1. When was your business founded?

Four businesses were established around 10 years ago and another 3 were founded around 3 years ago.

2. How many employees does your business have?

The number of employees of the businesses were ranged from 3 to 25.

3. Does your business have a mission statement?

Most of the companies had mission statement, when the companies with a brief idea were included. Mission statements state the purpose of the business, policies and standards of behaviour and its values and culture. Therefore, the mission statements guide which people can fit into the start-ups and influence in recruitment processes. This suggests that the start-ups without a mission statement would struggle with what their culture is and can recruiting person who may not fit into the start-ups. As result, the start-ups may cost their time and effort without any profit, since the person who cannot fit into the organisation tends to be less efficient than when the person perfectly fits the environment.

4. Does your business have an organisational chart?

Organisational charts were not common among the start-ups. The organisational charts refer to a diagram that shows the structure of an organisation and the relationships and relative ranks of its parts and positions/jobs. When the business has this organisational chart, they can identify what part and a rank of the job is required for the business. This will allow the business to get a right method and right recruitment pool, when they plan to recruit people for the business. Furthermore, they can decide how much to offer, on average, according to the rank in the organisational chart. This will be more fair and able to retain the staff with right amount of offer as well.

5. Does your business have any on the job training?

There were no specific job trainings for many of the start-ups Job training costs both financially and time for the start-ups to afford. However job training greatly increases the productivity of the employees, especially for the new employees in the company. This can provide opportunity for the new employees to adapt to the business and become familiar with the how the work goes on the business.

6. Does your business have job descriptions for all positions / for when you hire new employees?

Importance of Job descriptions

Positives

• Help management improve the organisation
• Show employees where they fit in
• Provide clear expectations
• Help cover legal bases
• Tell candidate what the organisation is looking for
• Help for goal setting and reviews (once hired)

Negatives

• Easily out dated
• Encourage ‘that’s not my job’ thinking
• If poorly written may be used as evidence against the organisation.

Dos and don’ts about writing job descriptions

Do

• Give specifics
• Use accurate adjectives
• Focus the job description on the job not the incumbent
• Allow for flexibility
• Keep descriptions current

Don’t

• Use subjective terms, opinions or recommendations
• Use words that raise a question of discrimination
• Use vague, general working or jargon or technical terms
• Include anything derogatory
• Glass over essential vs non-essential functions
• Describe duties to be performed in the future

Most of the start-ups had job descriptions for all positions. Job description is a list that a person might use for general tasks, or functions, and responsibilities of a position. This can assist the business to recruit the person best fit to the position. This includes considering skills required for performing tasks, personality which can maintain the jobs and responsible person for the job.

7. Do employees work from home or from an office?

The decision of whether or not employees, employers and staff work from an office, their home or a combination of both office and home can influence many aspects of recruitment and retention. Predominantly, this issue of working from either an office or home provides potential both positive and negative consequences in the area of business culture; as was said by one of our respondents – ‘culture is more important than salary’.

The place of work and the impacts that it can have on culture include:

• Effects upon personal work satisfaction
• Teamwork capabilities of the business
• Camaraderie of the business
• Team development

Furthermore, the decision to either work from an office or from home can determine:

• Abilities to perform required tasks
• Efficacy of work
• Efficiency of work
• Stability or deterioration of job roles and positions

8. How does your business advertise for employees?

The majority of advertising for tech start-ups was done online – this was using recruitment sites such as CareerOne and Seek; and also through professional networks such as LinkedIn. Utilising the internet for tech start-up recruitment makes sense for a number of reasons:

• Those seeking employment in tech start-up businesses should possess a firm understanding of the internet and its opportunities for job markets
• Web based recruitment strategies can be cost effective
• Web based recruitment strategies can be time effective
• More chance of success because the Ad is there 24/7 unlike a paper Ad which relies on the person turning to the correct page and then finding the Ad amongst all the others. Online Ads have an increased chance of being seen.

However, there are also disadvantages of online recruitment such as:

• There are often too many candidates which is time consuming to sort through
• Doesn’t always work, particularly when it is a ‘difficult-to-fill’ job but these are more rare now days.

By diversifying their recruitment strategies to other pools of recruitment these tech start-ups can increase the likelihood of finding suitable candidates for employment. Strategies other than the internet that were used by tech start-ups that we surveyed included word of mouth and using recruitment agencies.

Overall, the strategies used by the tech start-ups we surveyed yielded a sufficient number of applicants for them to fit an individual who they believed would fit their business and the available position.

9. What are the biggest problems your business faces when recruiting?

There are numerous problems tech start-ups face when recruiting and selecting for their business. A number of these problems can be considered universal recruitment and selection problems across all industry and business types. However, a number of these problems are unique to start-ups.

Universal recruitment and selection problems are generally issues of fit. These include:

• Employer – employee fit
• Cultural fit between the business and the employee
• Knowledge fit between what the business requires and what the employee knows
• Goal fit between the goals of the business and the goals of the employee
• Value fit between the values of the business and the values of the employee

Employees may or may not fit into a company for numerous reasons:

• People are attracted to different jobs as a function of their own interests and personality
• Organisations select people who they think are most compatible for the job and the organisational culture.
• When people do not fit the environment they leave.

Unique problems of recruitment and selection for start-ups are generally associated with types of uncertainty – both on behalf of the business and potential employees. The nature of start-ups mean that generally there is substantial uncertainty of the business’ growth – this is especially true in the fast paced and ever changing world of technology. From the business’ point of view they are cautious to hire new individuals due to uncertainty that they will be able to consistently support them or provide consistent work. From a potential employees point of view it is a risk to work for a start-up because there is not much security within start-ups.

Furthermore, because most start-ups are small there is limited, and potentially not any, opportunity to climb a career or corporate ladder. Many potential employees are turned off the idea of joining a start-up due to the risks involved.

Potential employees are often turned off joining start-ups due to the uncertainty of income. Many start-ups cannot supply a consistent supply of income. To counter this problem start-ups often will give out equity shares in the business – but again unless they are willing to take risks this may not be enticing.

Other problems tech start-ups face when recruiting include:

• Lack of time
• Lack of resources
• Location of businesses
• Remuneration

10. Does your business have structures / strategies in place to grow your business through your employees?

Our investigation of tech start-ups found that the majority of businesses we surveyed did not have any structures or strategies in place to grow their business through their employees. Numerous businesses stated that as start-ups that they were waiting for their business to grow first and then they would seek to utilise employees to grow the business.

11. How do you believe culture influences recruitment, performance and retention?

The consensus of the effects of culture on issues of recruitment, performance and retention was that it plays an essential role in a business’ life. Insightful comments made by some respondents stated that the culture of a business is of utmost importance to a start-up due to potential issues of limitations in pay and benefits. It was stated that for a start-up to be successful the culture of the organisation must be highly credible and that it is essential to have a cultural fit between old and new employees. Another respondent stated that having an environment that encourages high performance is beneficial to both the employees and the business. It was also stated that culture is the most important thing in a business – that it is more important than salary.

Summary:

• Start-ups without a mission statement would struggle with what their culture is and may recruit people who may not fit into the start-ups. As a result, the start-ups may cost their time and effort without any profit, since the person who cannot fit into the organisation tends to be less efficient than when the person perfectly fits the environment.
• Without a suitable organisational chart, companies might be unable to recognise what job they need to recruit for and therefore, further problems may arise when deciding the appropriate recruitment pool. Again, hiring the wrong person will be costly to the organisation.
• Appropriate advertising is important when looking to target a specific demographic to recruit from.
• Job descriptions and training are both important to ensure that employees have a clear outline of what their job entails and should be updated regularly. Without this training the employee may become stressed and overwhelmed by their role, creating an unenjoyable work environment.
• Common problems start-ups face when recruiting include
  • Organisation and knowledge fit
  • Employee uncertainty of pay and growth
  • Lack of time and resources

This research has been prepared by Macquarie University students in collaboration with TechnoMatch Recruitment as part of the PACE (Participation & Community Engagement) Program. 

From left to right:

Claire Jones | Phsychology student | Macquarie University

William Jang | Phsychology student | Macquarie University

Angus Duffin | Phsychology student | Macquarie University

Stephanie Guiho | IT Recruitment Consultant | TechnoMatch

From left to right:

Claire Jones | Phsychology student | Macquarie University

William Jang | Phsychology student | Macquarie University

Angus Duffin | Phsychology student | Macquarie University

Miqdad Hassan | Director | TechnoMatch

The Students have demonstrated commitment, focus and perseverance in researching  ”Recruitment Trends for Technology Startups”.  The students went the extra mile and met with Startup founders, conducted interviews, statistics and analysis… GREAT WORK!

Today the presentation was impressive big thanks to:

• Eugene Jiang
• Caroline Hopley
• Sarah King
• Sarah Barraquio
• Jason Fowler
• 

1. Budget: When the owner does not have a defined budget for the new employee’s salary it makes it hard to choose who would be the suitable candidate. One way of defining a budget for the employee is to implement a strategy on how the new employee will influence the business and forecasting the revenue based on having the new employee and based on the rise in the forecasted revenue influenced by the new employee’s productivity then you can set a budget related to that number.
2. Job Descripton: Many business owners leave it too late before they hire a new employee. Then they get very busy and it gets hard to manage their workload and at that stage they start looking for a new employee which they end up with an Assistant without defined tasks and the result could affect their relationship with their clients. For example if the new employee doesn’t know who is responsible for following up with a certain call whether it’s the new employee or the business owner then the follow-up might end up postponed. It is recommended that the business owner sits down and write a Job Description defining the tasks that do not have time to do or are not good at and find an employee that will do them.
3. Interview structure: Many business owners do not prepare a list of specific questions to ask the interviewee. If the candidate did not focus on answering questions that are directly related to the tasks allocated to them at the job; there is a big possibility that the candidate will not perform as expected by the business owner. It is recommended that the business owner creates a list of qualities that they are looking for in the candidate and create their questions in a way that the answer explores the quality; for example if you are looking for a self motivated employee then a question could be tell me about a time where you had to accomplish a difficult on your own and what was the result.
4. Where to place the job ad: Some business owners place an Ad on the first website that comes up to their mind or the most popular website. But reality is that most popular website may not give you the results you are looking for because the job seekers that visit it have different set of skills or maybe more experienced that what you are looking for. The best way to do this is to analyze the job description and place an ad where you believe will have the most exposure to candidates that meet your criteria for example if you are looking for someone local; then placing an ad in the local paper or if you are looking for a fresh graduate then placing an ad on the University Job board.
5. Sharing the vision: if the business owner does not explain the vision of the company then the candidate may be just interested in the extra cash they will get from the job and that’s ok too but it’s much more powerful  the business owner explains the purpose of the company to the candidate and evaluate if it aligns with their future perspectives. When you are running a small business there must be a purpose to keep it going and grow it.
6. Reference Checks: Many small business owners feel happy about a candidate because they did well in the interview and they seemed motivated but can do the job? We still don’t know. A good way of checking this is by doing reference checks; calling their previous employers or colleagues and asking them questions about the candidate similar to those asked to the candidate and comparing both answers to see the computability.
7. Organisational Chart: As mentioned before many business owner hire their first employee because they are busy and need an extra hand quickly and many business owners don’t have an organizational chart of how their company would look like in the future. If you don’t have a an organizational chart it will be hard to write a Job description; a defined set of tasks and evaluate if the vision of the employee aligns with the company’s future objectives. An Organisational chart is a vital tool is evaluate a candidates’ fit into the company.

Miqdad Hassan: TechnoMatch IT Recruitment Director