Pure Enthusiasm: How to Hire a Team 30% Cheaper Than on the Market
When your startup has modest investments and there are only a couple of people on the staff including you, but your tasks and ambitions are world domination high, the only thing you can do is improvising.
Creating a strong and appropriate team is always difficult. It is easier to solve this task if you have enough money to buy professionals on the market, but this is almost impossible for a small startup. It can buy only guest workers. However, we have worked out several tricks over the past few years that will help you hire ambitious and strong employees 30% cheaper than on the market and sometimes on very strange conditions.
Out-of-towners rule
Many tests have proved the fact that people coming to big cities from smaller towns ask for lower salaries at the start, are ready to work really hard to stick to the workplace, are more initiative and ready for any crazy schemes. In our current team, eight out of nine people came from other towns, including me. This can be taken as a coincidence or a pattern. When you have nowhere to go and will hardly be hired as a manager to larger corporations like Mars, a startup is a great place to get experience, connections, practical knowledge and fast career growth.
A dream and a belief in the better future
When there are no competitive advantages such as finance and stability, a big idea and the inspiring view work great. I think, nowadays there is faith deficit: the institute of the family is undermined, religion is not much of an interest for the young and ambitious, but the unconscious desire to believe in something still persists. That is why selling the future — a kind of an image which one wants to be a part of — works perfectly to attract the candidates.
The lack of spare resources taught us “to sell” the future. Being a small team of two people, we drew prototypes literally on our knees and stickers and we didn’t have a single ready solution, we had to sell the vision of the final product during job interviews, describe the future image, tell about our dream to build an international company. This skill helps a lot in attracting the first like-minded people and forming the core of the team because people’s natural wish to believe and to dream will be paid.
Involvement and co-creation
Many segments of the market have grown younger that is why the age of members of the same team also decreases often to 30 years. One has to take into consideration the motivation of the generations Y and Z in which, I remind you, money take far from the first place, usually the third or the fourth. The younger generation wants to make interesting and important projects, show initiative, contribute more than the job description demands.
That is why, for example, we decided to refuse the functional titles. If a person understands his or her functions and the necessary result and his or her area of responsibility are clearly defined, the company’s work will be well-coordinated. As the proverb goes, “call me a pot…”, the point is that the work process should be convenient and nice.
One more method is introducing a game element into the work process. For example, you can apply gamification in a small collective by introducing a game currency that an employee can earn and spend on fulfilling his or her wishes. Such a team competition stimulates interactions inside the staff and gives additional drive.
Collaborate sessions on developing the product and the company’s strategy are also an important element of involvement. Here everyone can influence the future working process. All members of the team must realise and believe that their suggestion will be heard and accepted if it is reasonable.
The flexible schedule and working remotely
Let’s agree when no one controls you with a stick from 9 am to 6 pm and you can plan your day and rule your life yourself, this is a huge motivation. You’ll think twice before asking for a pay rise. Besides, in this case, you can work on several projects at once. Many companies even collaborate remotely with programmers, managers and partners.
Though different time zones and the impossibility of everyday live communication required a lot of brain efforts to understand how to arrange the processes best. It is important to work out a clear system with efficiency criteria, paying for the result and bonuses for fulfilling the quantitative KPIs. This is a kind of micro-business inside the company when everyone can distribute his or her resources and responsibilities and regulate his or her salary. Such services as Slack, Trello and Google allow creating the whole infrastructure online and monitor each team member’s results. You can work on your smartphone and it makes your life a lot easier.
Horizontal development
In the usual career world, an employee develops vertically. And this development must be accompanied by pay rises, but you can do it differently. The horizontal development offers every member of the team an opportunity to take another position if they get bored on the previous one. Such a trick allows to hold down the salary rise for some time and increases the interest in teamwork. Besides, some use special coaching programmes to define the uniqueness of the person that helps to create a post especially for him or her (by defining their talents, values, and the key role that characterise him or her from his or her birth). Additional training is no less important and you need to invest in it. All these allow attracting people aimed at development instead of stability and financial guarantees.
Partner offer
When you need a person of the top-manager of an international bank level, you can always offer a warrant or a share in the business (if it is worth it). Nowadays, the trend to entrepreneurship, the wish to travel the world and work for pleasure leads many successful professionals to the stage “starting from scratch”. Catch them at this moment. Networking is a great helper here. Many new acquaintances, educational grounds, conferences, many posts in social networks. In the end, all these lead to the necessary people and create a partner funnel.
