Hiring method that works

I recently learnt of a hiring technique that is working very well for one of The Morpheus’ portfolio company (and while interviewing for them I wrote the previous article). They have been able to build a very impressive pipeline of potential candidates for various roles and all this without paying expensive fees to consultants.
 

Preparation

  • Create a hiring team that would exclusively focus on hiring & do nothing else for minimum 1 month 
    • Have an HR person who would undertake search / make the initial contacts / handle scheduling & other logistics 
    • Have founders dedicate their time to share the company’s vision & check the skills of candidates 
    • Have domain experts to check for required skills 
    • Have some experienced advisers / entrepreneurs / investors / mentors to check if the guy would fit in a startup (people who understand culture of ur startup) 
  • Be prepared to put dedicated / high quality / honest effort 
  • Ensure the pre-sales material is in place : 
    • Impressive corporate website
    • Well written job profiles
    • Well thought of pitches to get candidates interested
    • Crisp powerpoints abt the company 
  • Understand that the best talent is most likely not looking for new positions & hence ur initial pitch / pre-sales needs to be really good 

Execution

  • Buy a limited time access to naukari.com database 
  • Buy premium LinkedIn package for your HR person 
  • Make a list of companies / places you would like to hire from 
  • Find relavent people in those companies via linkedin & other sources 
  • Research them online / on social media 
  • Connect with them on social networks or use naukari.com database to find a old / new copy of resume of this guy 
  • Basically get hold of their cell number / personal email 
  • Have a person with good people skills (preferabally a girl) cold call this person 
  • This first contact should only focus on few things
    • We are a exciting company
    • We have hand picked ur profile from 100s of profiles
    • Our founder would like to meet you for coffee 
  • Line up lots of focused interviews 
  • Ensure a high quality interview process that would look impressive to potential candidates 
  • Take real good care of candidates during the interview process
    • meet them on agreed time
    • keep them informed
    • keep ur promises
    • [Important] do get back to people who are rejected & inform them accordingly 
  • For candidates who look good, line up the followup interviews fast & complete the whole process swiftly 

Hope fully this would allow you to build a good hiring pipeline & close some positions. Do share ur experiences & tips in comments.

 

Note: Thanks to Ankita & Annkur for sparking the idea for the post.