How to Recruit Top Talent on a Small Budget [Interview]
Well, that’s where Jon Bischke steps in. As the CEO of Entelo, a recruiting software solutions provider, Bischke knows a thing or two about how SMBs can recruit top tech talent on a small budget. Read on to discover what he had to say about the best strategies companies can use for their tech talent attraction needs:
1. Why is it important for companies to use the right strategies when recruiting tech talent?
Tech is arguably the most competitive market to recruit for. The supply-demand imbalance is pretty great, especially around things like Ruby on Rails, iOS/Android and UI/UX. If you do everything right, you might be successful. However, if you show up with bad strategies it’s the equivalent of the Jr. Varsity taking on the Varsity and not having a very good game plan.
The good news for SMBs is that there is plenty of info out there on how to recruit effectively. Countless blogs and articles have been written on the topic (e.g., Entelo’s Recruiter Academy ). And as an SMB, you actually have some advantages in recruiting. I’ll get to those later.
2. What are some of the most common problems SMBs face when trying to secure today’s top tech talent?
They typically try to compete in areas where they aren’t competitive. SMBs typically can’t compete on cash compensation. You need to put out a reasonable offer but no need to try to match the offer that Google made. That’s a losing proposition.
Another issue is that they don’t fill the top of the funnel enough. People will drop out of the pipeline for all sorts of reasons. If you close 10 percent of the candidates in the top of your pipeline and you need to hire 20 people this year, you need 200 people at the top of your funnel. Sadly, many companies don’t understand what their close rates are and therefore they don’t do enough work at the top of the funnel to get them where they need to go. Usually quality is what takes a bad seat as people rush to meet hiring goals and that’s the surest way to tank your company.
3. How can SMBs recruit the same caliber of tech talent like Google and Facebook, but using limited resources?
Asymmetric warfare. You need to beat them in areas where they can’t compete. The biggest area where big tech companies can’t compete with startups in on impact and professional growth. In a startup, an engineer will have more impact. For people who want to have impact, this is a big deal. At a big company they are likely to be more of a niche player. For some folks, that’s fine. But for others, the ability to have major impact is one of the more attractive parts of joining a small company.
As for professional growth, in a startup you’re often drinking from the firehose and wearing several hats. While this is chaotic and frustrating to some it provides for incredible growth opportunities. 
4. How do Entelo’s products assist SMBs with recruiting top talent? Why should companies use them?
Part of Entelo’s aim is to level the playing field a bit. Entelo’s starting package is less than the cost of the fee you’d pay a third-party recruiter to make one hire for you. Yet with Entelo you can use the same platform that many of the largest tech companies use to make hires.
Entelo is also re-defining how recruiting is done by using predictive analytics to identify when talented people are coming to market. At the end of the day, a major competitive advantage that recruiters have is knowing when candidates are starting to look for new jobs. Entelo helps in a big way with that making recruiting efforts more productive, a necessity in smaller organizations.
5. Final thoughts?
Mostly just that it’s hard, but it is supposed to be. Once you get used to the fact that your first few years of running a startup will be brutal and that recruiting will be the most time-consuming and energy-consuming activity you’ll do, then you’ll be in great shape. Don’t fight that though. Thinking recruiting should be easy will result in your doing a crappy job of it and hiring “B” players.
Put on the uniform each day and go to battle each day for top talent in the same way that John Calipari, Rick Pitino or any college basketball coach does it. Make a game out of it and make it fun for everyone on your team!