Inspire People have been working with businesses in the tech for good industry for many years now, and have plenty of experience helping start-ups and scale-ups to grow their businesses and expand their teams. Our successful approach to recruitment, along with our advisory and project services, means that we work closely with our clients and get a real insight into the way that our work impacts and improves their growth.
In this time, we’ve learnt plenty of things about the best way to approach recruitment when you’re a tech for good scale-up. In this article, we’re going to share six of the key things that any similar company in the tech for good industry will benefit from knowing.
6 Key Recruitment Learnings from the Tech for Good Space
Client Value Alignment is Essential
Our mission at Inspire People is to help create a better society with the help of technology, which we do so by committing to working with other businesses that share our vision. One of the most important things that we’ve learned from this approach is that, if a client doesn’t have similar values to us, we’re going to find it very hard to work with them.
Working with clients that have a similar purpose isn’t just a benefit because it allows us to work towards our mission. It also makes the recruitment process much smoother and more successful, which benefits everyone involved.
We recruit within the tech for good space because we understand our clients, the candidates that apply for their roles and their motivations for applying. An increasing number of candidates on the job market are now prioritising cultural alignment over other benefits, and as a tech for good business ourselves, we’re ideally positioned to tap into what is going to make these applicants really want to work with our clients.
Our clients find that working with a recruitment partner who truly understands and aligns with tech for good values really does improve their ability to find the right candidates. We understand the kinds of candidates you’re looking for from the get-go and can develop recruitment strategies that ensure cultural alignment is a priority.
Scale-Up HR Teams Need Greater Support
Many scale-ups have relatively small HR teams, which often means that it is the sole responsibility of the hiring manager or CTO to interview job candidates. This can create a lot of work for only a small number of people, meaning that some recruitment processes may end up rushed or screening processes might not be as thorough.
We’ve learned that hiring managers often need more support with recruitment when they’re working for a scale-up that is rapidly growing, which is why our services can be so beneficial to businesses in the tech for good sector at this stage of growth. By working closely with HR staff, we help to produce job specs which screen candidates for culture fit as well as skills, and also develop and support interview procedures to ensure that the right candidates are hired.
As a scale-up, your company may not yet have the resources for a fully-fledged recruitment team. You shouldn’t let this impact the quality of your new hires, which is why working with a recruitment partner can be so beneficial.
Passive Candidates Require a Different Approach
Another of the useful things that we’ve learned from recruitment in tech for good is that passive candidates require a different approach from recruiters. When candidates have been headhunted instead of seeking out and applying for the role, the best thing you can do is develop an interview process that sells the business and the role right away.
Passive candidates are sometimes the most talented, which means you’ll need an incredibly compelling offer of employment to encourage them to engage in the interview process and potentially accept a job offer. If you’re winning a candidate over from working for a competitor, or simply a role that they enjoy, you need to lead with the benefits of your position and the reasons why your company would be a better fit.
Whilst a traditional recruitment process may focus more on the candidates trying to sell themselves to their interviewer, interviewing and engaging passive candidates requires the potential employer to be much more proactive. Focus on your employment value proposition, what unique opportunities your role offers, and the benefits of working for a tech for good organisation.
Interviews Should Be Value-Led
We’ve already talked about the benefits of working with clients that share our tech for good values, but this learning goes one step further. We’ve also found that our clients recruit more successfully when they focus on hiring candidates that share the same commitment to using technology for cultural and systematic improvement and innovation, both in the level of employee engagement and the length of time they stay in the job.
Identifying candidates with the same value-led goals involves interviewing them using value and belief-specific questions to ensure alignment with the company. We’ve helped many of our clients to develop interview processes and ideal candidate profiles that use a variety of questions and assessment criteria to analyse what makes an applicant tick and gauge their suitability for company culture.
Using value-led interview procedures sees retention improve massively, as employees feel strongly about the work that they’re doing and are much more engaged when working towards a cause that they personally support. This increases their enjoyment of work and their job satisfaction, making them less likely to leave a role after a short time.
Candidates Require Resilience
One of the most important things we’ve learned about recruitment from our work in tech for good is that candidates applying for scale-up jobs need to be resilient. Growth in these kinds of organisations happens incredibly fast, and there are often periods of chaos and higher stress levels whilst a scale-up team expands.
If a candidate isn’t ready to hit the ground running in a new role, or struggles with change and fast-paced environments, they invariably leave pretty quickly. This is frustrating for employers and can also further contribute to feelings of internal disorganisation, impacting productivity and efficiency.
We’ve learned that the best way to handle this is to test candidates against this type of behaviour during job interviews to ensure that they have the resilience to cope with this type of environment. This involves considering candidate experience as well as their personality and responses to questions about how they’d deal with hypothetical situations.
We also make sure that candidates are aware of the environment that they’ll be starting a job in, to avoid any misalignment with expectations.
Recruitment Doesn’t End With a Hire
Any successful recruiter knows that the recruitment process doesn’t end after a candidate has accepted a job offer. The final learning that we wanted to share was that it is very important to monitor your new hires in scale-ups, as things move so quickly with expanding teams and technology and new employees can quickly feel forgotten or out of their depth.
We speak to our candidates regularly during their probation period to help them to embed into the team, ensure they have the support and training they need in an ever-changing environment and support the tech team and the candidate all the way. The first few months are the most crucial for settling a candidate into a role and influencing how long they’re going to stay in it, and in a scale-up, you need to offer support so that onboarding goes as smoothly as possible.
This point also applies to our clients; we have also found it necessary to have weekly sessions with the hiring teams so we are always up to date on their current requirements. By making sure that we’re recruiting for roles and skills that they need right now, we ensure the success of our recruitment processes and keep our client relationships very positive.
Summary
Recruitment in the tech for good industry is different from others because of the focus on value alignment from purpose-driven organisations. But as today’s recruitment market changes and more candidates start to prioritise culture fit over other benefits, the advice and lessons we’ve shared in this article are likely to benefit and become applicable to a range of different businesses.
About Inspire People
We believe that technology has the power to change the world for the better and we love working with businesses whose technology or purpose has a positive impact. We help businesses that share our vision access the people, resources and strategic advice they need to achieve their digital transformation goals
Our service is designed to accelerate your digital growth. We created our offer in response to emerging challenges in an uncertain business landscape: a blend of Advisory, Talent and Project led services that will help you achieve your strategic aims and deliver more for your employees and customers. We’ll connect you to rare specialist talent, experts and insight to help you navigate your biggest challenges and remain competitive in a changed world.
Get in touch today to discover how working with us could help you innovate and grow.
Speak to our expert team on +44(0)20 7871 8550 or email hello@inspirepeople.net
