Startup hiring strategies: What’s working, what’s not
Get Hired! or Hire — KSUM presents Hireathon, a virtual recruitment drive for startups and talents under one roof.
The covid-19 pandemic saw no decline in hiring in the startups, and the trend is set to continue. About 72% of startup founders said the pace of hiring will increase this year despite the pandemic, according to a survey by debt fund InnoVen Capital.
Startups in the logistics, deep technology, digital media, and e-commerce domains are more optimistic about new hiring this year. Health-tech and Fin-tech Startups are expected to sustain the hiring trends of 2020, which saw a 20% increase in startup hiring, in this year as well.
Hiring challenges for startups
However, hiring the right talent for the job is the biggest challenge startups are facing, according to about 52 percent of startup founders surveyed. Hiring the right team for the job is a recipe for success. A startup with a wrong team is the third top-most reason for its failure, as per a Cbinsights study of 101 startups.
A study of 680 tech-startup founders from 9 countries by Lawless Research puts this into perspective, given that diversity of a team greatly influences its success or failure. The study lists the top three benefits of a diverse startup as enhancing creativity and innovation (81%), improving problem-solving (67%), and providing greater access to talent (63%).
Diversity hiring strategies
Here are some hiring strategies that can help startups achieve diversity in workplace.
- Recruit from sources where diverse candidates usually meet up.
- Offer internship or trainee opportunities targeting candidates from particular backgrounds.
- Make policies like community-based holidays to flexible work hours that will encourage candidates from diverse backgrounds to apply to your company.
- Use blind resumes or interviews to black out personal information while screening candidates.
Some of the key last century startups who relied on diversity and went on to become multinationals include L’Oréal, which has women in 69% of its total workforce and 53% in key positions now.
Linkedin no more primary source of recruitment
Not so long ago, Linkedin was the preferred go-to destination for startups and multinationals to hire candidates. Fast track to 2021, only 9% of recruiters plan to use Linkedin as their primary source to hire candidates, says a survey of 350 recruiters from various sectors conducted by Hiretual, which uses Artificial Intelligence tools to recruit candidates for its clients.
The growth of social media, AI-based recruitment tools, other online recruitment platforms, and the expansion of alternative technologies and the ease of connecting with candidates here have led to a dwindling in usage of Linkedin as the primary source of recruitment.
How do AI-based recruitment tools stack up?
The pros of using AI tools for recruitment include attracting the right candidates for the job while reducing irrelevant applications, faster hiring, improved quality of recruitment, and enhancing the experience of both candidates and employer. However, it comes with some cons such as lacking human judgement, biases and inaccuracy could creep in, and is subject to programming flaws.
Startups such as Snapdeal and Ola have realised the need for AI-based recruitment strategies and have hired the services of AI-based recruitment services providers to meet their hiring needs.
However, many startups with budget constraints are not in a position to for AI tools to hire. For them, online job sites are still the major source of recruitment followed closely by employee referrals.
Referral programmes for hiring
Referral programmes continue to be a favorite of startups. It is a quicker way to reach out to candidates who are referred by the employees. Not only is it cost-effective, but also acts as an advertisement for the company. Importantly, it is reliable as it comes from an employee of the firm.
Also, referral programmes work as incentive for employees as they get monetary rewards if their referrals are hired. So, the employee would look to refer the right candidate for the job to claim the incentive.
While traditional hiring channels are not going away anytime soon, AI-based recruitment is slowly taking the market by storm. Startups would have to own this new way of hiring to bring in transparency and effectiveness, and cut costs at scale.
Hireathon: Get Hired! Or, Hire!
KSUM proudly presents Hireathon, a virtual recruitment drive for startups and talents under one roof.
Over 300+ startups from Kerala are seeking talented applicants for over 1000+ openings in this recruitment drive, from 25 September to 10 October 2021.
Grab your opportunity now itself!
For more details: https://hireathon.startupmission.in/
