When your start enjoys a burst of success, and demand starts to grow, the time has come to hire more staff. It’s a difficult time. As well as the challenges of finding good candidates and making the right hiring decisions, you also have to acknowledge that a chapter of your business’ life is ending forever. As you hire a full board of executives, more entry level staff, and a proper HR Team to support them all, you’re no longer a dynamic, flexible start-up. You’re well on the way to being another established company.
It’s vital that you make the right decisions during this phase. Allowing yourself to be distract and hiring the wrong people will handicap your company as it tries to establish itself in a bigger pool, full of much bigger fish.
One of the first things you need to do is look for help. If you’re looking for Executive Recruitment Agencies, London has more than its fair share and it can be difficult to chose what the right one for you is.
The first step is to call on your professional network: conferences, clients and contracts should have outfitted with a trusted network of peers. If you know anyone working in your niche who has recently gone through a similar expansion, it’s worth speaking to them and getting recommendations. An endorsement from a trusted peer is worth more than any number of anonymous online reviews.
Once you’ve found the right recruiter to work with, you can begin putting together lists of vacancies and they can start finding candidates. If this is your first start up, or even if it’s not, this could well be the first time you’ve dealt with staffing up on such on such a scale. A good recruitment agency will be able to give you advice here, making sure you know the current market for the roles you’re recruiting, and helping you fill out job descriptions with the skills you need to make a success of this phase of your business. This is why it’s worth putting the effort in to find a recruiter who’s really willing to work with you: they can do so much more than simply finding candidates.
It’s worth reflecting on the values that make your company unique, so you can hire candidates you see those values reflected in, and make sure your company keeps its identity even as it grows.
