As a scaling company, you’re often running against the clock. And, as the leader of a scaleup, it’s likely that hiring is your number one pain point, with up to 30–40% of your time spent on recruitment (if you haven’t hired a head of people, that is).

“Hiring slow, and firing fast, is one of the hardest things founders have to do.”  Greg Marsh, former CEO, One Fine Stay.

Understandably, when it comes to managing the rapid pace of scaling, you’re rarely looking to hire slowly – even though the impact of a bad hire, particularly in senior/extremely technical roles, could be detrimental. So, how do you entice the right talent in the first place?

This session will explore how to build your talent brand aligned to your culture and values. All too often, when hiring senior or technical/specialist roles, tech teams are fighting for talent from the same pool. How do you stand out from the crowd and bring on the right team members, not for your perks but for your mission, vision and purpose? Employees want to know what makes your business fun and special, and you’ll need to be able to articulate what a ‘win’ looks like.

Scale Coaches:

• Sultan Saidov - Co-founder and President, Beamery
• Neil Purcell - Founder & CEO, Talent Works
• Paul Newnes - Head of Digital, Talent Works
• Sarah Chester - Digital & Marketing Lead, Talent Works
  

Session Takeaways:

• Top tips towards building an attractive and competitive employer brand that entices talent.
• Techniques to unearth new talent - the potential key to your success.
• How to effectively scale a hiring process
• Common mistakes when scaling your team and how to avoid them.
• Understand peer challenges and approaches that you can tailor to your own situation.

SESSION NOTES

> HOW TO HIRE TALENT AS YOU SCALE (Delivered by Talent Works)

Culture

Culture is a byproduct of consistent behaviour. Company culture is often spoken about but rarely defined. It is a shared set of basic assumptions that are learned as a group when we solve problems. 

Culture is largely emergent but can be shaped. It’s easier to shape in the early days when you can see everything in the company, harder when scaling. 

Organisational Culture and Leadership - Edgar Schein

Artefacts - things you can see e.g. office etc

Values - company values

Beliefs (assumptions) - emergent things that you cannot control directly but underpin everything else

Clearly define your company values by defining into 2 or 3 behaviours that people can observe and managers can use to set by example. To build culture:

• Relentlessly reinforce - managers and leadership team
• Show recognition and give feedback
• Measure - not talked about widely

Hofstede’s dimensions of organisational culture

• Means oriented or goal driven
• Internally or externally driven
  Externally means being driven by what the customers want
• Easy-going or strict discipline
• Employee or work oriented

Surveys and systems can help capture the numbers and nuance and how people truly think about the organisational culture.

> EMPLOYER BRAND

92% of people would consider changing jobs if offered a role with a good employer brand. The employer brand is what shows who the company is, not what you are selling. 

Your Employee Value Proposition (EVP) is what an employer offers an employee.

It is two-fold; 

Tangible - office space, compensation, benefits

Intangible - flexible working, environment, culture

Discovery

• Stakeholder interviews provide the vision
• Focus groups with employees provide the reality
• Surveys with candidates provide the external perception

Insight

• What do we need to tell people internally?
• What do we need to tell candidates externally?
• Why should they believe us?
• Needs to be honest and true

Before you create anything, you need to agree on a set of guidelines and tone of voice. Everyone needs to be aligned.

It’s important to have confidence when competing with big brands. Think about your values and proposition of what you want in an employee. Ensure that everyone is aligned and really question if they are the right fit for your company.

> BUILDING A HIRING PROCESS

69% of people will share a negative experience in a hiring process.

Checklist:

• Prepare questions and follow a structure
• A lack of structure makes it difficult to compare candidates
• Know your mission, values and benefits
• Ensure all managers are aligned to promote the right message
• Its a 2-way street, you must know what you can give an employee too
• Use an interview scorecard
• A simple tool to objectively review candidates

Scorecard

Don’t just think about how well people answer questions and their skills. When they talk with their answers, do they use examples that align with your culture? This will help to work out if they will stay long term. Use this with every candidate to work out who will be the best fit.

Keep the scorecards on file

• It helps to assess the skill of hiring managers
• All hiring managers need to be aligned with the process
• Can see patterns emerge
• Worth looking back if you’re struggling to retain

> WHAT NOT TO DO

• Don’t just post and pray
• Think more strategically to attract candidates
• Don't hire specialists over generalists in their early stage
• If you haven’t quite found product market fit, specialists could hold you back
• Don’t stick with hiring talent from inside your industry
• Think about transferable skills
• Don’t stick with the usual channels
• Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram can all also be used as tools for hiring, people then will have a higher chance of having heard of you
• Be creative to help build a pipeline and get your employer brand out there
• Don’t go it alone; you can’t do or know everything
• Find the right partners who can support
• You’re going to need the right kind of help from outside

> ROUNDTABLES

What is the best recruitment process you’ve experienced as either an applicant or recruiter?

• Being honest about where you are in the process, and open with communication 
• Importance in clarity of the role, what is needed and what it entails actually speeds the process up
• The Who Methodology, up front investment but worth it
• Ability to probe after asking open questions, keep digging 
• Having a form of assessment is essential, potentially as part of the interview however then creates more pressure
• All starts with the correct job description
• Having someone from a different team in the interview process
• What questions do they have for you? When they’ve spent their time doing research
• Staff handbook with company policies

What does a dream applicant look like to you? How are you attracting those applicants?

• People that are different and stand out, most CVs are the same
• The passion for the industry, which doesn’t necessarily link to experience 
• Self selection candidates that come to you
• Finding people that will grow with you
• Incentives with referral schemes 
• Showing authenticity, emotional intelligence and vulnerability in interview 
• Showing team mentality using ‘we’ rather than ‘I’
• Managing own networks and cultivating
• Sponsoring events

> HIRING TALENT AT SCALE

Sultan Saidov, Beamery

Scaling beyond 150 employees

Beamery got to 150 employees last year - The ‘Dunbar number’ - which is when your workforce will stop seeing itself as one unit. Start thinking about building for the long term as things start to go out of your control.

When thinking about scaling to a new location, think about mapping out the supply of skills available, e.g. Austin was a good location to open a new office as it was cost effective and had lots of universities with the right talent.

It’s crucial to start to think about the People function while scaling, rather than just hiring.

Diversity

Some teams are diverse from the get go, but other functions may not be. Diversity starts with intent and it impacts your culture greatly.

As a company you need to assess at what point should you start hiring specialists? Hiring problem or internal change problem?

Involve existing team in having a joint journey and acknowledging that your company is growing faster than the people within your company. Think about whether you can train someone to grow with the company or if you should bring in someone more senior and the internal mobility of your employees. Some specialist roles are easier to convert into from generalist roles than others. Redefine people’s job roles in parallel to hiring managers

DNA to getting talent right

Employee activation

• Make it easy for employees to refer and engage
• Involve everyone, and define clear job roles
• Train team on how to pitch your company as an employer
• Make a structured process of who will be involved in hiring and interviewing

Candidate experience

• What a candidate can find out about you organically is out of your control but candidate experience starts with this
• Marketing team writing up articles and making videos to include in messages you send, get the word out there

Forecasting & Planning

• Make plans that are realistic as it determines how your business will function
• Predict what your growth will look like, including pipeline

Recruiter Effectiveness

• Never too early to have your own recruiters
• Think about what makes them good
• Build conversations and relationships with a few years in mind

Tips and tricks

• Run sourcing hackathons
• Split companies into groups to find new pipeline or make content to attract talent and build the employer brand - could be 2 hours on a Friday
• Engage candidates at outset - and make sure that enough content about what it's like working at your company is easily discoverable
• Is candidate going to be excited if their first contact with your company is via a recruiter?
• Play to strength of being a fast growing company
• Use a consistent framework for defining strengths needed for the job, and run interviewer training early - interviewing should be a certifies privilege, and can be qualified well by sourcers/recruiters
• What do you think about the role as a group of people, a feasible role to hire for?

Hexagon model 

How do you define role, what is considered a strength and how important is that quality to you and the job? Make a note of which qualities are priorities for you and see how the candidate compares.

Be fast

Get the specs right and start to be more specialised 

> ROUNDTABLES

What processes are you implementing in order to tap into a diverse set of talent pools?

• Building a diverse pipeline
• Ensure that interviewing team is also diverse
• Writing about flexible working to attract candidates who may require that option
• Different teams have different dynamics and diversity
• Try and nurture and bring in talent early - but how?
• Having diverse role models that champion what you do
• Females in hiring roles
• Job boards that look at ethnic backgrounds or underrepresented groups
• Consider having remote workers
• Start at top level from board and directors, then work down

What steps are you taking to develop your employer brand? What does best practice look like?

• Video content to demonstrate the brand in the company
• Illustrate a day in the life of an employee
• Using employees and accessing their network
• Webinars 
• Partnerships or meetups with universities to get junior staff
• Transparency like Monzo
• Workforce are the face of the brand, making sure everyone is aligned in how they present the company 
• Focus on people and their growth, e.g. someone entering as a grad and their progression
• Photography of the staff so they can share and feel proud
• Rebranding exercise 

READINGS:

• Lab Rats: Why Modern Work Makes People Miserable, Dan Lyons

• Straight Talk for Startups, Jantoon Reigersman & Randy Komisar

• Organisational Culture and Leadership, Edgar Schein

• Hofstede Model of Organisational Culture, Geert Hofstede

• Cooking up your Employer Brand - The Startup Edition, Talent Works