It’s not about fundraising. It’s not about selling or closing deals. It’s not even about who will be the MD and who will be the president. It’s always about finding the perfect team.
According CB Insights Research, the inability to assemble the right team is one of the main reasons startups fail. A startup cannot operate with mid-performing employees or structured roles. A team on deck will always deliver peak performance. Therefore, having the perfect team is essential for any startup.
Most of the top talents in Bangladesh share a vision of joining big multinationals and building their careers on big brands. Young talents lack the basic knowledge of startup culture and the pros and cons of employment in startups. With this awareness gap among prospectus applicants, it becomes difficult for startups to cut through the big corporate noise in this war for talent. Thus arises the need for recruitment marketing.
Here are some recruitment marketing strategies a budding startup can consider to build the perfect team for any occasion.
Learning opportunities
The job description is one of the most direct points of contact where the organization can encourage potential candidates to apply. You may not be able to offer them big checks, but you can offer them knowledge and an environment to grow.
When we started with Savoir Bangladesh, we struggled a lot to hire the right person. During one of our “Take-5” sessions (where we take a tea or coffee break together in the afternoon), I was chatting with one of the employees. She had just finished her studies and had been with us for about 4 months. I asked her why she chose a low-wage startup over a big corporation. She replied, quite obviously, that she could not have learned as much as she did here if she had chosen a larger, essentially more sustainable organization.
To my knowledge, this can be discussed in more detail; the obstacles we face every day within a startup are considerably more real and are frequently encountered without a safety net. Therefore, finding resolutions is much more exciting and exciting. It’s no longer a case study you learn from – it’s an experience, your experience.
“My friends are always chasing multinationals and big bodies and they get frustrated if they don’t make it. I just urge them to take it easy, join a potential startup where they can learn,” the young employee said. . It made me realize that my target audience has a part that just wants to learn, basically the brightest. So I introduced a new section in the job description called: “Why choose us? One by one, I started to market the value propositions, starting with the learning outcomes.
Founder’s Story
Tell your audience who you are, how your journey has been, what motivates you, and why they should follow your lead. Much of the previous point, i.e. learning outcomes, usually includes learning directly from founders. This is where you tell them why they should be interested in learning from you.
To let them be part of the organization you created, tell them why they should be part of your legacy. This is where you breathe inspiration. Design a separate campaign to portray yourself as the founder, a leader and a true inspiration. Then, use your personal brand value to attract potential candidates to your organization.
A lot of skepticism was thrown our way in our early recruiting days. It’s a common trend among applicants – to apply blind. When we called them, we heard hesitations and questions such as who we are, what we do and what their future is with us. Candidates who didn’t bother to ask also didn’t bother to show up for interviews. Within days, as part of a branding campaign, our journey with Savoir Bangladesh was featured in the country’s largest English daily.
“Furniture Your Dreams” was shared on Savoir’s LinkedIn page and brought us a large group of enthusiastic and potential candidates, who during interviews expressed their enthusiasm and desire to work with us. So, we shortened the introductory article and placed it under the “About Us” heading in the JDs.
Objective
Many young people today want to be motivated by a purpose that adds value to their work. Savoir’s goal is to make the furniture industry more economically, environmentally and technologically sustainable.
Economically sustainable projects include the outsourcing of production to SMEs and MSMEs. Environmentally friendly projects include responsible sourcing, refurbishment and reducing the carbon footprint on the manufacturing side. Technology projects include offering a digital platform with multiple features that help reduce time and energy consuming actions and environmentally friendly machinery to reduce production time.
Break down your organization’s missions or the problems it solves as well as the impact it has on others. Sell the purpose of its existence to attract potential candidates who wish to be part of a better society, community or world towards which your organization is striving. Explain to them how you are different from others in your field. Make your projects interesting and your tasks fun. Use innovative terms and create meaningful tasks so that even the lowest ranked employee contributes to a larger goal.
84% of job seekers prefer to apply to companies with a positive and growing reputation as an employer. Thus, 9 out of 10 applicants apply for a job from an actively nurtured brand.
The ideal recruitment marketing strategy is an effective partnership between HR and the branding team, and therefore leveraging the correlation between branding and recruitment – with which the aforementioned strategies are the perfect combination.
