Finding People to Staff Your Startup
Posted on June 20, 2008
Filed Under Finding Professionals, Uncategorized |
Are you the proud owner of a brand new startup company? Congratulations! You’re on the road to a long and successful career in the field of your choice. No more pointless scrambling up the corporate ladder for you! Soon, you’ll be setting your own hours and bossing around your minions like a pro. But first, you’ll need to find some underlings.
As you probably already know, finding a few good workers to support your company when you’re essentially penniless is nigh impossible. It might as well be chiseled in stone that people (especially the kind of people you want working for you) won’t work for nothing. However, unless you’re independently wealthy and can finance an entire payroll yourself, hiring employees will be a death sentence for your nascent company.
What a lot of startup owners don’t understand is that their business, especially in its infancy, shouldn’t necessarily follow the business plans used by more established companies. This doesn’t mean you should just hire any old dude or dudette off the street who’ll work for peanuts - that would certainly be a recipe for disaster. No, instead of focusing on what you don’t have, you need to find a different way of attracting quality workers to your company and highlight your strengths.
The surest way to get your company on track is to invite a friend or partner to become co-founder with the intention of expanding the company, while you work on the bits and bobs that really interest you. Fill the most important positions first. If you’re a tech company that means engineers. One or two amazing employees will be worth more than a bloated payroll full of deadbeats. Invite employees to invest in the company and give them bigger job titles than their salaries might demonstrate. Most workers will be much more apt to put in more time for less money if they feel greater returns will be theirs a few years down the line.
Once you’ve got a group of excellent candidates just hopping for the chance to come work for you, you might think all you have left to do is to pick out your favorites and install them in the office. You could do just that - if you’re dumb. But if you really and truly value the integrity and reputation of your startup, one of the best things you can do for your business is run a Background Check on all potential employees. It may seem like a harsh thing to do, but in reality, a background check is one of the most useful tools a business owner has at their disposal. It can make the difference between hiring a stellar employee who helps bring your company to the next level, or hiring a lazy troublemaker. A quick and easy online background check can save you tons of valuable time and money - the two most important resources for any startup. Good luck!
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Take it from someone who has been there, they aren’t kidding when they say you should background check all your employees - whether you’re new or old. I had $16,500 stolen from my company from someone with a past… that I just didn’t know about. I’ll never hire anyone, not even a freakin mail room boy without doing a background AND drug check again.