As startups grow and dedicated managers, human resources and talent acquisition professionals take hiring decisions off founders’ plates, building an effective talent pipeline becomes a key factor in success. So when it comes to actually hiring people, there are few more discerning candidates than hiring managers and people leaders themselves.
Despite a broader economic slowdown, many New York City startups are still hiring — especially in the e-commerce and healthtech fields, among others — and people leaders, talent acquisition professionals and recruiters remain busy.
To learn what separates a good talent acquisition and onboarding process from a great one, we asked five people leaders who recently started new jobs. Here, we’ve highlighted their biggest insights into what stood out during their recruitment.
As a talent acquisition professional, you’ve probably seen every move in the book. What part of your company’s interviewing and hiring processes stood out to you?
“For a company that's growing as fast as Medly — we doubled in size last year — I was so impressed by how thoughtful and genuine my conversations were at each step of the process. The company and opportunity were the right match, but ultimately my deciding factor was the feeling that I wanted to work with the people I was meeting.”
“One thing that really stood out to me was the speed of the hiring process — despite not having anyone in a dedicated TA seat, the team at Gooten was able to get me through the entire process in less than a month. I also had the opportunity to interview with Brian Rainey, the CEO, and it was extremely impactful to be able to hear firsthand about the company’s growth, goals and where I fit into the mix — straight from senior leadership.”
What are your team’s goals for the rest of 2020?
“We’ve been fortunate enough to experience two (and hopefully soon three) of the best quarters of business growth that Chainalysis has ever seen. Top that with the fact that we also got a funding extension in the midst of a pandemic, and it’s definitely been an Everest-like achievement for us. So we’re taking that momentum and focusing on growing the team internationally across every vertical. I’m growing our engineering teams in NYC, London, Copenhagen and Aarhus and I know our public sector team is seeing a massive rise as well. All great things on the horizon — which is something I didn’t think I’d be saying four months ago when I lost my job.”
“As a team of one, my goal at Flex is to hire at least one in-house recruiter in the next couple of months to help us achieve some steep hiring goals in the upcoming year. I’m also working to expand our already inclusive culture by developing more robust benefits offerings, developing a clear and consistent compensation plan to prevent pay gaps from creeping up and partnering with organizations that promote the advancement of people from underrepresented communities.”
“We have a lot on our plate for the rest of 2020. Our goals center around four themes: Attract the best talent, build an equitable and inclusive culture, create transparency around pathways for growth and streamline systems and technology to enable scalability. We’re refining our recruiting and hiring process to deliver the best candidate experience, developing career frameworks, building out a more robust performance management process and expanding our diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. This growth phase is a very exciting time for RapidSOS, and we want to make sure we have robust systems in place to support the people who are going to make it all happen.”
