7 Hiring Hacks Your Startup Should Be Using

Every business wants to hire talented employees who can take them to a new level. However, hiring new staff is easier said than done. Especially if you’re a startup or a small company with a limited budget and time, recruiting can be a big challenge.

Let’s look at the stats!

According to a survey by the society of human resources (SHRM), recruiting a candidate takes 42 days and $4,000. Can you compete with other employers and leading enterprises with dedicated hiring teams and a budget at your disposal? It’s not possible.

How do you hire good candidates while not spending your entire time and budget filling several positions? The best approach is to be creative with recruitment and follow the hiring hacks that leading startups use.

This blog lists 7 hiring hacks for startups that will help you improve your recruitment process and recruit talented employees faster. Let’s begin:

Top hiring hacks to improve your recruitment process as a startup

1. Leverage social media for hiring qualified candidates

Startups primarily use social media marketing strategies to spread brand awareness, promote brand values, and share the company culture. However, you can also use social networking to attract, nurture, and hire top talent because social networking is insanely popular.

The following research shows how using social media for recruitment makes sense:

• With 875 million users, LinkedIn is one of the most highly trafficked sites. Around 52 million users look for a vacancy through LinkedIn weekly.
• 79% of job seekers use social media to search for vacancies.

Do you know what these stats mean? Whether you’re a startup, SMB, or a large enterprise – there’s no shortage of job seekers. If you play your cards right, social media recruitment can be one of the hiring strategies for recruiting high-quality candidates.

Social media recruitment can also be an effective hiring strategy if you’re looking to hire passive candidates. Job seekers are the most active on social media sites like LinkedIn and Twitter and can be valuable hires.

Here’s how to leverage social networking for recruiting:

• Create brand awareness through regular posts and interactions. Social media can be a great way to showcase your company culture, discuss your accomplishments, and connect with job seekers.
• Talent managers can connect with job seekers, especially those not actively seeking a vacancy. Jobseekers are more likely to apply if they have known you and your brand for a long time.
• Use social media to assess and filter job seekers. Candidates’ social media profiles, content, and interaction can give you an insight into their behaviour and help you avoid considering a candidate who might not be the right fit. Besides, 67% of businesses use social media to weed out unqualified individuals. There’s no reason why you should stay behind your competitors.
• Share content relevant to your business and industry. It keeps you in job seekers’ minds and showcases your field expertise.
• You can redirect posts to the company career page and quickly attract a potential hire.

Besides social networking sites, you can use job sites to access remote talent worldwide and hire the right candidates.

2. Optimise your hiring process with data

Each wrong hire can cost you anywhere between $17,000 and $250,000, a significant amount for startups. Hence, you can afford to make a mistake while hiring individuals. You have to find the best talent. Otherwise, it’s game over for you.

But how can you find the perfect candidate? The most efficient way is to leverage data like a candidate’s work history, technical skills, and personal skills to make informed decisions. This information can give you enough idea of whether you should select the candidate.

Another way to leverage data in making informed hiring decisions is to give job seekers assignments to see how they perform under pressure. This way, you can quickly weed out individuals not the right fit for the role.

Always remember that suitable individuals are out there. However, finding them takes work. Data can help you see through the fog, optimise recruitment, and zero in on individuals who fit your organisation. Hence, pay attention to the data, as it can help you make the right recruitment decisions.

3. Use an applicant tracking system to streamline your hiring Process

Some startups believe that applicant tracking systems (ATS) are irrelevant to their type of business. They think these tools are for enterprises receiving thousands of applications on an opening, not for startups where job seekers seldom apply.

It is far from the truth. Hiring is a complicated process. Finalising a candidate for the role takes months of effort, hours spent scanning resumes, and a lengthy interview process. Without an ATS, you would be lost. Your team would have to put their energy into hiring staff, and only a little room would be left for innovation. Hence, you must invest in an applicant tracking system (ATS) to streamline recruitment.

Here’s how an ATS can help you:

• With an ATS, you can scan resumes faster – thus weeding out unqualified individuals and saving time and effort.
• An ATS can offer a remarkable user experience that entices them from the moment they apply to their selection and onboarding.
• You can make data-driven decisions to improve recruitment by using reports like time-to-hire, cost-per-hire, and candidate sources gathered from applicant tracking systems.
• With ATS software, you can better collaborate with potential employees, communicate more effectively, and share your feedback.

Are you looking for the right ATS software? Here's a helpful guide on how to choose an applicant tracking system. Check it out, and you will find the ATS software that best suits your business requirements. 

4. Work on Employer Branding

Employer branding is the best way to attract and hire talent as a startup. Here is how a strong employer brand can help you hire people:

• A strong employer brand can showcase that your company is an ideal workplace. You can stand out among established companies who want to hire the same talent.
• Passive candidates (people who’re not looking for a role but want to work at a great workplace) are more likely to connect with companies with great reputations.
• By creating a positive employer brand, you can retain your current employees and create a culture that fosters employee engagement, loyalty, and satisfaction.
• When you have an excellent brand reputation, you don’t have to spend much time and budget on job advertisements and costly campaigns. This way, you can reduce recruitment costs while attracting talented individuals.
• Since a strong employer brand emphasises a positive and engaging work environment, you’re more likely to attract individuals who share your company's values and vision.

Here are a few tips to help you create a great employer brand that attracts the best staff into your organisation:

• Ensure that the content you’re putting out there is engaging and appealing to your target audience. It should be able to inform, educate, and entertain them.
• Most job seekers, especially millennials and Gen Z people, are emotionally invested. They prefer working with you only if you align with their vision and values. Hence, don’t just focus on creating a company page. Instead, focus on building and supporting your community. Post content about your team members, share their achievements, celebrate their important days, and reply to others’ posts to show you care about everyone.
• Your team is the best brand ambassador of your company. Hence, focus on offering them a great work environment that makes them say good things about your brand, which is a more viable option as it saves time. Also, encourage them to share posts on special occasions through employee referral programs.

5. Schedule Video Interviews for Initial Screenings

Scheduling video interviews for initial screening is becoming increasingly popular in recruitment. It is because using video interviews for initial screenings offers many significant benefits, such as:

• Saving Your Time: By scheduling video interviews in the initial phase, you can quickly screen candidates and determine whether they fit the organisation. This way, you can save time in recruitment and recruit talented individuals faster. 
• Reduced Cost: Scheduling a video interview in the beginning, means you don’t have to invite jobseekers to the office for initial screening. This way, you can save a lot of money during recruitment. 
• Convenience: Video interviews ensure that job seekers can participate in the interview from anywhere with an internet connection, which is convenient for both the candidate and the interviewer.
• Access to a wider pool of talent: With video interviews, you can screen potential staff from anywhere worldwide, thus offering you access even to individuals with diverse backgrounds, skill sets, and remote locations.
• Efficient screening: With video interviews, you can efficiently screen many individuals and quickly narrow the pool to the best fit for the role.
• Quickly gauge candidate's soft skills: Video interviews can help you quickly assess potential staff for learning agility, critical thinking, and communication skills. It is essential, especially for jobs that require the candidate to interact frequently with clients.

Here are some tips for scheduling video interviews that you can follow to nail video interviews during the initial process:

• Use scheduling software: Use an online scheduling tool (an applicant tracking system) that allows candidates to choose a time slot that works for them. This way, you can minimise back-and-forth communication to hire staff faster.
• Be flexible: Be open to scheduling video interviews outside of regular business hours to accommodate candidates who may have other commitments.
• Provide clear instructions: Provide candidates with clear instructions on how to join the video interview and any technical requirements, such as a reliable internet connection and a webcam.
• Test the technology: Test the video conferencing software in advance to ensure everything works properly.
• Prepare for the interview: Treat a video interview like an in-person interview and prepare accordingly. Develop a list of questions to ask and ensure you know the candidate’s resume and background.
• Follow up promptly: Follow up with candidates after the video interview to provide feedback and let them know the next steps in recruitment.

6. Build Talent Pools

A talent pool is a group of qualified professionals and young talent that a company has identified as potential employees for current or future openings. Here’s how building talent pools in your organisation can help:

• With a pool of pre-qualified candidates, organisations don’t have to spend weeks looking for scouting and recruiting candidates – thus reducing the time to fill vacancies. This way, you can stay competitive and hire talented employees faster.
• Organisations can assess their skills, experience, and cultural fit by proactively building relationships with candidates, leading to better quality hires.
• Talent pools can also reduce the time and resources for recruiting new hires – thus reducing recruiting costs.
• With a talent pool, you can build your brand’s reputation as an ideal employer - thus attracting best talent and retaining current employees.
• You can quickly fill critical positions as you always have a pool of engaged and motivated employees to draw from when vacancies arise.

Hence, it would be best to build a pool of qualified potential staff who’ve already been pre-screened and assessed to fit the organisation’s culture and values. It would help you create your dream team.

Here’s you can create a pool of bright employees:

• Use employee referrals, networking events, and job fairs to attract potential employees.
• Forging strong relationships with candidates. Stay in touch with them through emails, social posts, networking events, and industry conferences.
• Assess individuals through skill tests, interviews, and reference checks to see if they fit your organisation.
• Stay in touch with even those individuals who could not make it for the current position. You can nurture them to build a robust talent pipeline for the future.
• Keep track of potential hires in a database so that you can easily track and contact them if a new job arises.

In short, you must be proactive to create a talent pool in your organisation. It’s not a one-time task but a long-term strategy that can save your startup time and effort in candidate recruitment.

7. Automate the job posting process

Job posting consumes the most time and effort for startups. If you can automate the posting process, you can save a lot of time as you don’t have to post openings to multiple job boards and socialmedia platforms manually. This way, your HR team can focus on critical tasks like candidate screening and assessment.

Additionally, automating the job posting process can:

• Save money by eliminating the need to pay for individual posts on multiple job sites. Many job posting tools offer bulk discounts or flat-rate pricing – which is way more cost-effective than paying for individual posts.
• Help you reach a wider audience of jobseekers across multiple job boards and social media platforms. It increases the chances of finding the best fit for the position.
• Help you maintain consistency across all platforms, ensuring all potential candidates have an equal opportunity to apply.
• Track the performance of posts and identify areas for improvement. It can help you optimise the job posting process and improve the effectiveness of your recruitment effort.

Here’s how you can optimise the job posting process to save your time and effort while recruiting staff for your company:

Step 1: Identify Platforms for Job Posting

Identify the job boards and social media platforms most relevant to your organisation and where you are most likely to find talented individuals.

Step 2: Choose a Job Post Automation Tool 

Various tools such as recruitment software, applicant tracking system (ATS), and social media recruiting tools can automate postings. Some of these tools are designed specifically for automating the posting of vacancies, while others offer job posting automation as one of many features.

Step 3: Configure the Job Posting Tool

Once you choose a job posting tool, configure it to post openings on your platforms. It may involve setting up platform integrations or manually entering the job posting information into the tool.

Step 4: Create a Custom Job Posting Template

Create templates for your job postings that include all relevant information, such as titles, job descriptions, duties, qualifications, and application instructions. It will ensure that all posts are consistent and have all the necessary information.

Step 5: Schedule Job Posts

Use the job posting tool to schedule your posts in advance and automatically post them on designated platforms at designated times. It can ensure you post jobs at optimal times.

Step 6: Monitor and Optimise Your Job Posts

Monitor the performance of your posts using the analytics and metrics provided by the job posting tool. Use this information to optimise your strategy over time and increase the effectiveness of your recruitment efforts.

In Conclusion

Startups are cool as they offer everyone a lot of exposure and avenues for personal and career growth. However, recruiting can be challenging if you’re a startup owner. It’s like walking on a minefield where one wrong move can cost you business and your brand reputation. Your staff is the backbone of your company. They need to be solid and reliable if they want to achieve success.

The quick hiring strategy hacks we mentioned above gave you enough idea of how you can find and recruit great employees faster. To recap:

• Use social media to scout talent, forge relations, and weed out unqualified individuals.
• Leverage data and analytics to identify areas for improvement and make informed decisions.
• Use an applicant tracking system to automate recruitment and optimise recruitment.
• Work on employer branding, as it can help you attract and nurture young talent.
• Schedule video interviews for initial screenings to weed out candidates early on and save your time and effort.
• Build talent pools that you can use to fill urgent openings.
• Automate the posting process, as it can save a lot of your time and effort.

Now that you’ve learned how to hire employees as a startup, implement these learnings practically and use them to recruit qualified employees quickly. Best of luck!