In the last 12 months however, we’ve hired over 45 people and retained 100% of our top employees across all levels. We managed this through a few key changes to our hiring process that kept costs low, while still being fast and efficient!
If you want your startup to be successful, you need to be able to hire (and retain) people smarter than you”. We’ve all heard this, right? After all, in any startup the IP is almost entirely tied up with its team, especially in the initial years. So if you get this right, you have struck gold! The trouble is, hiring can often be rushed and desperate – a reaction to a change in circumstances, a shift in strategy or even a sudden pivot.
Hiring is also an area where most of us make our first mistakes. This was certainly true for POPxo. It took us 15 whole months to get to our first 10 employees with a lot of mis-steps along the way.
In the last 12 months however, we’ve hired over 45 people and retained 100% of our top employees across all levels. We managed this through a few key changes to our hiring process that kept costs low, while still being fast and efficient!
Make it harder, not easier, to apply We completely ignore generic cover emails and lazy CV uploads. Our hiring portal (we use breezy.hr), has two questions that every single candidate needs to answer in order to apply. The first is why they want to work at POPxo. The second, is why they think they’d be a good fit for the role. Just these two simple questions have proved very helpful for weeding out the ‘copy, paste’ candidates or those who were clearly not suited for the role they were applying for. We weren’t looking for how articulate they were, only how specific they were about wanting to work with POPxo!
We also ask every candidate to complete a skills based test. E.g. for a social media role, we asked candidates to create 3 social media posts in the POPxo’s voice and style. For a sales role, we asked candidates to prepare a sales pitch for POPxo, and actually pitch it to us!
Screen for motivation and the ability to learn fast (don’t over-value experience) We’ve found (for a lot of junior roles in particular) that even when people have done similar sounding roles elsewhere, they have to un-learn a lot of what they had been taught and re-train with us. So, in our interviews we give extra attention to how motivated they are and how likely they will be to learn our processes and embody our values.
Have no fewer than three people interview every candidate Avoid the temptation of making offers after only one person (excluding HR) has interviewed the candidate. We always have at least 2 rounds, and ask a minimum of 3 people to interview each candidate. We also ask 2 people to interview together, so more people in the organisation get trained in our interviewing style. We make offers only when all three people say “yes”.
Actively look for candidates with a point of view, even if they differ from your own We want to make sure everyone at POPxo is able and empowered to make decisions when called upon. But if a candidate displays no original thinking or cannot provide a well-reasoned response at the interview stage, we rarely hire them.
Offer attractive incentives for employees to refer people from their networks We know our current employees have large circles of friends and acquaintances and we want to make sure they publicise roles we have open via Linkedin and Facebook. So we instituted a flat 5k referral bonus to any employee who refers someone who we end up hiring. For roles we are struggling to find candidates for, we have a super bonus of 10k. The bonus is not just a financial incentive (though of course it’s that too) but it also re-enforces to everyone at POPxo how important hiring is.
Set expectations early Finally, we make sure we have a frank and open discussion about the work culture and norms in the final interview. We try not to sugar coat as it’s better new joiners come in with the right expectations – and are not shocked to find out that, for example, we’ll be giving them weekly performance targets!