As the nearly famous Edgar Lee Phillips once remarked, you can go anywhere you want if you?re lost. Which is fine when it comes to directions but another thing entirely when it comes to recruiting for an Internet start-up. You simply can?t hire well if you don?t know what you?re looking for. This held true in the past days of classified ads, and it?s doubly true in today?s world of Internet-based recruiting. And determining what you?re looking for serves as only one piece of the puzzle, because you must also determine the ? brace yourself for a hundred dollar phrase ? organizational maturity of your company. ?Organizational maturity? is a mouthful, to be sure, but even if job seekers don?t use those exact words, the best candidates in today?s tight market consider it their right to know where your company is today, and will be tomorrow, in pursuit of its goals. Regardless of the exact words, one thing to count on is the inevitable question, where are you? That?s because today?s valuable job seekers use the Internet as one powerhouse of a tool, and as result they don?t just have availability to more information, they expect it. This means they?ll take advantage of a slew of online resources to find out as much as they can about your company ? from compensation to current openings to culture. You name it, they?ll expect to know the answer. Weird as it may sound, they?ll expect more concrete information on these issues from a start-up than they would from most any other prospective employer. Given that so much information is available online, you better be ready for a quick but sound answer on where your company is. In fact, you?ve got a vested interest in answering this question well. A different stage of organizational maturity means a different approach to the missions of finding and keeping a strong team, and keeping that team happy. No easy task. With this in mind, consider that there are 3 basic types of Internet start-ups:
If using the above examples on growth phases help to answer this nagging ?where are you?? question, then knowing what to do with this information helps those lost souls like Edgar Lee Phillips find their way home. Start-ups must use the same care and strategy in attracting, retaining, and motivating employees that they invested on their business plans. This means spending equal time and energies on this trifecta, as if these were ingredients in a recipe. Case in point: these companies must have a plan of action for recruiting, retaining, and motivating their employees, and developing this plan means having answers to some of the questions that appear on the short list below:
In the end, recruiting for an Internet start-up may bear many similarities to recruiting elsewhere. However, life with a start-up is a highly condensed one, where the company?s evolution occurs so rapidly that continual planning becomes an absolute necessity. Having ready answers to where you are and what you need are essential if you plan to thrive in the fast lane of Internet start-ups.