruiting different personnel for different tasks. This would not only be beneficial for the employee who would get a chance of exploring and working out skills in more than one field but also for the organisation with its limited capital budget at the initial phase.

3. Unclear Mission: Ambiguity regarding the values and mission of the business proves damaging to the image of the company. As a manager, one should make it clear to the employees. Undefined goals, values and unclear mission of the startup would become a hindrance in the way of business. It would cause difficulty while taking important decisions of the firm and impede productivity.

4. Holding the position for the ‘perfect candidate’: It is right to see that startups always want to look out for ‘one more candidate’ for the job position. But this in return only drags and lengthens the hiring process. Adding fuel to the fire, in search for the perfect candidate, the firm could lose it’s right candidate who could be productive in the long run to the firm.

Thus, in spite of waiting to offer the job position to the ‘perfect’ candidate, the startup must look strategically for the ‘right’ candidate and attract and engage them. 

5. Hiring someone known: When you hire your friends, relatives, family members or even your co-workers, it becomes difficult to fire them if their work is not upto the expectations later. Firing other employees who don’t prove to be productive is not a challenging task. But firing someone who is known to you becomes difficult. This would result in a startup compromising it’s success for the failure of someone.

Thus it is advisable to overcome the emotional connection, draw a line between personal and professional relations and hire the correct person for the job role.

Shot of two upset friends not talking to each other after fight on the sofa at home.

Startups need to fail fast and learn fast. But recruitment is not the aspect to experiment with a lot. Leaders should aim to create a team of persistent, hard working, talented and go-getter employees who will steer the brand towards success.