How to Save Thousands Recruiting the Best Candidates

You are probably tired of hearing about SEOmoz and EnergySavvy recruiting bounties. In a way, it’s working because everyone keeps writing and talking about it. Here is how these companies could have saved thousands of dollars… Sponsoring local events! Yes, I’m biased, because Seattle 2.0 will be the beneficiary of this strategy, yet let me make my case.

 

Startup Recruiting is Hard!

 

There are two things that make it very hard to recruit for a startup, as compared to a big company. First, it’s hard to get the word out. The good candidates won’t know about you unless you make a lot of noise. Second, the perceived impact and reward of working at a startup plays a major role in a candidate deciding or not to apply to a job.

 

On the first point, I don’t need to elaborate a lot. Startups have one, two or a handful of openings at any given time, so they don’t see the influx of candidates a company like Microsoft, Google or Facebook sees. Because of that, startups have to spend money on job boards, on recruiters, and other job openings advertising tactics. Even startups that have a pretty descent social media reach have to do those kinds of things. You don’t have to look any farther than Cheezbuger Network. Massive social media reach, yet they have to do the same things every other startup does to recruit.

 

The second point is more complicated. If I’m a great candidate for your position, but I don’t believe your company will be successful, likely because I don’t understand what you do, why would I apply for a job at your startup? Didn’t you hear there are dozens of good startups recruiting? By the way, since I don’t understand what your company really does, I’d prefer to apply to a company I understand and value their purpose.

 

Recruiting = Marketing

 

A big mistake a lot of startups make is to have an excessive customer-focused identity. In other words, they value more their customers above anyone else on this planet, including their employees and their overall impact in the world. You can see why this is a turn off for candidates, don’t you? More and more I see people that look for purpose. It’s not only about how much money am I going to make, but how we’ll make the world a better place and have fun while doing it.

 

To be honest, a lot of startups are not fun, their mission will not make the world better and they are unlikely to succeed. Your job as the CEO / Founder of a startup, it’s to make it absolutely clear how your startup is different from the ones that suck. You’d think it’s obvious, yet lots of (good) startups fail at this test. Most startups don’t deliver their real message to potential candidates well. Primarily because the candidates are not the target audience of the product they are building, or have little (real) understanding of the industry the startup is disrupting, and the startups don't wear the candidate hat while reading the homepage, the about page and the job description.

 

The Good Candidates Are Not Looking

 

You can list your job on a dozen job boards; you can buy Google, Facebook and Bing ads. You can hire a dozen very expensive recruiters to fill your open positions. It’s likely to work (it has been working for decades). Or, you can try to seed opportunities on the head of the future candidates without these future candidates even knowing you’re planting that seed. And that’s where going against established procedures might work for you.

 

The best engineers, designer, product managers, marketers, and biz-dev guys for your startup are already working on another startup. They might or might not be happy, but they are unlikely to be looking because they are awesome and busy working on their tasks. How do you reach these people? What would make them say “I should learn more about SEOmoz”? Or, how do you make sure when their startup goes into the dead pool, is acquired or they get tired because of opportunity cost is not right anymore, they think about your startup as a next place they should be looking for a job?

It’s pretty clear to me that keeping your brand popping up in front of these people, showing how fun of a workplace it is to work for, showing how much you get involved with community, sponsoring events, hosting lunches, giving talks, is part of what your startup is.

 

The bottom line is that making an outrageous bounty offer for referrals only works if you are the only one doing it. The next startup will need to offer at least $15,000 (or a car) as a bounty otherwise the gimmick will not get noticed. You still need to have the traditional recruiting to a certain extent (job board, website, social media, etc.) for those that are looking, but you have to augment that with an outreach for those who are not looking at this moment, but are ready to think about a new job. By the way, recruiters know this trick pretty well.

Avril Lavigne Bridget Moynahan Noureen DeWulf Nicollette Sheridan Amber Heard