Building a cross-functional team
When you’re a small business it can be challenging to work out how best to grow your team. What we’ve learned from our years working in start-ups and scale-ups is that people make a huge difference to your success. It’s vital you think carefully not only about the skills you need, but also about the attitudes and values of those you hire. Timing is also critical and you need to make sure you invest in growth at the optimum time and think carefully about outsourcing versus a permanent hire. With time and cash likely constraints, you should also consider the best way to find and attract talented people. So many things to think about! See some of our tips below.
Think about attitude and values
There’s one thing finding someone with the specific skills and experience you need when filling a role, but it also makes real sense to hire someone with the right values and attitude for your business. For example, if you have very rigid and structured processes you might want to look for someone who loves stability and is happy to follow the guide rails. If you work in a start-up or small business where there is constant change and people need to switch context or move quickly from task you task, you might want to look for someone with more generalist skills who can cope with constant change. It’s worth really thinking about how your business operates and the sort of person you need at the time to thrive in the current environment of your organisation. This is likely to change as your business matures so keep on re-evaluating!
It’s also worth some self-reflection as a business owner - think about what’s important to you and who you would work best with. That doesn’t mean your team have to be carbon copies of you - in some cases you might prefer someone with a different view point to balance out some weaknesses you know you have.
Hire complementary people
When you’re a small business you often don’t have the luxury of recruiting for every single role you need. Of course there are ways of prioritising but you can also think about how you hire complementary skill sets to fill those gaps. For example does your marketing director also have a knack for internal comms and HR or can your finance lead take on some operational tasks? In addition to covering different specialist skills you might also want to look for people from diverse backgrounds with a range of experience who may have faced some of the challenges of your organisation before. This can often help plug some gaps in your business, you just need to be mindful of how structures might evolve as you grow and what this means for these members of the team and their development.
Use data to drive hiring decisions
It’s very easy to be responsive to immediate pressures when making decisions - perhaps you’ve recently had a project that required a lot of certain types of work to be done or you’ve got a manual process that seems to be sucking up time. This may impact your ability to make logic decisions and hire on impulse. Make sure you’re having a look at the data you have to hand - how often do you need certain work to be done over different periods? Do tasks come in peaks and troughs across time? Can you find alternative solutions like automating processes? This will help you get a picture of the real needs and can help you work out whether it makes sense to hire full time or get in temporary support during busy periods. Associating cost or value to tasks can also provide insight into what you can afford so you don’t get carried away. We’re not saying numbers are everything but by breaking things down into logical pieces you often get a more rational idea of what’s needed to help support decision making.
Respond quickly if things don’t work out
Unfortunately we’ve been there - someone who seemed perfect at the interview starts work and things just don’t seem to click. This might be because they don’t quite have the skills you’d thought, need more training and support that you just can’t offer or perhaps the role isn’t right for the way they like to work and their needs. The most important thing to do here is have honest and open conversations with your team. Make sure you set expectations from the start, regularly review progress and understand how they feel in their role. It isn’t about ruling with an iron rod or being a demanding employer but you should be clear in establishing the relationship in terms of what you need as an organisation and in turn what you can offer your team and how you want to support them. You also don’t need to implement loads of formal processes but it’s a good idea to keep regular check points and note clearly and openly where there are concerns. The worst thing is to let situations linger over time so even though it might feel uncomfortable act fairly but quickly - the longer you wait the longer it will impact the success of your business.
Choose recruitment channels wisely
We have some great contacts in recruitment agencies and we know how effective a good consultant can be in finding the right candidates quickly. However with fees ranging anywhere from 15-25% of salary it can be a very expensive way of hiring particularly if you have several roles. If this is out of reach or perhaps this doesn’t make sense for your business you can use various different channels. For a targeted approach you can reach out via all your social media, post in meet-up groups and share with industry contacts - a recommendation is always useful! There are other job posting sites which can bring in lots of applicants but in our experience they can end up time consuming as you potentially have to sift through a lot of applications - many of which may not even be relevant! Make sure your job ad is clear and concise - it’s got to have the right balance between setting expectations but not being so specific you put people off. If you have any hard criteria it’s also worth screening that as part of the application process - although we’d recommend making it as straightforward as possible.
We’ve been there and done a lot of hiring and there’s plenty more to say from application screening to interviewing and creating a great culture, so if you feel you need some advice please do get in touch. We can help with growth planning, candidate profiles, recruitment and hiring and provide suggestions for on-boarding, training and development.
