3 Signs It’s Time to Hire a Recruiter for Your Startup
There comes a point in the journey of every startup founder where simultaneously performing the roles of administrator, problem-solver, publicist, hiring manager, and strategist isn’t feasible. It starts to do more harm than good to you and your business.
According to a recent survey conducted by CBInsights, close to 14% of startups fail because the right team wasn’t right.
At that point, it’s time to delegate — and one of the first things you want to delegate is the act of hiring itself. The stakes are too high not to.
Is it time for your startup to hire a recruiter? Keep reading, and if you’re experiencing any of the following, the answer is yes.
1. You’re Spending Too Little or Too Much Time on Recruiting
How much time are you dedicating to the hiring process daily or weekly?
If you barely spend any time on recruiting at all, you should hire a recruiter. What counts as “barely spending any time at all”? That depends on your company’s specific situation, but here’s a good rule of thumb: If your company is experiencing growth and you can’t reliably set aside time every week to work on hiring, you’re probably spending too little time on recruiting.
Today’s job market is highly competitive. Job seekers have more job descriptions to apply to than ever to choose from, and if you aren’t active when you need talent, you’ll lose those valuable resources to your competitors.
For instance, if you speak to a suitable candidate one day but it takes you a week to follow up, the chances are that candidate will have accepted a new job in the interim. The best candidates are usuallyoff the market within ten days .
On the flip side, if you’re spending too much time on hiring, then you could also benefit from a recruiter or a staffing agency. What counts as too much time? That’s simple: If you routinely find yourself falling behind on your to-do list because of recruiting, you’re spending too much time on it.
As a company leader, your limited time is better spent elsewhere: planning your day to achieve maximum productivity, finding the right business opportunities, interacting with potential clients, assessing funding options, etc.
Every minute you spend looking for qualified candidates is one more minute you spend working in the business instead of working on the company.
2. You’re Hiring for Highly Specialized Positions
Next up, you definitely should hire a recruiter if you require highly skilled candidates for your startup.
Sure, you may be able to source suitable potential candidates for simple administrative or entry-level roles through generalized job boards and networking websites. However, specialized talent doesn’t usually job search at these places.
If you need a quality analyst or a web developer, hiring a recruiter would better serve you by tapping directly into networks of specialized talent. The problem is that you probably aren’t part of those networks — because you’re not in that field.
Recruiters and recruiting agencies often specialize in professional niches. They spend years cultivating deep networks of contacts, and they know what it takes to attract top talent to a specific job description.
Let expert corporate recruiters do it yourself rather than trying to do it yourself.
3. You’re Trying to Hire a Significant Number of People
If you’re planning on hiring only two to three people over the next six months, then you may be able to proceed with your search even without a recruiter — unless, of course, those are specialized roles.
On the other hand, if you’re looking to hire many employees in a relatively short period, you need a recruiter.
Recruiters should almost always do high-volume hiring because a lot of work goes into hiring that many people to fill open positions. It is essentially a full-time job of its own — and you already have a full-time job to worry about.
For example, let’s say you need to make 8-10 new hires in a month. The average corporate job listings receive 250 applications . Your startup might not receive that many, but even if you only get a third of the response, that’s 80 resumes per role — or 640-800 resumes total.
You’d have to screen all those resumes and make phone calls to every candidate who could be a fit. Let’s say that only 10% of those resumes are worth a call. That’s still 64-80 calls!
Then, you have to narrow it down for the second round of the interview process, and maybe even a third and a fourth-round, too. When it’s all said and done, hiring those eight to ten people is going to take up your entire month!
Hiring recruiters to handle the high-volume hiring for you will cost money, but it’ll pay off in terms of time saved. Plus, because recruiters can dedicate all their time to the hire, their final selections for the hiring company will be more thoroughly vetted and likely better matches for the role.
Hiring the right recruiter can also considerably help you mitigate or avoid the turnover cost of making the wrong hire.
Hire a Recruiter Today
Due to low unemployment rates in recent years, it has become increasingly difficult for organizations to hire and keep top talent from leaving. The national unemployment rate has remained low for the second year in a row. In 2021, it hovered to around 3.7%.
While this is excellent news for the working class, it’s not an ideal scenario for businesses looking to hire. There aren’t as many suitable candidates looking to fill those positions. This is especially true for companies with high turnover rates. It has become troublesome for them to close those gaps.
In such a scenario, hiring a recruiter can prove advantageous since they can significantly help lighten the load. An agency recruiter can network, sort through candidates, and successfully conduct the initial screening. In short, they do the grunt work so that the business doesn’t have to.
If you’re ready to hire recruiters for your growing startup, contact us today to learn about our on-demand recruiting and talent sourcing software.
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