Your company is so small, how can you persuade Daniel to join?

In the early days of starting a business, things may change quickly, so what you need is the first batch of employees with extensive skills and high flexibility, who can adjust their positions according to the needs of the company.

For most companies, it is a challenge for most start-ups to recruit new people almost every year in the early stage.

In order to help the founders solve the recruitment problem, today I share an article by Gleb Budman, co-founder and CEO of Backblaze, a cloud storage service provider.

This paper will explain how a startup company can recruit suitable employees in the early stage from four aspects: who to recruit, when to recruit, where to recruit and how to let employees join your company. Next, enjoy ~

1. What kind of first employees are recruited?

For companies in the late stage of entrepreneurship, the positions of employees are basically fixed, and everyone focuses on a specific business and will not change frequently. But in the early days of the company, employees' positions may not be very fixed, and sometimes they need to be adjusted quickly.

For example, when Backblaze was founded, Sean was one of our first employees. At first, he was a quality inspector. Later, 100% focused on data center infrastructure.

In the early days of starting a business, things may change quickly, so what you need is the first batch of employees with extensive skills and high flexibility, who can adjust their positions according to the needs of the company.

Maybe you will say that sometimes companies need an expert. In a previous company, we hired Jon, a doctor of Bayesian statistics, because at that time we needed algorithm analysis to stop spam.

However, even such experts are willing to work outside Bayesian statistics, such as mathematics and programming.

2. When to recruit

After defining the characteristics of suitable employees, the founder needs to arrange the recruitment time reasonably. Early recruitment may cause unnecessary capital costs, and late recruitment may miss the company's development opportunities.

Therefore, the founder should make clear the recruitment time according to the specific situation of the company at this stage.

If you have successfully raised funds and are willing to burn money for your mistakes, you can guess all the positions that the company may need and then start recruiting. No need to judge: if you have enough cash and limited time, this is also a reasonable strategy.

If you have limited funds, what you need to consider is how to reduce labor costs and free up more time for value-added things.

You can try to observe what you and your team are doing, and then recruit others to do the work. In this way, you will be liberated and concentrate on the work that others can't finish.

In Backblaze, I personally worked in marketing for several years before recruiting the vice president of marketing. When recruiting, my primary goal is to find someone who can let me go completely, so that I can concentrate on my job as CEO.

3. Where can I find the right person?

Finding excellent talents is not a simple matter, especially when the skills you need are widely needed in the market and have great returns. But don't forget, you have another important advantage: you only need five people, not 5000.

(1) Take the initiative to find someone else.

1, people you have worked with * * *

The best person to recruit is someone you have worked with. You know they do a good job. In Backblaze, many employees come from a startup, MailFrontier, where we worked before.

We know what they can do and whether it is in line with the company culture. At the same time, they also know us and can quickly integrate into the company culture. If you have no work experience, you can consider your classmates at school or people you have worked with before.

2. People you know

Recruiting friends, family or other acquaintances may be risky, but it is also an option. Sometimes, a friend has a good relationship with you, but he is not qualified for his post or can't integrate into the company. It may be a tricky thing to fire him.

This requires a dialogue in advance to explain this possibility. In Backblaze, we successfully recruited many friends.

3. Friends of acquaintances

In fact, your contacts may be wider than you think. Your employees, investors, consultants, spouses, friends or other acquaintances may know some people you need. Let them know which positions you are looking for and ask them if they have any references.

4. People you've heard of

Sometimes, the person you need may not know before. However, you may have read his articles, used his products or watched videos about him. If he is the person you need, you should take the initiative to contact him, maybe you will make a great recruitment.

5. Other ways to find talents.

There are many other ways to recruit suitable candidates, such as job websites, community groups, Facebook /Twitter and GitHub.

Hiring "people you know" may lead to "hiring people like you". You have the same work experience, culture, background and point of view. You are efficient but lack creativity.

In addition, "hiring people like you" usually leads to a lack of women and ethnic minorities in scientific and technological fields and leadership positions. Therefore, when looking for people you know, don't ignore people with different cultural backgrounds.

(2) Make it easy for others to find you

Reaching out to someone is the most direct way to find others, but at the same time, you should also let the potential target reach out to you. To do this, they need to: 1) get to know you; 2) Know that you are applying for a position that they are interested in; 3) They are willing to work in your company.

Therefore, it is particularly important to publish your contact information through multiple channels. You can use the following methods:

1, your blog

Before we released the product, I started to write a blog and tell some interesting things. By 20 17, more than10.5 million people had read these contents.

Many employees we recruit have read our blog. This is also a way for them to find us, or a reason why they are willing to work here.

2. Your email

In addition to blog subscribers, we regularly send emails to customers, partners or potential partners. The content of the email is what we think the other party may need or be interested in. Every few months, there will be some job information we need in the mail.

3. Your social footprint

Whether it's Twitter, Facebook, hacker news or Slashdot, your potential candidates may exist on various social platforms. Being active on social platforms can let them know about you.

4. Persuade others to join your company

Recruitment is a two-way selection process. Once you find the right person, or the other person contacts you actively, how can you convince them to join you? They may still be working or have other things to do.

At this time, you need to consider some issues. What are the unique advantages of your company to attract others to join? Does the post personnel provided by the company meet the requirements?

1. Why should I join you?

To get employees to join you, you need to provide some benefits that big companies can't provide, starting from the following aspects:

Role: aware of the power of the role. Employees will be more willing to join your company if you can provide wider responsibilities and higher promotion possibilities.

Salary: High salary is attractive to employees, but they may have more choices besides salary. For example, can you exchange your salary for other more requirements?

Benefits: Besides medical care, food and pension plan, do you have any other benefits in your company?

Location: Most people want to work in a company near their residence.

Environment: open office or cubicle, noisy or quiet office environment, 247 work or work-life balance? Different environments attract different people.

Team: Who will employees work with? Employees don't like to have an affair with annoying people. Even if a company has 654.38+10,000 people, there may be only 100 people they want to do. Working with team members who get along well with themselves can greatly improve work efficiency.

Market: Some people like games, some people like biotechnology, and some people like food. Different markets will excite different people.

Products: Are there any products that employees like? If there is, it must stand out. If you are lucky, your potential recruiters will come to you.

Mission: A sense of mission can spur employees to move forward, identify with the company's direction and implement it. The mission of our company is to make data storage easier and cheaper. If you care about data, information or knowledge, you may be interested in our sense of mission.

Culture: I put "culture" last because I think it is the most important. What is your corporate culture, and then it is very important to find out who wants to work in this corporate culture. If they like this culture, they will adapt and continue to work.

Step 2 write a job description

Most job descriptions focus on the conditions that candidates must meet, without thinking about why job seekers want this job. Job description should first "sell" the job so that employees want it, and then share your requirements for job seekers.

Remember: when people look at job descriptions, they look not only at what you said, but also at what you said. Many people say that the job description is one of the reasons why they decided to stay.

3. Arrange interviews and registration.

Every entrepreneur will interview employees in a different way. There are too many interviews and too many places to pay attention to. But I think the most important thing is that every interviewer should clearly know that his job is not only to evaluate job seekers, but also to give them a sense of culture and learn to actively promote his company.

Once you decide to hire a person, you should fire the candidate immediately. Completing a successful recruitment is not only to find and hire the right person, but also to make this person feel that work makes them happy and helps them succeed in their careers.

Finding the right employees is really important and difficult. Here, I hope this article can help start-ups recruit suitable candidates, and employees can also find enterprises that can meet their own needs.