On May, 3rd, the Partech Shaker invited Jérémy Clédat of "Welcome to the Jungle" for a Mind Shaking Lunch dedicated to the recruitment of the best talents.
Startups often have difficulties recruiting the best candidates. They usually do not have access to the right platforms to communicate. On LinkedIn or Viadeo, they are overlooked among the large number of job offers and therefore do not have much visibility. Ad spaces are bought by the big companies that have enough funds. However, even in the rough employment market context, start-ups can stand out. Their main strength recruitment strategy is to concentrate on sharing their culture and values, and make people want to join the team.
Jérémy Clédat, who founded Welcome to the Jungle, decided to talk about this burning topic during the presentation by focusing on communication, recruitment process and integration. For him, job-seekers are less familiar with start-ups than one would expect. According to a report where 1500 candidates were asked to talk about what they know about start-ups, the majority of them are not familiar with this ecosystem and only know Blablacar and Criteo at best. We should not overestimate the attraction of start-ups. The popular belief that a “start-up is cool because we work on floor cushions and talk via Slack” is not efficient anymore in bringing ideal candidates. Team and environment are the n°1 criteria for a start-up to succeed.
Communication
Before recruiting, it is crucial to set up a clear communication strategy on very operational aspects such as the kind of work environment (co-working? full-time? part-time?) or the kind of organization (strict hierarchy? work close to directors?) the company evolves in.
If you wish to hire developers for instance, you should determine a specific message. For developers who are used to a particular technology, the company needs to communicate specifically on the kind of technology used (PHP, Ruby?). As a result of the lack of developers on the market, they tend to be very demanding when looking for a job. Hence, the challenge for the company is to orient its strategy communication towards technology.
If you wish to recruit candidates for a B2C business, communication should be focused on the brand. Fans of the brand tend to make better employees because they would be ready to invest time and interest in a product in which they believe. Besides, the best brands like Uber recruit via the mobile app to benefit the community.
If your company is a B2B business, then you should focus on your expertise and communicate on the firm and its collaborators. The best way to do that is to create a brand platform and native contents. The collaborators should be the ambassadors of the brand. For example, blog posts are usually inexpensive and work quite well.
The recruitment process
A company should make the effort to answer all of the applications it receives even if the interview did not go well, as it is an ideal image-builder for a company that wishes to development its employment brand. About 65% of the companies on the platform Welcome to the Jungle do not reply to candidates’ applications, and the evaluative comments beneath the brands show that candidates do not retain a good impression on them.
When a candidate is invited to an interview, it should be a genuine organized path to attract him. As an example, for interviews at AirBnb in San Francisco, there are personalized big screens for each candidate. And it should not be underestimated: 60% of candidates who had a good recruitment experience share good comments about the brand with family and friends.
Last but not least, the recruitment process should be shared. Stripe, for example, asks the candidates who were not retained to advise the company on which profiles would suit the job perfectly among their network.
Integration
When an agreement has been reached between the company and the candidate, it is crucial to create a genuine integration experience to give him all the means at his disposal to work well. This process involves for instance highlighting the different positions within the company and organizing meetings so that experts convene to talk about a specific technology.
Accor for example built its new strategy around a semblance of a start-up state of mind and digital innovations to appeal to employees. Each floor has its own Football table. However, even though the company communicates actively on this subject, candidates and collaborators do not seem to be interested. They are actually more interested in Accor’s executive committee, reputation, prestige, international scope and perspectives of evolution.
In a start-up, the added value for the candidate is not the salary; which represents a 40% difference between start-ups and large groups. What really stands out is the environment you managed to create. Employment brand should not be a concern for big companies only! On the contrary, it has to be a major concern for start-ups that wish to attract the best candidate, the one who suits the position better. Even though attractive salaries and mobility capacity are important, what really matters now is the project and the quality of the mission assigned to the candidates.
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