The shift from reactive to proactive hiring might just save your startup
200%+ increase in job postings and 48 year low of candidates actually looking for a role. That’s across all sectors, now capture the statistic in the niche sectors where talent is already scarce… to be precise 30 jobs are open for each software developer out there.
How to grow in this environment? Can talent pipelining be the winning solution for attracting A-players to your team?
Talent Pipelining predicates itself on building long term relationships with well suited candidates for your organization over a long period of time. Your mindset here is switching from recruiting to fill an open position to thinking about who your company will want and should hire in the future.
Talent pipelining isn’t a short term strategy and takes time to develop and nurture, but in the long term the benefits are worth the investment. Considering the increase in job postings and top talent being incentivised as much as possible to stay in their current organisations, my vote would be cast to start on the strategy sooner than later.
This shift from reactive recruiting to proactive one, has several benefits for the wellbeing of your team and your success overall:
Your image: consistently reaching out and talking to professionals in the field spreads the word about your organization. Even if you are not recruiting yet or considering to recruit in the future for a specific team, placing your self in front of the right people and making a positive first interaction can increase the referrals and interest in your company overall.
Candidate focus: you have a liberty of time to listen to what the candidate actually aspires to, so rather than pushing on position being filled here and now, you take a consultative approach. This also allows you to measure the culture fit long before the candidate interviews. Having a trusted recruiter relationships gives the individual a career advisor, and ensures there is someone keeping them in mind when it’s time for the next career move.
Your estimates are better: by staying in touch with the talent you learn the expectations on salary and benefits package.
You keep the pulse on what your competition is doing, gaining a valuable insight.
Your time to fill improves: alright, we got to the stats now - talent pipelining allows you to be two steps ahead in the hiring process and saves time in actively sourcing and narrowing down the ideal candidate profile.
At YZ we favour Talent Pipelining strategy, it allows us to focus on long term work and engagement, and I must admit, relationship driven recruitment is the most rewarding experience for all the ends in the prism - the candidate, the organisation, and the talent acquisition partner.
How this relates to the startups?
Are you making your first hires and are just about to raise pre-seed/seed financing? You might think you’ll have time for strategy later…Sorry to break this to you but this is where you are not quite right. Sharing the collective insight from ground stage players like Founder’s Institute - building your approach to hiring is a core to raising your organisation, and is essential in your first steps.
In the competitive market you’ll need all the support you can get to establish your brand image, differentiate yourself in front of the candidate and develop the long term relationship with your prospects.
Why should VCs care?
Gone are the days when VCs can differentiate on the existence of the capital at hand. To improve the value they offer to their LPs, VCs need to maximise the benefits they bring to the ventures they invest in. Startups, in fact, do their DD on investors too and chose based not only on the deal amount but on the added value, expert network and insights they bring along with the financing. Talent Acquisition is amongst those value added services and acts as a differentiator for early stage focused funds and deep tech investments. Funds like Audacious, Granite, Polymath, Modrona, Sapphire, Albion, EQT and many other investors had already realised the importance of offering the helpful arm and connections to their portfolio ventures where talent caliber is a critical component to success and attracting it is a matter of survival of your investment.
There is no better time to start than now.
