Guest Speaker: Mikael Jurke. Recruitment consultant & Partner – Headlight International AB

Recruitment of Human Capital to a Small Business Start Up

Intro: Headlight International, founded in the year 2000, is an executive search firm with offices in Stockholm and Paris. They assist companies of all sizes and in all industry sectors recruiting executives. Due to their network of Venture Capital clients they have had the opportunity to assist a number of smaller companies and start-up’s recruiting key members to their management team. Mikael Jurke has a background within the Swedish financial services industry before starting working with executive search in 1998. He spent six years at Ray & Berndtson, Stockholm before joining Headlight International in 2004.

We need to recruit! - “The war for talent” is on and for a small start-up it is often hard to compete against bigger companies who can offer high salaries and bonuses. Instead, the challenge is to find the right people and get them to share the vision of the company. The offer is often an invitation to a, hopefully, interesting, exciting and lucrative journey.

• What do we really need? When writing an ideal candidate profile it is easy to get a bit carried away. It is often better to focus on the task at hand and try to find a candidate who could develop into an excellent professional in that role. This will also help to keep that person, in whom you will invest time, money and knowledge.

In good times top candidates often have many propositions. To get them onboard, one has to be able to move quickly once you have found your candidate. Have questions regarding shares or options and contract all ready sorted out, this increases your chances to success once you have found your candidate.

When building a team it is obvious that you need different kinds of competence and personalities in order to get the best line-up. Every recruitment is unique and it would be hazardous to try to map a profile that always works. Our experience, however, tell us that there are some characteristics that often prove to be especially valuable in a start-up company:

1. OPERATIVE - In a smaller business you are, to a larger extent, expected to do the work yourself. There is rarely a staff of support people there to help you out. In a small company a Financial Manager, for example, will have to do the accounting, the tax reports and the financial analysis him/herself. The Manager will not be this operative forever, but at least until the company has grown into a size where a larger department is appropriate.
2. FLEXIBLE - A new environment combined with the fact that a start-up not yet has reached critical mass often calls for flexibility from the people working there. Your job can radically change overnight or the company’s strategy might also take on a somewhat new path due to a new possibility. In order to cope with this, start-up companies will need more flexible managers who can focus on the target even though some parameters changes.
3. OWN DRIVE - In a smaller company it is sometimes hard to find time to coach, motivate and inform employees on a regular basis. This calls for employees who can generate this by themselves. It is important that people are proactive and seek up information on their own, rather than sitting by their desk waiting for it. Even though it should be easier for a small group of people to share information, young companies often lack the routines, the processes and the time to do just that.
4. SHARED VALUES - To some extent a start-up is like a family. Each person is a large part of the company’s heart and soul. This makes it even more important to recruit people who have a set of values that are coherent with the rest of the company’s. This is obviously very hard to test before hiring someone, but one should really give this some serious thoughts before signing someone.

Many people within the executive search industry talk about cultural fit, the fit between a company’s corporate culture and the values and personality of an individual. Corporate culture is, however very hard to determine. People who describe their corporate culture tend to talk more about how they would want it to be, rather then how it really is. It is therefore often easier to focus on how things are being done within the company in order to grasp a company’s current culture; for example “Do people within our company say what they think and do the others listen?” How do we make decisions (consensus after discussions or someone just decides). Questions like these will help you to get a better picture of who you, as a company, are and if the candidate sitting on the opposite side of the table would fit in, or even help develop your company’s culture further.

Be Thorough - To improve the odds when recruiting we often advise our clients to meet with the candidate several times. Having an informal dinner before signing could give the employer good input about the candidate that otherwise might not have surfaced. A thorough reference-check is obviously also important, but the answer to the question if she/he might fit into a start-up environment is often difficult for a reference person to answer. This is, nevertheless, an excellent opportunity to learn more about the candidate and one should not be afraid of asking the questions you really like answered. Just remember, sometimes it is not what is said that is of importance, it is how it is said….... What can we offer? In some start-ups the entrepreneurs are so absorbed with their vision and their own love to the company that they sometimes seem to think that just being a part of it should almost be enough for any candidate. This is unfortunately often not the case. If you are looking to hire a person with a certain experience and knowledge, drive, ambition and who will help develop and grow your company, you will probably need to give that top candidate more than just a fair salary. An entrepreneurial mind-set or being an “intrapreneur” often also means that the candidate, in the future, will want to share the values that he/she has helped develop.