How to Attract the Right Talent to Your Startup

Are you a startup business looking to hire amazing talents? Do you want to move your business forward with creative and innovative people? Then you should learn how to.

Sure every business looks forward to attracting the right talents, but for a small business owner, you have to ask yourself these questions before you think of how you can attract the best talents.

When do I start thinking of hiring the right people?

For a start-up business, you have to start positioning yourself to attract the best talent as soon as you start conceiving the idea of starting your business. This makes it easy for other people to flow with the business vision easily.

What interests the best talents in the market?

Asides from the fact that most employees look forward to getting a good pay and other great benefits what else within your capacity can you offer a great talent?

According to research, most great employees are intelligent people that thrive with meaningful challenges. Great talents are innovative and creative, and as such would love to be a part of an innovative and creative team.

As a start-up, your prospective employees may likely not be interested in your effort to outdo your competitor. Great talents will likely be interested in your ability to come up with innovative, positively challenging and value-adding projects.

How can I start attracting great talents to my start-up?

We all know that having the right talent is a step forward to building a great business. If you look forward to building a great business with great talents, then you should consider these tips to hire great talents:

1.   Get the right publicity for your startup

Even if the big brands have already created the awareness that they need to attract the best talents, you can also do that as a small business.

As a small business, you have to make sure that you communicate your vision, mission, and values as much as possible at the right time to the right people.

Smart employees are always on the look-out for great ideas and innovations that they can be a part of. So, as a small business owner, you have to make sure that you publicize your ideas and goals and you will definitely be on your way to finding great hires.

2.   Provide Benefits that Big Brands Can’t Afford

Great talents usually look forward to work with great brands that will create a great work environment for them.

Since big brands already have a lot to offer prospective employees like; competitive salary, travel allowance and the likes. To compete with these brands there is no need for you to try to offer salaries and pecks that you cannot afford.

One of the ways you can attract great talents is for you to provide what these brands cannot afford. You should offer things like; great work environment, flexible work schedules, vision ownership etc. are the things that start-up owners have the ability to afford that bigger brands may not.

Creating a work environment that is creative, inspiring and one that can bring out the best in your employees.

3.   Offer Learning Opportunities

When it comes to hiring A+talents on a budget for your start-up business, offering a learning opportunity is thing that help attract the best candidate to your company.

Often times, great talents look forward to working in company that will create a room for them to learn and build their career.

Money doesn’t mean everything to everybody, many great talents want to gather all the knowledge they can to make progress in their career. To attract these type of candidate, you have to show your prospective employees that there is a growth opportunity open for them in your company if they get hired.

Candidates that are passionate about building their career will always choose a work environment that fosters learning and development than any big brand that does not.

4.   Give Your Employees Ownership

While a competitive salary is important when it comes to hiring great people, giving your employees the right to own what they do is one thing that can make an employee thrive.

Often times, great talents want to be in a place that they can make impact not even minding even if they get a low salary at the end of the day.

According to research, great talent often want to work for start-ups because they want to make impact. Most times great talents are satisfied knowing that they are the key to driving the success of the business.

So letting your prospective employee know that this is what they can achieve working with you can help you attract the right people to your business.

5.   Build a Great Work Culture

During your recruitment process, you should be able to show your prospective employee a great work culture that they can thrive in.

We know that a good salary is really important to a prospective employee, some great talents are interested in a great culture that can help them grow and become better.

One way you can attract good talents to your small-business is for you to consciously invest in your company’s work culture. You can emphasize things like; flexible work-life balance, foster continuous improvement, transparency, values etc.

6.   Hire people with the right attitude

When it comes hiring the right people in your start-up business, you should consider hiring people that have the right attitude. Skills should not be the only reason why you should hire someone to join your small business.

A skilled person may not have the right attitude you need to move the business forward. You should focus on selecting people that have positive attitude toward work and a personality that help the person thrive being part of the business.

When you are looking forward to hire the right people, you should focus on values and attitudes like; ability to learn, great communication skills, ability to accept criticism.

7.   Embark on Challenging Projects

As a start-up business, you likely have competitors that are doing the exact thing that you are doing, one of the ways you can attract great talent is for show your prospective employees that they would be part of a great project.

Intelligent and great talents usually thrive on challenges, so to attract these kind of people, you have to show them that there is a challenge that they can be a part of. Great people always want to be a part of a successful project that can help them stand out.

Taking up calculated challenges that your competitors will not likely take is one you can attract the right people to your business.

8.   Get a clear understanding of your vision and mission

Before you think of getting the right talent for your position, you should have gotten a clear understanding of your company’s vision and mission.

Great talents want to work with a company that understands why they do what they do, a company that has a clear vision, not one that is neither here nor there.

If you have a clear vision about what you want you want to achieve with your business, then it is quite easy for you to attract the right people that share your business vision and values.

You need to have a clear understanding of your business vision before you think of bringing other people into the business.

9.   Offer a Growth/Career Path

Many prospective great talents want to work in a place that can help them grow. According to research, employees often feel used when they notice that they don’t even have a clear understanding of what they are doing in the company.

Employees appear to be more committed when they feel like it is a win-win situation for them and the company too, and not when they feel like a means to an end.

As a start-up business owner, one way you can attract top talents is for to build a structure in your system that allows for growth and development within their area of specialization.

Every employee want to be better, and if your company is a place that make them better, then you are on your way to attracting top talents for your business.

10. Accept Speaking Gigs and Network Regularly

Just like we mentioned earlier in this post, you always have to publicize your brand to get your message and vision out to the public.

Asides from advertising, one way you can get your brand to the public is embracing the opportunity to put your brand in the eyes of people.

One way you can put your brand in the eyes of people is to make yourself available where people can see you and learn about your company’s vision and goal. Attending speaking gigs and networking regularly with industry experts as well as prospective employees is one way you can build your brand.

Hiring on its own is challenging, and it could be even more challenging for a small business. Regardless of the competition that big brands pose to small businesses when it comes to hiring great talents, you can still hire top talents in your company if you have the right strategies.

Ogugua Belonwu, is the founder of MyJobMag, a recruitment startup company in Nigeria. You can follow him on LinkedIn for more HR insights and tips