3 Drawbacks When Using Referrals For Your Startup And 3 Recruitment Solutions.

Written By Alex Reynolds

Sometimes relying only on referrals when hiring nuanced or technical talent for your startup can inadvertently create hiring bottlenecks.

Here are 3 potential drawbacks and 3 suggestions to help your startup be successful.

  1. Limited Talent Pool: Your referrals may be limited to your existing employees/founders and their networks. Which can lead to a lack of diversity and a volume of candidates.

  2. Skills Gap: Sometimes referrals do not necessarily align with the requirements for the role. Candidates can be a good fit culturally within your startup, but they might not be the best fit in regards to technical ability or leadership. This can include technical skills like machine learning, specific programming languages, an understanding of algorithms, or a subject matter expert within a certain field.

  3. Bottlenecks and Delays in Deadlines: When the dependency for talent is strictly limited to referrals this leaves startups subject to having timelines impacted in regards to product development. Hiring bottlenecks can affect the ability to secure rounds of funding and also impact delivering a minimum viable product.

  1. Understand what your ideal candidate profile looks like. What are the essential technical requirements this candidate needs to have? What are the soft skills, and leadership capabilities? What are your negotiables and non-negotiables when it comes to the candidate?

  2. Utilize LinkedIn, LinkedIn Recruiter, or Sales Navigator to identify and reach talent. LinkedIn has powerful search tools to identify talent. Use simple or complex boolean searches and filters to identify candidates to reach out to. Depending on the volume of candidates there are ways to source for candidates that are completely free to various LinkedIn payment plans.

  3. Create Job Boards and Advertise: Job boards can allow you to create paid campaigns in order for you to create awareness around your job board. They can range from platforms like LinkedIn, Monster, Indeed, Dice, or ZipRecruiter. Job board platforms all have various payment plans and price models. Usually, job boards work on a pay-per-click model. Certain job boards like Dice cater to technical talent.

Alex Reynolds

I'm a talent acquisition partner with over 9 years of combined experience in talent acquisition, digital marketing, and design.

I specialize in helping startups, remove bottlenecks in recruitment when they are building their teams. Whether you are a company looking to make your first strategic hire, or this isn't your first time at the recruitment rodeo, I can help provide quality candidates that align with your requirements, mission, and vision.

My experience has allowed me to work in e-commerce, government contracting, agency-side recruitment, in-house recruitment for a global digital marketing agency, to partnerships in the startup ecosystem.

I'm passionate about connecting people and helping find strategic recruitment solutions to position companies in a better place than they were before. I've successfully recruited across a variety of industries and skill sets, but my favorite ecosystem to recruit in is anything that involves the intersections of technology, creativity, and design.

If you are interested in connecting feel free to reach out, I'm always down for a friendly chat.

If you would like to work together, I'm incredibly passionate about creating a positive interview experience for you and your company. Utilizing recruitment strategies to effectively source candidates while providing detailed feedback. I pride myself on quality over quantity. Delivering only the best candidates that align with your company's needs while also being your biggest advocate, rooting for you along the way.

Book a free discovery call with me here -> BOOK A CALL <-

https://www.hippogriff.info
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