5 reasons why Talent Acquisition is important for Startups
Every start-up knows how important terms such as skills and flexibility are. In fact, starting a new activity or a new form of business means having and developing transversal and diversified skills that can respond to all forms of internal needs (present and future). In this sense, surrounding oneself with good people and qualified resources to form one’s own team, by launching a Talent Acquisition campaign, is a first strategic step to take in order to foster the growth of one’s own company.
In this article, we suggest some reasons why Talent Acquisition, as a process of acquiring talent, is important for start-ups as well as for established companies.
Organising Human Resource Management in a Startup
We all agree that people make the company! From this understanding comes the commitment of companies to human resources management. Many have specific departments that deal with personnel recruitment and selection, while others outsource recruitment activities to third parties. What about start-ups?
By definition, Start-ups are at the beginning of their activity, so they have a limited budget and few resources. Especially in the initial launch phase, a startup needs to establish itself on the labour market: this requires the continuous effort of the people involved, but also external economic support to give stability to the product or service developed by the new company.
According to the Hi-Tech Startup Observatory, promoted by the School of Management of the Politecnico di Milano in collaboration with Italia Startup (association of the Italian Startup ecosystem), the largest investments would come from informal players (36% of available capital), followed by international investors (33%) and formal players (31%).
In 2019, Italian hi-tech startups raised €694 million more than in 2017, around €100 million more than in 2018.
Talent selection for start-ups: “selecting the recruiter”
Before choosing a strategy to expand the team, it is important to decide who will be in charge of the search and selection process.
As the right person may only temporarily be HR, it is important to be able to modulate the search and selection process according to internal needs. It is not enough to find the right people for a specific moment in the growth of the start-up or to update and enhance the recruitment campaign on the basis of new and growing needs of the company. It is important to be able to direct recruitment activities towards resources that, in addition to participating in the growth of the start-up, can also contribute to stimulating it.
Talent Acquisition is a proactive process that involves everyone. Founders, managers and employees must have a clear vision of the start-up and/or company, know its strengths and weaknesses and be transparent about its values. In a more or less direct way, everyone can contribute to the recruitment process by becoming a brand ambassador and communicating the Employee Value Proposition (EVP).
Why focus on Talent Acquisition? 5 tips for startups
1. Improve Employer Branding
As already mentioned, in order to gain a foothold in a specific market, it is essential for startups to build a strong brand by communicating their values and mission clearly and transparently from the outset. This is a determining factor in the selection process. On the one hand, the company chooses the profile of a candidate who meets the requirements of the job advertisement; on the other hand, the candidate chooses not only to accept a job that meets his or her professional ambitions, but also to share the message that the company stands for and the values it represents.
A good reason to cultivate the creation and communication of one’s own brand comes, therefore, from the close link between the latter and Talent Acquisition: having a strong brand and communicating it in a positive way attracts talented candidates who, at the same time, strengthen and improve Employer Branding.
In this way, it is important to take care of the company’s online presence, website and social pages and to encourage interaction and contact with candidates who, once hired, will add value to the company.
2. Makes you competitive with other companies
The Talent Acquisition process creates a competitive advantage over other companies in the same sector and helps to publicise the start-up by making its brand known. Let’s not forget, after all, that recruiting and marketing are joint activities in many ways!
Deciding to launch a Talent Acquisition campaign means embarking on a precise path of growth for the company aimed at developing talent. Competition is played out on the degree of attention paid to the selection process and its target audience: recruiting activities designed with the sole aim of filling a vacancy in the shortest possible time, without focusing on the skills and peculiarities of the profiles, lead to quick but unreasoned choices, with negative effects on candidates and the companies themselves.
3. Affects Candidate Attraction
In order to be truly competitive, start-ups must also be perceived as such by job seekers. An innovative search and selection process is crucial to attracting qualified resources, but also to retaining them in the company. In the case of a startup that is launching the recruitment process for the first time, it is essential to engage candidates who are experiencing the selection process because, as they do not have any further information and assurances other than those provided by the company, they will be more critical and detached. It is therefore necessary to involve the talent, interact with them and establish a relationship that is functional for both.
4. Target the best candidate
Especially at the beginning, startups have limited resources (both in terms of staff and budget). Investing in a Talent Acquisition campaign means engaging in the selection of the right resources that, for a startup, are not necessarily those that fully meet the requirements of an ad. The recruiter must be far-sighted, able to identify the skills that will be useful in the future and hire a resource that will practice them or develop them over time. In this sense, the recruiter’s attention may fall on other factors: problem solving, familiarity and practice in the use of social networks and innovative tools close to the new generations, or multitasking.
5. Facilitates the creation of a talented team
In startups, it is often the case that tasks are carried out by everyone and divided according to availability rather than the specific skills, abilities and aptitudes of each person (including founders). In order to start building their team, therefore, launching a Talent Acquisition campaign could be a strategic choice for startups. Unlike simple recruiting that aims at filling a vacant position in a short time, talent acquisition is oriented towards the selection of qualified people with skills that could be very useful in the long run. This means, for start-ups as well as for companies, that there does not necessarily have to be a vacancy in order to hire a resource: the specific skills of the person hired may prove essential for the performance of tasks and roles that may arise in the future.
Benefits of an ATS for Startups
In order to manage a search process aimed at selecting the best talent, start-ups may find it useful to use tools such as the Applicant Tracking System (ATS) In-recruiting to manage the entire search and selection process in a centralised manner.
Among its many functionalities, the recruiting software supports the recruiter in all the phases of the recruiting process: creation of the job advertisement, sharing in multiposting and on the main social networks, customisable registration forms and unique database for CV management, scheduling of interviews, questionnaires, and many other solutions that allow to organise activities in a simple, flexible and customised way. In this sense, the software adapts to everyone’s needs and facilitates research with a view to talent acquisition, while also easily integrating with Inda, the artificial intelligence technology developed to support HR and optimise the selection of the best talent.
Digital Marketing presso Inrecruiting