Insider guide to successful start-up hiring with Darren Ledger, Head of Recruitment Innovation at iGaming Elite and Nicholls Moisa.

We get it, most of us have been there through the hard work, the late nights pouring over cashflow projections and sharpening that business plan. The angst of identifying potential investors, securing the finance and actually getting the business on its feet. You’ve got a great idea, identified a niche in the market or are just going to replicate an existing business model but do it better – Sir Richard Branson’s favourite approach.

Then you need the team, a great team, not just any old team. Where do you begin? You could hire some of your friends or family, but is that really the recipe for success? You could just go out and do the hiring yourself of course, and if you are a professional recruiter, why not?

Well, the first reason not to do the hiring yourself is that the investors have probably bought into your real talents.

Whether you’re a product innovator, a genuinely experienced entrepreneur or someone with exceptional brand marketing experience, that’s where the investors expect your focus to be – not spending hours writing job descriptions, developing an employer brand, crafting job adverts and searching for an audience… before even getting around to interviewing loads of candidates. Candidates who you know, immediately upon meeting them, aren’t the right fit.

After all, how do you even know what the ‘right fit’ looks like?

There are no shortcuts to hiring the right people, the first time, every time. When you are rolling out a new start-up it’s critical to hire professionally and accurately. The implications of not doing so can be the difference between success and failure.

Why it’s critical to secure the very best recruiter for your start-up hiring:

There are few things in recruitment as exciting, rewarding and challenging as recruiting for a fast growth start-up entering a new market. But be cautious when selecting the recruiter, you are going to work with. The last thing you need is an order-taker. Don’t be fooled by a bubbly personality, that large corporate cheese eating persona and loads of industry terminology.

Test and assess that you’re getting the real deal. This is my interpretation on the kind of recruiter you need. Below is a description of how the ideal recruiter should approach your project, the perspective they need to have, and the skills and expertise they should be able to demonstrate.

A Start-up recruiter should look something like this:

The whole project and delivery excite them more than the financial remuneration.

It’s exciting because there is no pre-defined culture or template of what this organisation will look like, how it feels, communicates and functions. To use the phrase made popular by eminent philosopher, John Locke, what we have to work with is ‘tabula rasa’- essentially a blank slate.

As the recruiter you get to play an intrinsic part in defining what that culture will be, to work with your client to develop a coherent, tangible employer and employee brand that is relevant and attractive to the target audience. Having that kind of input, identifying and creating those elements combined with the opportunity of looking back 1 year, 2 years and 5 years later, and hopefully seeing a thriving, successful environment and organisation, is extremely rewarding.

It isn’t for weak recruiters

Hiring for start-ups is not for the faint of heart, and it certainly isn’t for anyone other than a recruiter with a full-compliment of sharply honed skillsets including acute consultancy skills, a high level of tenacity and commitment to hard timescales.

Not only are you defining what the organisation structure will look like, you are also working with your client to define role specifications, the right kind of experience and personality traits. That’s why it’s challenging. Every aspect from positioning the employer brand, the benefits and salary structure all the way through to candidate assessment and selection and on-boarding is critical. One false step and suddenly momentum is lost, and often opportunity and money are lost with it.

Your chosen recruiter needs to have a consummate understanding of how to identify where your target audience is, how to reach them through the most appropriate channels, where to invest accordingly across social media and professional forums, and generally how to spread the good word. Time is of the essence so they should be adept at setting and delivering to hard and fast schedules and getting all the wheels in motion.

They need to be able to assess and select candidates

You’re laughing, I can hear you. Of course, recruiters know how to assess and select candidates, it’s their job right?

Wrong.

The vast majority of recruiters have a very limited skill-set. They know very well how to qualify a candidate such as testing job location, availability and remuneration expectations. But, very few really know how to interview in depth; how to test experience and acquire evidence of this using competency-based interviewing techniques.

Even fewer understand how to evaluate personality traits and behavioural attributes. Usually this is because recruiters are working against the clock to just get a candidate’s CV forward and they are reluctant, even afraid to ask the hard questions.

Getting a candidate face-on and digging deep as to why their average tenure is less than 2 years isn’t easy. It takes skill and tact to get them honest. For a start-up you need tenacious, agile, resilient and willing employees and assessing those things requires excellent communication skills and emotional intelligence.

They need to be accountable for the long-term outcome

Let’s be honest, all the research shows that the 3rd highest reason start-ups fail is hiring the wrong people. Making the wrong hire in any organisation can be hugely costly, but bad hiring decisions can be catastrophic for start-ups.

They can derail an entire growth strategy, leave investors frustrated and even questioning their decision to back a project in the first place. Estimates vary wildly depending on the source, but based on 20+ years experience in Talent Acquisition, I have no doubt that a wrong hire costs at least twice the candidate’s salary in lost productivity, cost of hire, workflow and team cohesion, among many other negative effects.

Find a recruiter who is willing to put their money where their mouth is. How do you do that, I hear you ask? Identify a recruiter who will provide extensive long term guarantees of up to 1 year from the point of hire. Add retention bonuses into the reward structure for the recruiter – I came across a recruiter recently who works with a company who pay him a % bonus in cryptocurrency when a new hire passes the 6 month point, and then pays another % at the 12-month point.

Pay them up front

Yep, I saved the worst until last.

Forget about the contingency pay on success format. Recruiters, just like you, have mouths to feed and incur costs. Pay them a retainer but set conditions fixed around mutually agreed timescales, transparency and delivery.

On this basis, a good recruiter will disclose to you how much their social media marketing for your project is costing, they’ll invest in professional copy and content writers and source additional expertise where necessary. But they won’t fund all these vital ingredients indefinitely out of their own pocket. If, as is often the case with start-ups, timelines shift once the wolf is at the door, that’s when shortcuts start to be taken, and there are no shortcuts to great hiring strategies.

When I work on a new start-up, I am transparent about pretty much every cost I incur. If I’m using a design agency to create briefing documents, advertising content and PPC through social media channels, I explain precisely how much it is costing and where your investment is going.

Let’s be honest, no self-respecting decent recruiter is in it for the up-front fee. The gravy comes at the end and the real meat comes with the repeat business and a relationship that flourishes over a years. If you’re hesitant about putting some skin in the game, you’re talking to the wrong recruiter.

The author, Darren Ledger, is Head of Recruitment Innovation at both Nicholls Moisa and iGaming Elite.

Interested in iGaming and blockchain recruitment? Make sure you also read our exclusive interview with Fran Moisa, Managing Director at Nicholls Moisa & iGaming Elite.