Recruitment tips for Start-up HR professionals

(Part I)

If you have been recently hired as the HR director or lead recruiter for a start-up company, you will find this article very helpful.

Start-up companies face significantly different recruiting challenges than their more established, financially secure competitors. In a start-up situation, timing and efficiency are critical keys to your success. First, build your recruiting time line and staffing plan. Be sure to separate key profiles that you will be hiring on an ongoing basis over the long term from those key management positions that need to be filled at specific times during various growth stages.

Once your staffing plan has been developed, you need to develop core job descriptions complete with proposed reporting structures and key responsibilities. Next, identify your sourcing and recruiting options and budgets thoroughly. Lay out a strategic recruiting plan that keeps internal recruiting resources focused on managing the candidate selection and interview process -- and away from the time-consuming sourcing process.

Search firms and outsourced recruiting consultants can provide valuable assistance in finding and pre-qualifying the best people for you and your staff to interview and hire. And of course, the Internet should be the cornerstone of your recruiting strategy, as it continues to be one of the most cost-effective recruiting resources available.

When building your staffing plan, start by spending some time with each hiring manager and/or key executive in your company to be sure you understand their individual goals as they relate to the corporate goals. Focus on each manager's vision of his or her department when it is fully staffed as well as his or her expectations of your role in helping achieve that vision.

Discuss the manager's commitment to the hiring process and candidate selection feedback. Request a 24-hour response to any resume submitted for consideration with written or verbal feedback, including the reason why the candidate will not be given further consideration. Impress upon the manager that, like his or her job, it's critical that ongoing and timely communication exists so that you can remain motivated to work on his or her open positions.

Without their active participation and feedback, you will make assumptions that will only waste their time in the long run. Once your staffing plan has been completed, ask the managers to sign off on it to secure their support.

Adapted from "Recruitment tips for Dotcom and start-up HR professionals, Part 1;" courtesy of http://hr.monster.com.hk