Starting a new business brings different challenges for entrepreneurs. To grow your new business, you need a strong team, and if it is a tech-focused business, you will need to attract and find the best developers.
But hiring good candidates isn’t easy. To make the most of your hiring strategy, you will need to attract candidates successfully and manage the evaluation process.
It’s vital to look for hiring solutions that help you maximize your time and resources while finding suitable employees.
What to do? An applicant tracking system (ATS) can help you with this.
According to research conducted by Jobscan, 98% of Fortune 500 companies use applicant tracking systems, while Kelly’s OCG survey estimated 66% of large companies and 35% of small companies also rely on ATS software.
With an ATS, you can screen faster, engage with your candidates, and hire better.
Collaborating over hiring decisions becomes more effective and easy. No matter the type of your startup business, an ATS can benefit you effectively.
So, if you have a startup company and are wondering how to hire developers, you can choose an ATS.
But before that, let’s discuss the hiring challenges faced by startup companies and how ATSs can help them hire developers –
Hiring Challenges Faced by Startups
Fierce competition with other companies
There is no doubt that each company wants to hire the best developer to build a strong team. But as great talents are hard to come by, it results in intense competition between companies. Both B2B and B2C companies feel the heat of the fierce competition. And to survive in this competitive business environment, startups need to find their strengths and work wisely.
Unreliable candidates
Candidates’ unloyal behavior makes hiring more difficult for startup companies. Most candidates attempt multiple offers and keep recruiters waiting. And it is something that you can’t prevent. It makes it difficult for startups to continually drain their resources and relentlessly pursue various leads for a single tech position.
Possessing skills to evaluate
Lack of tech expertise in the existing team members is an obstacle to highlight! In-depth tech knowledge is a must when evaluating developers; without this, recruiters might end up hiring inefficient developers. And you know well that poor hire further leads to lost opportunity costs.
High salaries
When it comes to joining a new company, especially startups, candidates ask for a lofty increment in compensation. Many startups find it difficult to meet the needs of the candidates. On the flip, the already established brands grab talents quickly by offering lucrative salaries. Some startups might offer generous employee stock ownership plans to combat this, but it does not work in every circumstance.
Brand image
‘Brand image’ is another hiring challenge faced by many startups. At the beginning of their journeys, most companies understandably lack the necessary PR and recognisability. If candidates don’t have a fair view about who you are and what your company is all about, they are more likely to choose tech giants over you, even when you offer better terms and exciting work opportunities.
How to Overcome the Hiring Challenges?
Improve tech expertise
Whether you belong to the technical field or not, you should work on your technical skills. Improve your tech expertise and keep yourself updated with the latest technology trends. It will lower your dependency on others during tech hiring and help you evaluate candidates.
Focus on micro-conversions
During hiring, keep track of the efficiency of each step of the hiring process. Use this data for determining where your candidates are dropping off or are more susceptible to rejection, etc. It will ultimately help you optimize your conversion rates by improving your hiring process.
Showcase your compensation offer smartly
When candidates express their unrealistic expectations, interact with them and explain your offers smartly. You can help candidates break down their expectations and work with them to arrive at a realistic number. You can also customize your offers to the candidate’s expectations. Besides, you can offer perks that go beyond money. But if any of these does not work, it is better to walk away.
Focus on brand building
The initial step of brand building is to create a digital presence. Create a compelling website for your business and be active on LinkedIn. Besides, focus on communicating the mission statement, values, and culture. Building your branding online that relates to your startup can also work for you.
Steps to Follow When Hiring Developers for Startups
You need to come with an action plan when you are about to hire developers. It helps you eliminate unnecessary things and make hiring easy. Here are the steps to follow –
- Identify your business requirements
- Decide your employment model
- Find necessary specialists
- Check the expertise through technical assessment
- Conduct the final round
- Hire the candidate
Also Read: Cheat Sheet to Hire Top Developers
How Do ATS Platforms Work as a Boon for Startups?
Startup businesses, especially at an early stage, have low recognition and a limited budget. But finding and hiring the top tech talents can be difficult for any startup business.
Choosing the right applicant tracking system or technical skills screening software can position your business as a serious employer focusing on hiring the best talents in the minds of prospective candidates. Besides, ATS that empowers cutting-edge tools can create a tech-savvy image of your business to applicants and inspire them to choose you.
And here are the perks of using such a system –
- Source candidates efficiently
- Scale your business
- Eliminate errors
- Save time, energy, and money
- Improve candidates’ experience
- Onboard candidates more effectively
Things to Look for in an ATS
The objective of a good ATS is to make recruitment more accessible and help you find the right talent. But all ATS don’t work on the same goal, so they can’t meet your needs in the same way. So, it is crucial to consider various things when looking for an ATS. We have identified the most crucial ones for you –
- Ease of use
- No hidden costs
- Job posting
- Applicant management
- Candidate experience
- Strong automation
- Managing your talent
How Skillsz Helps Startup Businesses?
Skillsz is an all-inclusive ATS platform of Capital Numbers and works to help businesses find promising developers without investing much time, energy, and money. Designed by considering the hiring needs of companies nowadays, it will eliminate the recruitment headache from your hiring team.
Easy to use, customizable, and affordable, it will drive talented candidates to your team. And as it helps businesses of all sizes, it will be an excellent choice for your startup too.
Whether you need a WordPress skill test or Node.JS skill test, or something else for evaluating candidates, it can help you. All that you need to do is to follow four simple steps for finding talents – creating a job, designing the test, inviting candidates via three different methods, and getting PDF reports with detailed analytics – and you are done.
To make your business stand out during the assessment and ensure that you find the right talent, Skillsz offers exclusive features, including custom-branding, adding skills, and setting proficiency levels for the test. While custom branding helps make a great impression about your startup venture, incorporating skills and proficiency for a job help you tailor-made the question that enables you to find the right match.
Besides, Skillsz offers a ready-made question of 5000+ questions, a real-time dashboard to track all information from one place, and an anonymous domain to the businesses that want to hide their identities. If you are looking for a holistic pre-employment assessment and bias-free hiring, Skillsz is the ultimate choice for you.
Bottom Line
Startups face many hiring difficulties as, nowadays, tech talent is in high demand, and most of them ask for lucrative compensation that startups can’t bear. If you also have a startup company and your business model needs rapid talent acquisition to scale, you have several sources to choose from, but all of them are not credible.
In such a situation, choosing an ATS is an excellent option for you. It will automate the pre-employment assessment process and ensure quality hiring.
Skillsz is a candidate screening and shortlisting platform that makes hiring effective by measuring the candidates’ skills. As the process is user-friendly, candidates will not face any difficulties during the test. After they finish the test, you will get the report and make hiring decisions accordingly.
As Skillsz offers different pricing plans, you can choose the one that suits your budget. And the best thing? You can sign up and start a 14-day FREE TRIAL. Hurry up and register today!
About Skillsz
Skillsz’s skill assessment platform allows companies to assess developers with online programming tests. This automotive platform, which is designed to make recruitment easy and effective, enables companies to filter out unqualified candidates and find the best talent quickly. Create coding tests, invite candidates, check results, and find out the best talent. Does it sound interesting? Start a 14-day free trial today!