Originally posted on the SoftLayer Blog on March 20. 2015.
In late 2014, I was at a Denver job fair promoting an event I was organizing, NewCo Boulder. All the usual suspects of the Colorado tech community were there; companies ranging in size from 50 to 500 employees. It’s a challenge to stand out from the crowd when vying for the best talent in this competitive job market, so the companies had pop-up banners, posters, swag of every kind on the table, and swarms of teams clad in company t-shirts to talk to everyone who walked by.
Nestled amid the dizzying display of logos was MediaNest, a three-person, pre-funding startup in the Catalyst program, at the time they were in the Boomtown Boulder fall 2014 cohort. What the heck was a scrappy startup doing among the top Colorado tech companies? In a word: hiring.
MediaNest was there to hire for three roles: front end developer, back end developer, and sales representative. They were there to double the size of their team … when they had the money. In the war for talent, they started early and were doing it right.
I’ve often heard VCs (venture capitalists) and highly successful startup CEOs say the primary roles for a startup CEO are to always keep money in the bank and butts in seats. Both take tremendous time and energy, and they go hand-in-hand. It takes months to close a funding round, and similarly, it takes months to fill roles with the right people. If you’re just getting started with hiring once that money is in the bank, you’re starting from a deficit, burning capital, and straining resources while you get the recruiting gears going.
The number one resource for startup hiring is personal networks. Start with your friends and acquaintances and let everyone know you’re looking to fill specific roles, even as you’re out raising the capital to pay them. As the round gets closer to closing, intensify your efforts and expand your reach.
But what happens if you find someone perfect before you’re ready to hire them? Julien Khaleghy, CEO of MediaNest, says, “It’s a tricky question. We will tend to be generous on the equity portion and conservative on the salary portion. If a comfortable salary is a requirement for the person, we will lock them for our next round of funding.”
MediaNest wasn’t funded when I saw them in Denver, and they weren’t ready to make offers, so why attend a job fair? Khaleghy adds, based on his experience as CEO, “It’s actually a good thing to show a letter of intent to hire someone when you are raising money.”
At that job fair in Denver, MediaNest, with its simple table and two of the co-founders present, was just as busy that day as the companies with a full complement of staff giving away every piece of imaginable swag. I recommend following their example and getting ahead of the hiring game.
As long as you’re successful, you’ll never stop hiring. So start today.