Recruiting Before, During and After a Round of Funding

Hiring TipsDeveloper Recruiting

Guidelines to make every step more controllable and prosperous.

Startups can fail even when they are well-funded, as we have seen in recent years. A key element to success is anticipating how your business will grow with the funding, and this is where recruiters come in.

Hiring top candidates is necessary to grow the business and meet investor goals, so recruitment should be a top priority no matter where you are in the funding process.

This tech recruiter resource guide will demonstrate how to adjust your recruitment plans before, during and after a round of funding.

Recruiting Before a Round of Funding

The time spent before a round of funding is just as important as what you do during and after. Rely on the reasons you need the money and how you intend to spend it to influence this phase. You will need to hire employees to help your company meet its planned business objectives. It is your responsibility as the recruiter to prioritize which roles are most important. Estimate future growth and set goals before seeking funding.

Set and achieve company-wide hiring goals.

If you are looking to raise funds, your team is likely running low and being bombarded by requests to hire new employees throughout the company. It is essential that recruiters are involved in the process of identifying hiring priorities. Work with senior leadership and department heads to evaluate current needs and determine which hires can be delayed until after your funding round has closed.

There are a few things you should consider when prioritizing roles:

• Work with your finance department to understand how much money is available for current hiring needs, as well as how much will be allocated for growing teams post-funding.
• Understand the short-term and long-term business objectives established by the C-suite, board members, investors, and other stakeholders to prioritize roles based on these goals.
• By reviewing hiring requests from managers, you can better understand which teams are struggling to meet objectives or facing burnout, and who will be best able to help your company meet its goals.

These considerations will help you determine which roles you need to fill and build a roadmap for your hiring goals post-funding.

CREATE A PLAN

A roadmap for attracting and hiring candidates is essential to achieving your business objectives.

To begin, assess your current recruitment metrics to determine where your strategy is effective and where it can be improved. After that, look at your company to see which employees could be promoted from within, as well as where your company has skills gaps that need to be filled by external candidates.

For roles that can't be filled internally, have your employees reach out to potential candidates in their networks. Try establishing an employee referral program and offering higher incentives for employees to recommend qualified candidates for available roles.

INCREASE BRAND AWARENESS THROUGH RECRUITMENT MARKETING.

Even if you do not have any open positions at the moment, it is still important to work on your employer branding and recruitment marketing. By doing this, you can start to build your talent pipeline and get both passive and active candidates interested in your company as a potential employer.

Scheduling social media posts in advance for the upcoming months will assist with the increased demand for investor relations and business maintenance.

Create a recruitment video or company culture video by researching competitor content, determining who you will feature and getting estimates from videographers.

Please create a timeline of recruitment events that can be hosted after funding closes. This timeline can start up to a year before the event.

Make sure your careers page is up-to-date with information about your company culture, benefits, employee spotlights and anything else candidates want to learn about your company.

Recruiting During a Round of Funding

Funding places a lot of strain on everyone within a company. Teams are forced to work with fewer resources, employees are working longer hours, company culture and team building are placed on the back burner and leaders are less available as they are prepping to present to investors.

While all of this is happening, it is also important to recruit individuals for roles that cannot wait until funding closes.

START CONNECTING WITH POTENTIAL CANDIDATES

Depending on your hiring timeline, begin connecting with candidates who could fill your top priority roles after the funding. Connect with people in your talent community to learn about different roles. It is important to bring candidates into the early stages of the recruitment process, even though you don't have the money yet.

By connecting with candidates before having the money to hire them, you will be in a better position to fill positions and meet growth goals. If you start the process now, you will be in a better position to fill any hiring requests that come up after funding closes, rather than starting from scratch and setting your team back.

Additionally, connecting with candidates will not only not hurt your team, but may actually be beneficial to you in the future. If you already have several candidates in the pipeline, not only will you speed up the hiring process, but you will also improve cost-per-hire.

ALIGN HIRING NEEDS WITH INVESTOR EXPECTATIONS

Keep in mind that the goals established prior to funding are likely to shift based on which investors your team chooses to partner with and the conditions they request in order to invest in your company. It is important to have a preliminary plan to demonstrate your business acumen, however, be prepared for changes as they will happen.

Make sure to connect with leaders frequently during the round of funding to ensure that your hiring plan is on track. It is important that you quickly shift your hiring goals to align with changes in the investment plan, if needed. The initial work completed before the round of funding will help your team be more agile moving forward.

Recruiting After a Round of Funding

Your team's hard work has finally paid off! While you can all take a breath from the funding madness, there is still a lot of work to do. You now have to deliver on the promises made to investors by hiring the right people in due time and growing your business in a way that meets the goals you set long before the funding started.

In the past, you may have hired candidates on an as-needed basis. However, now you need to hire with the intention of rapidly growing your business. Many changes are coming your way, so we have compiled a few tips on how to achieve your goals in a strategic manner.

LEVERAGE PUBLICITY IN EVERYTHING YOU DO

Fortunately, you established a robust employer brand and recruitment marketing strategy before beginning the funding process, so job seekers who are engaged with your company will be pleased to learn of your latest funding. Use this news to push candidates in your pipeline across the finish line.

Furthermore, do not hesitate to share this information with potential candidates through your careers page, social media outlets, local news sources, job descriptions, and interviews. Ensure that job seekers are aware that they would be joining something significant from the start.

GROW YOUR CULTURE WITH YOUR TEAM

When hiring new employees, avoid compromising the company culture that your team has worked hard to build. Hire for culture add instead of culture fit so you can continue to foster your culture without creating a homogenous workforce. Additionally, do not forget about diversity and inclusion hiring efforts as you attempt to quickly fill roles. Diversity statistics have repeatedly shown that if you don't prioritize who you hire, your business and employees will suffer in the long run.

Try out some of these 42 company culture ideas to see what is most compatible with your organization's culture.

LOOK FOR CANDIDATES WITH A RESILIENT MINDSET

As your company rapidly approaches these new milestones, it is essential to bring on individuals that can handle the additional workload. One way to ensure you are making the best hiring decisions is by creating candidate personas for each position. This will help you not only sell candidates on the role, but also see if they would be a good fit for your company.

Define your roles and personas in order to better understand where to find resilient candidates and what qualities to look for in their profiles.

DON’T BE AFRAID TO SPEND MONEY

The leadership, investors and stakeholders of a company want it to hit its goals and they understand that to do so the company needs the right people. The way in which the company has been hiring up until now will no longer work.

To maintain your new hiring goals, invest in recruitment tools to automate tedious tasks, streamlined your process and simplify your application process. Investing in your recruitment strategy is essential in order to be successful in finding the right employees for your company.

A vacant position costs a company an average of EUR 500 every day it remains open. That is an expense that will quickly add up and reduce both your revenue and profit.

The process of securing funding can be daunting, but with careful planning each step can be more manageable and productive. If you're looking for more content similar to this, check out our tech recruiter resources page.