The Ultimate Guide to Startup Hiring The Inside Scoop from Six Successful Founders and Talent Leaders

Table of Contents

Introduction 3

Talent: Your New #1 Concern 7

Growing Your Org 8

A Pulse on Agencies 10

Hiring an In-House Recruiter 12

Key Qualities to Look for in Candidates 14

How to Differentiate Your Startup to Top Talent 16

Advice from Lessons Learned 18

Conclusion 20

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Introduction

Whether you just raised millions of dollars and panicked because now everything is real and you actually have to start building a company, or you’re a few hires deep and wondering if you’re even remotely on the right track, you’re not alone. The recruitment process is incredibly ambiguous, especially for someone who’s never been through it before, and there’s not much information out there on how to do it well.

The following is a guide for startup founders at early stage companies who are committed to getting hiring right from the very start, because they know their company’s success hinges on it.

How do you hire the right people? How do you get the best candidates to work with you and not the startup or RSU-toting behemoth company next door? And should you even bother with an in-house recruiter? These are just a few of the questions we asked our panel of experienced founders and talent leaders, to shed some much-needed light on how to hire for startups.

Read on to meet the panel and hear the lessons they’ve learned from their own crash courses in rapid-growth hiring.

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After completing her BSE in Marketing at the University of Pennsylvania, Arum Kang focused on delighting customers in the consumer product space. She has worked with a variety of companies including Lord and Taylor, Avon, and Amazon. After obtaining her MBA degree from Harvard Business School, Arum co-founded Coffee Meets Bagel with sisters Soo and Dawoon. As CEO, Arum creates and executes the vision of Coffee Meets Bagel. Over the past three years, she has built a team that shares her passion for bringing people together. Her overarching goal is to always make sure that the users’ needs are heard and that they receive a superior product experience. In addition to her day-to-day work, Arum has given many talks about the intersection of dating and technology in the startup scene, including a recent TEDx talk on ‘Redefining Normal’.

Barbara is Connect’s lead recruiter and has been in the recruiting business for over 20 years. She joined Connect - a location-powered messaging app focused on creating a more connected world - in 2014 to build the company’s recruiting function from scratch. During her career Barbara has worked as an agency recruiter, and as an inside recruiter, worked for large companies, and small companies, but by far her love is for the startups!

The Panel

Arum KangCo-Founder and CEO of Coffee Meets Bagel

Barbara McGheeSenior Technical Recruiter at Connect

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As Soylent’s Chief Technology Officer, John manages a team of highly-skilled engineers and data scientists focused on Soylent’s web presence, building e-commerce, order management, and fulfillment software. Most recently, he spearheaded efforts to acquire Soylent.com. Prior to Soylent, John worked in finance, as well as for early- and mid-stage technology companies. He also co-founded, alongside Soylent Chief Marketing Officer David Renteln, a venture-backed education technology company. Coogan has a Bachelor of Science in Economics from Northeastern University and is enamored with big data and anything that increases his efficiency. A native of the Greater Los Angeles Area, he currently resides in Downtown Los Angeles with his fellow co-founders.

Karthik Sridharan is co-founder and CEO of Kinnek, the marketplace for small business purchasing. Prior to Kinnek, he was a research associate at AQR Capital Management. He is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania (Class of 2007), and lives in New York City. In his free time, he enjoys eating mangoes.

The Panel

John CooganCo-Founder and CTO of Soylent

Karthik SridharanCo-Founder and CEO of Kinnek

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Scott is the talent manager at Getaround, an on-demand carsharing marketplace. He oversees Staffing and People Operations, and has seen the company more than double in size since joining them in April. Scott is focused on providing a positive culture with HR systems to make life better for Getaround employees. Prior to Getaround, Scott was a technical recruiter at Google, where he led pipeline expansion initiatives across multiple roles. Scott received his masters in Human Resources and Industrial Relations in 2011 from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and his bachelor’s of Public Administration from San Diego State University in 2009.

Spenser founded Amplitude in 2012 to revolutionize the way companies interact with their mobile users. He and co-founder Curtis Liu completely rebuilt the mobile user analytics stack, creating a behavioral analytics engine that would finally allow companies to easily understand what their users are doing in their applications. Spenser first discovered the need for a better mobile analytics solution while founding Y Combinator startup Sonalight, a voice recognition texting app, which led to his idea for Amplitude. Prior to Sonalight and Amplitude, Spenser worked as an algorithmic trader for DRW Trading Group.

The Panel

Scott Zindell Talent Manager at Getaround

Spenser SkatesCo-Founder and CEO of Amplitude

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It used to be product that kept CEOs up at night. Today, it’s talent. Human capital – ranging from a skilled and engaged workforce, to effective leadership – is the number one concern for CEOs globally, ranking above customer relationships, innovation, operational excellence, and more1.

Employees drive a company’s excellence on every front. From product, to customer relationships and sales, you’re only as good as the people you hire. But finding the right people is harder than ever. Job openings often outnumber qualified candidates, time to hire is getting longer, and cost per hire is increasing with it. (In 2014, companies spent an average of 52 days and $4,000 per hire2.) And then there’s retention. Recruiters try to poach the best people with new opportunities all the time, which makes holding on to your all-star hires harder than ever as well.

For all of the problems startup founders have to solve for the first time, hiring is one of the most important to get right. Make hiring a top priority for your company from the very beginning to significantly increase your chances of success.

1 The Conference Board, CEO Challenge 2015 2 Bersin by Deloitte, Talent Acquisition Factbook, 2015

Our panel confirmed that these challenges are real. Here’s how they described hiring in their own words:

Hiring is...

“The most important thing you can do for your organization – more than sales, more than product, more than good engineering. Your company is ultimately a function of the people there. Once you figure out product market fit, it’s the most important thing you can be spending time on.” - Spenser

“Hands down the most difficult thing I’ve had to do. I’m only now getting the hang of it. It’s way harder than coding.” - John

“A sleeper cell kind of problem, almost every failure can be traced back to it. It’s the hardest thing that you don’t want to do, but that you have to do.” - Karthik

“Creating the values and culture that your company’s success hinges upon.” - Scott

Talent: Your New #1 Concern

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Grow organically for as long as it makes sense

It’s okay to let your recruiting strategy grow organically in the beginning, instead of hiring like crazy because you have VC money and think that’s what you’re supposed to do. In the early days, try to hire out of a need that your company has, but that nobody has the bandwidth to do. As John advises, “If you’re nowhere near finished with what you’re doing, and it needs to get done, you probably need to hire someone to help you.”

Of course, hiring only when a need arises has its tradeoffs. You won’t have someone on board the moment they’re needed, which might tempt you to sacrifice candidate quality for the sake of expediency. But measured and deliberate growth, our founders agree, trumps fast growth in the early days. “When you’re growing organically, even if it’s not optimally, at least you know you won’t overheat,” says Spenser.

If you rush the process and try to get people in the door before you fully understand what their role will be, you risk bringing on dead weight, or hiring someone who ultimately isn’t a fit – both culturally, and in terms of their ability to produce.

It’s okay to hire someone too soon

Organic hiring isn’t ideal for the reasons already stated, so once you can transition to longer-term planning, you should do so. If you know you’ll need to hire someone in two to three months, start looking for them now. As Karthik says, “It’s not a bad thing if you find the perfect candidate and have to bring them on a bit early. The added efficiency you get will make up for the added expense.” Paying a few more months’ salary than you intended to still beats the mad dash to find someone once you’re buried in work. Plus, you get the added bonus of an already ramped-up employee once they’re truly needed.

How to Approach Growth“Don’t spend like a drunken sailor just because you have the money” - Karthik

If information on hiring for startups in general is sparse, guidance on how they should think about headcount is a black hole. Here’s what’s worked for our panel.

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Too much growth is dangerous growth

Skyrocketing growth is something most people associate with great success stories, but hiring too fast before you’re truly ready for it can be a nasty shock to the system.

“When you grow too fast,” says Karthik, “you fall flat on your face. You don’t have time to adjust as a team, and you don’t have the right systems and processes in place.” Make sure you understand what an employee’s role will be, and how to interview and onboard for it, before you really ramp up your hiring. Once the right processes are in place, it’s safer to scale faster, but still keep an eye on your culture. Ramping up a team quickly might feel good for your bottom line, but it may adversely affect your team and culture in ways you can’t identify until it’s too late.

First hires: referrals aren’t the only way

Anecdotally, referrals are the most popular means of finding your first few hires – they come with strong references from people you trust, and vice versa for the candidate. But if you don’t have a huge network, there are other ways. Our founders have tried everything from Craigslist to meetups - and have been successful at it too. Arum, for example, met her first contractor (pre first full-time employee) at a developer meetup, and says she brought him on board after nurturing the relationship over coffee chats for almost six months. When asked why she waited so long, Arum expressed just how important it was to find the right person.“What’s important for anyone I bring on to the team is that we really know each other well. They have to be smart and good at what they do, and they also have to be mature. You just cannot force that.” Arum preferred to wait until she had a product that really impressed the best people, rather than do it the other way around – expect average employees to build an impressive product.

Without many data points on hiring at small companies for benchmarking your progress, focus not on where you think you should be, but where you are, and hire from there.

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“We work with a lot of external recruiters, but we have yet to hire anyone they’ve found. It’s too bad. Agency recruiters obviously work hard and have every reason to find good people, but most of their candidates are way off base.” - John

“We haven’t used any agencies at Getaround, but in my past experience with them, the candidates they put forward are fairly low caliber. The caliber depends on the level of the role, though. There’s more quality to be found in executive search.” - Scott

“We’ve hired two people through agency, but we’ve found they’re more useful when we need to hire somebody more senior. When searching for candidates who have less experience, we can do much better sourcing ourselves. It’s kind of amazing what you see even after they say they filter people. There’s a lot of noise.” - Arum

“We’ve used some agencies before. They’re okay. Executive recruiters have worked out well because that sort of information isn’t going to be of access to you otherwise, but generally the candidates you get aren’t going to be high quality.” - Spenser

“If you have enough seed money, agencies aren’t a bad way to get going. It’s really easy to say agencies don’t produce, but you will find some that are good caliber. And if the agency doesn’t produce, drop them.” - Barbara

A Pulse on Agencies If you’re not familiar with employment agencies or are on the fence about using one, here’s the deal.

Employment agencies (also called recruiting or staffing agencies) do a lot of the recruiting legwork by matching companies with candidates who fit their open roles. Agencies typically charge a percentage of a candidate’s first-year salary – about 20 percent, or more for more senior talent – if the candidate gets hired. Companies often turn to agencies when they feel like there’s just not enough time left in the day to focus on recruiting with everything else going on. Even companies who have in-house recruiters sometimes use agencies to help shoulder the workload.

So which approach should you take? We put the question to our panel.

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The time to use an agency, according to most of our panel, is during an executive search. You won’t get the same degree of noise in an executive search as you will in a more junior to mid-level one, and agencies have valuable intel on executive candidates that your in-house recruiter just won’t have access to.

Barbara has a slightly different take on agencies. She, like the others, thinks she can do a better job of sourcing great talent in-house, but suggests that agencies are helpful when you simply need to get off the ground and fill your pipeline. They can help you understand the talent landscape and do some candidate benchmarking to get a pulse for the type of candidate you can expect to recruit for different roles.

Overwhelmingly, our panel recommends hiring a dedicated in-house recruiter, which is in line with the national trend in declining agency spend. The percentage of company budget dedicated to third-party and agency recruiters decreased from 38 percent of overall recruiting budget in 2011, to 18 percent in 20141.

In-house recruiters have the advantage of knowing your industry and product. They can sell candidates on your company’s mission and vision, and they understand the type of candidate you’re looking for in a way that somebody who doesn’t work at your company never will. If it feels like a major investment to bring someone on board to focus on recruitment, remind yourself that there’s probably no greater factor in your long-term success than talent.

1 Bersin by Deloitte, Talent Acquisition Factbook, 2015 11

Hiring an In-House Recruiter Given the advantages of having an in-house resource dedicated to recruiting, sooner or later you’re likely to take that step. But exactly how and when should you ‘hire the hirer’? And what should you look for given that person will have such an impact on your trajectory?

When to hire your first recruiter

Our panel, all forward thinking in terms of hiring and talent, brought on their first recruiting-focused person at young stages in their growth. For Arum, it was after Coffee Meets Bagel’s Series A. For Karthik at Kinnek, it was around 14 people. For John, it was once Soylent got past 30 people. Spenser, at Amplitude, is in the midst of a recruiter search at 32 people. While they all hired a recruiter early, what none of them regret is hiring someone to help with the recruiting function too soon.

Some people cautioned Karthik on hiring an HR / people person at only 14 people, but their arguments to wait a few more months and save the money, he says, weren’t convincing. Rather, the people who told him to hire someone for HR / people early – with their first-hand accounts of waiting until they got to 50 employees and running around like crazy just trying to keep up with administrative and compliance issues – were a lot more compelling.

Why Hire a Recruiter Early

Your first recruiter will do leaps and bounds more than the sourcing, screening, and coordinating duties typically associated with the role. They’re going to build your recruiting function from scratch, and there are a lot of reasons you’ll be thankful to have them. Our founders brought their first recruiters on to establish processes, build employer brand, handle onboarding, keep employee engagement high, and much, much more.

“There are so many parts to the recruiting process,” says Spenser. “How do you get candidates interested, how do you structure the process, manage logistics, and close the candidate?” All of these questions are areas where Spenser recognizes he could use a recruiter’s expertise.

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Similarly, Karthik hired his first recruiter to help systematize Kinnek’s process and think about broader questions like employer brand and employee happiness. “We want people to still think Kinnek is the best place to work even when we’re hundreds of people,” he says. To play the long game in recruiting, as he calls it, Karthik needed someone who could tackle questions early on about what kind of experience candidates have when they come onsite, how to reject candidates, and how to make Kinnek a place people love working.

Not only is a recruiter helpful in scaling recruiting and people operations, sometimes you need them just to plug the existing holes. If you’re collecting resumes, whether it’s through a jobs page or an email address, hundreds, of resumes can build up before you have a chance to get to them. That, John says, hurts your professionalism and employer brand. What’s more, even if you don’t have room to hire the candidates now, you will in the future. You severely lower your chances of engaging with candidates by ignoring them for ages.

What to hire for

It’s one option to hand over recruiting responsibilities to a capable existing employee, but there are clear advantages to hiring someone who already knows a thing or two about recruiting.

One of the biggest “great to haves” Karthik looked for in his search for a recruiter was someone with previous experience at a fast-growing tech company – there are nuances to working in tech he wanted his first recruiter to be familiar with. “The way you think about HR, benefits, recruiting, and employee happiness at a startup are very different than the way you think about them at an investment bank,” he says. Another reason he looked for past experience in tech, was so that the employee could say, “Listen, I’ve seen a company similar to yours grow from 50 to 200 employees before. Here’s how to scale teams and here are the pitfalls to look out for.”

Spenser, too, is looking for someone with experience. At the very least, they should be able to answer questions like, where do you look for candidates, how do you find them, and how do you tell a company’s story? A recruiter will often be a candidate’s first and most consistent touch point throughout the process. They should be able to tell a company’s story and sell the vision just as well as, if not better, than the founding team.

All in all, look for a first recruiter who’s passionate about talent, who will take a holistic approach to recruiting, and tackle not just one, but every aspect of building an organization.

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Key Qualities to Look for in CandidatesThere are obvious skills to look for in every salesperson, engineer, marketer, etc., but not every candidate who looks qualified on paper will be a good fit for your company. It’s important to evaluate for the skills you can’t teach, too.

While the qualities you need in a hire will vary based on the role, the industry and your company’s growth stage, there are some general rules of thumb. Here are the inherent qualities our founders always look for to gauge whether a candidate will be a good hire.

OK with ambiguity

Very little about a job at a startup is defined. Employees need to be able to manage their own workload, be their own teacher, and make decisions nobody has made before. Such a degree of ambiguity isn’t something everyone is comfortable with, which is why an ability to navigate through ambiguity is the number one quality Scott looks for in a candidate. How do you evaluate for that? Just ask them. “If you sense surprise, hesitation, or anything other than excitement,” says Scott, “you can usually suss out ahead of time whether they’ll be a good fit.”

Curiosity

According to Arum, natural curiosity speaks volumes about a candidate’s aptitude for working at a startup. It’s not enough for Arum to see that a candidate has the right credentials, she wants to see that they have a natural drive for discovery. “We’re all doing and figuring things out for the first time. We have to stay curious so we can continually teach ourselves and learn,” she says. Without inherent curiosity, Arum doubts a candidate’s ability to excel in an environment that demands constant learning.

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Humility

For Karthik, it’s a huge turn off when a candidate acts entitled to a job at your company just because their skills are in demand. “I want to hire people who can say, ‘Look, I know I’m smart, but I also want to be part of a team and what you’re building,’” says Karthik. A lot of people don’t come off that way. It’s obvious to Karthik that candidates who feel entitled aren’t looking for fulfillment in a great product and team, but a paycheck. They’ll likely hop from highest bidder to highest bidder, which makes a candidate who lacks humility not only a poor culture fit, but also a risky hire in terms of retention.

Bias toward action

Execution is key at a fast-growing startup. There’s no room for idling and dropping the ball, so it’s important to hire people who are willing to get their hands dirty and do whatever it takes. “Early on, you don’t need to hire a bunch of managers, you need to hire doers and makers,” says John. These are people who not only have the vision and strategic thinking you’re looking for, but the ability to carry an idea from inception to execution. Suss it out by asking about a candidate’s past projects at work.

You get the picture. Avoid arrogance, and hire people with a natural drive who can be their own teachers and can get things done.

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How to Differentiate Your Startup to Top TalentEveryone is showering candidates with cash and perks these days, and there are hundreds of startups out there, not to mention all the more established and deep-pocketed companies. So what will make someone want to work for you? It takes differentiation to compete. Take the time to articulate what sets you apart, and make sure you capitalize on it during the recruitment process.

Focus on candidate experience

Candidates seriously care about their recruitment experience. In fact, nine out of 10 professionals say a good interview experience can change their mind about a company they had doubts about1. Arum is hyper-aware of this. “Every step of the way, from the moment you interact via email, candidates are evaluating you,” she says. Everything from how fast you respond, to how the candidate is greeted onsite and how excited you are in general, can make a huge difference in the candidate’s impression of your company. Arum takes extra care to keep people informed of where they are in the process, and will always send updates as soon as she can to minimize any anxiety the candidate might have. Additionally, Arum announces the candidates who are coming in for onsite interviews at the beginning of every week to make sure everybody gets a friendly welcome. After all, a huge part of a candidate’s decision is the team they’ll be working with day in and day out.

Sell your vision

A large draw of working at a startup is the opportunity to have a real impact on building a product you believe in and, ideally, being a part of the next big success story. Candidates at startups aren’t just buying into your job, they’re buying into your vision. “I love to get people excited about Kinnek,” says Karthik. “We have such a big vision, there’s so much room for creativity and exciting new areas we can explore. It’s impossible to get bored.” Karthik says he hasn’t done well enough if people don’t walk away thinking, “Yes! I want to be a part of that!” If you can sell a candidate on your vision and get them to connect with it, another recruiter will be hard pressed to sway them in a different direction.

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For engineers: focus on the tech

Some techies are way more concerned with your company’s tech – and how they’ll get to work with it – than they are by mission and vision, so before you capitalize on what you think is a huge selling point, find out what makes your candidate tick. Getaround, for example, has an almost 100% proprietary tech stack, and they know it’s a big selling point for many of their technical candidates. “For someone who wants broad exposure, you’re going to get it here,” says Scott. He doesn’t let any candidate go without feeling out how important Getaround’s unique tech stack is to them, and capitalizing on it when their ears perk up – which is usually always.

Hire from your customer base

If you’re lucky enough to have a product with a loyal customer base, hire from it! “When customers reach out to us, they’re already fans of the product and vision. It usually checks off the culture fit question right away,” says John. Not every company has this luxury, but if you do, keep an eye out for applicants who already love what you do. You’ll find dedicated employees, all without any differentiation needed.

Focus on transparency

A surefire way to make your employees feel disillusioned and wary is to shut them out of important company discussions. Karthik swears by transparency and makes sure during the interview process that candidates understand what transparency means at Kinnek. “As a founder, I make sure to let everyone in on the important details related to building the company,” he says. That includes transparency about how much money is in the bank, progress towards critical milestones, which VCs bite and which don’t, and even making sure employees get a chance to meet the investors. When candidates are considering dedicating so much of their lives to your startup, it helps many to know they’ll be treated with respect, instead of whispers behind closed doors.

Your company’s differentiators are something that everybody involved in the recruiting process should be able to talk about. From the initial phone screen, to the interview process and final offer, you should always be selling.

1 LinkedIn Global Talent Trends 2015 17

Advice from Lessons Learned No matter how much you hone your skills and your process, it’s impossible to be right on the dot about candidates 100 percent of the time. There will always be mistakes, but here are some words of wisdom from our panel on how to minimize them.

Be disciplined

In a recurring theme among our panel, Spenser stresses the need to systematize the way you hire. “The best hires have always come out of disciplined processes,” he says. You’re doing yourself a disservice if you jump right into a candidate search without putting serious thought into the type of individual you’re looking for. From there, you should structure your interview process in such a way that you’ll always walk away with the data points you need in order to make an informed decision.

Systematize employee referrals

Employee referrals are a rich source of hire for startups across the board, but there’s a lot that companies can do to increase their referrals even more. Making an announcement that you are hiring for a certain role only scratches the surface. “Employees make a lot of assumptions that can yield a low amount of referrals, like failing to realize a person is a good fit or assuming they won’t be interested in the opportunity,” says Karthik. He also points out that in today’s world of constant networking, an employee might forget altogether that they’re connected with someone promising. To really run an effective employee referral program, Karthik suggests doing deep dives with employees on an individual basis by going through their online connections together. Referral programs are often tied to financial incentives, but oftentimes, all employees need in order to send referrals your way are reminders and some proactive guidance.

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Don’t be afraid to let people go

Letting people go sucks – especially when you’re a small team and you want every person you hire to be influential in shaping your company. But that’s all the more reason not to uhm and ah over the decision to let someone go if they’re not pulling their weight. Keeping the wrong people on board is costly, both in terms of productivity and company culture. Arum struggled for months over firing her first employee, even putting him on an 8-week improvement plan. Now, Arum says, “I wouldn’t struggle. The moment you find yourself making excuses for an employee, you have to decide and move on.” Arum says that aside from hurting the employee, her main concern was the impact that letting one person go would have on the rest of the team’s morale and sense of security. She quickly discovered, however, that her team could spot a poor performer just as well as she could. One person even told Arum that he felt he could do his job faster and more effectively after the employee was let go.

Check references

Don’t make the mistake of treating reference calls like a rubber stamp – something you do just to tick off a box without giving it much thought. “You need to be prepared to reject someone based solely on reference calls,” says Karthik. It’s hard, but not impossible for a candidate to hide their genuine nature over the course of a few interviews. It’s a lot harder to do that all day, every day at work. Don’t underestimate the value and insights that speaking with candidate’s past coworkers can yield. If they have anything but high praise for your candidate, it’s worth seeking more references and reevaluating before you extend that offer.

It’s easy to take hiring lightly until you wind up with a culture you don’t recognize, high turnover, and B-team players. Building a team is a murky process, but one of the best places you can go to learn about common pitfalls and how to avoid them is people who’ve been through it all before.

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Conclusion You didn’t start a company to become a full-time recruiter, but as a founder, it’s important to understand that a large part of your responsibilities will revolve around talent. Founders who embrace talent and invest in things like hiring, company culture, and employee engagement from the very beginning set themselves up for success.

Here’s our founders’ advice one more time:

As you grow your org, pace yourself

Don’t hire just because you raise money, or grow too quickly before you have the proper processes in place – that includes things like onboarding and strategies for retention. Instead, hire based on your organization’s needs. In the early stages, that often means once you’re in over your head with work and can clearly see that you need help. As you grow and are able to forecast further out, start your search a few months in advance so you have someone on board as soon as you need them.

Agencies are most valuable for executive searches

Rely on in-house recruiters for the majority of your hiring needs, but consider agencies in executive searches – they have information in-house recruiters don’t have access to. Agencies can also be helpful when you’re just getting off the ground to give you a pulse on the general talent landscape.

Hire an in-house recruiter early

Hire someone who is passionate about building a recruiting organization from scratch. Your first recruiter’s responsibilities won’t be limited to hiring for individual requisitions. They’ll be responsible for laying critical foundations like establishing processes, building an employer brand, handling onboarding, and figuring out how to keep employee engagement high.

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Consider the key qualities you need in candidates

The startup life isn’t for everyone. Very little about a job at a startup is defined, and priorities and responsibilities are constantly changing. To find people who’ll thrive in such an environment, look for candidates who are comfortable with ambiguity, are strong executors, have an insatiable curiosity, and who are capable, but humble.

Make sure your whole team can differentiate your startup to top talent

It takes differentiation to compete with the hundreds of startups and more established companies out there. To get the best people, don’t take the value of creating a great candidate experience for granted, and make sure every candidate-facing employee is able to articulate what’s special about your company’s vision and open role. Take advantage of product evangelists (hire them!), and don’t forget that transparency is a powerful way to build trust with candidates.

Learn from our founders’ mistakes

Don’t wait until it’s too late to take hiring seriously. Be disciplined and build processes from the very start. Leverage your existing team for referrals, let low-performers go sooner rather than later, and always check references. In fact, be ready to reject a candidate or at least find out more in light of a poor reference.

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About LeverFounded in 2012 and headquartered in downtown San Francisco, Lever is the world’s first truly collaborative applicant tracking system. We’ve designed our software to be easy, intuitive, data-driven and hiring manager-friendly.

Lever supports hundreds of companies around the world from five employees to over 5,000 in proactively sourcing, nurturing and hiring the right talent. Among the factors that make Lever different from traditional ATS products:

ATS meets CRMAs well as including all the functionality you’d expect in an applicant tracking system, Lever offers comprehensive tools to help you nurture passive talent until they’re ready to become candidates.

Built for collaborationAs your company grows, half the battle is keeping everybody on the same page. Lever helps hiring managers and recruiters stay in touch through multiple features like @ mentions, job following and two-way email sync.

Candidate-centricTo increase your chances of success with a candidate, it pays to have a complete view of their every interaction with your team. See your company’s full history with each candidate over time, helping you personalize your outreach and improve their impressions of your organization.

We’d love to show you why hiring teams are raving about Lever. For a free demo, email sales@lever.co, call +1.415.458.2731, or visit https://lever.co . © Lever 2015. All Rights Reserved.