Hiring great talent is a game-changer for early-stage tech startups. But without the budget for a full time recruiter or a third-party recruiting firm, you’ll need to DIY. And recruiting is a full time job. The good news? Whether you love or hate LinkedIn, it’s still the best place to discover and attract your next hires. With time commitment and the right strategy, you can make a dent in your recruiting efforts. Here’s a step-by-step Recruiting Guide for Early-Stage Startups:
Step 1: Define the Role Clearly
Before you even start searching, you need to have a crystal-clear understanding of the role you’re trying to fill. Including:
- Title and key responsibilities:
- What will this person actually do day-to-day?
- What gap will they fill on the team?
- How does this role fit into the broader organization?
- What does success look like in this role and what quantifiable impact will they have?
- Must-have skills: What skills are non negotiable?
- Nice-to-have skills: What skills would be beneficial but aren’t deal-breakers or could be coachable?
- Cultural fit: What values and traits are important to your company culture?
Step 2: Optimize Your Company Profile
When you reach out to a candidate one of the first things they will do is go check out your company page (and look for a JD). Make sure it reflects your brand and team:
- Logo and banner: Use high-quality images.
- About section: Keep it concise, engaging, and ideally, with minimal jargon.
- Regular updates: Share posts about product launches, milestones, customer stories or team culture. If you have a company blog or culture page on your website, this would be a great place to direct candidates to as well.
Step 3: Use Advanced Search to Find Candidates
LinkedIn’s search functionality is actually pretty good if you know how to use it the right way. In order to get advanced Search functionality you might want to consider trialing or signing up for a Recruiter Lite account. Here’s how we’d recommend getting started:
- Keyword search: Use specific job titles, skills, or technologies related to the role.
- Filters: Apply filters for location, industry, and experience level.
- Boolean search: Use Boolean operators to further refine your search. For example:
- AND: Director of Product Management AND SaaS
- OR: Head of Product OR Product Lead
- Quotes: “Vice President of Product Management”
Step 4: Build Your Shortlist
Found some promising profiles? Great—now it’s time to organize:
- Relevant experience: Have they worked in similar roles or industries?
- Company size and stage: Prioritize candidates from companies of a similar size and scale. They’ll be more equipped to handle the challenges you’re likely to face.
- High-performance signals: Look for promotions within the same company, demonstrating growth and adaptability.
- Quantifiable success: Identify candidates who showcase metrics like revenue impact, user growth, or efficiency improvements
- Create a “Project” where you can save all relevant profiles, track your activity and plan for follow up outreach
- Here you can mark them as “Uncontacted” “Contacted” or “Replied”
- You can also Keep notes directly on their page to track what stood out as well as take notes during your conversations
- You can set reminders for follow up messages
- Alternatively, you can also drop them into a simple spreadsheet.
- Track key info: Name, LinkedIn URL, current title, and a quick note on why they caught your eye.
Step 5: Create Your Messaging Strategy
Build out a complete messaging strategy before your 1st InMail. All of your messaging should be highly personalized, but you can leverage templates to help you scale the number of candidates you are able to contact.
Decide how many candidates you’ll need to interview and how many candidates you’ll need to message in order to get there. After your first week of messaging you’ll get a sense of your response and conversion rates and can work backwards from there.
Some best practices:
- Best days: Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday see the highest response rates.
- Best times: Early mornings (8-10 AM) and late afternoons (4-6 PM) work best, as professionals are more likely to check LinkedIn around these times. These are in the local times for the candidates.
- That being said, you can also test and see what is working. We’ve had plenty of success sending InMails at 7-9 PM, as well as on weekend mornings.
- LinkedIn suggest keeping messages under 500 characters for better response rates
- Most candidates will require a follow up message. Being persistent is key, but we’d recommend no more than 2-4 total messages per person
Final Thoughts
Finding and attracting top talent takes time and effort—but if you want the best, it’s worth the investment. Hopefully this Recruiting Guide for Early-Stage Startups gives you a solid head start. If you have questions or need help refining your hiring strategy, we’re happy to chat.
Or, if reading this made you realize that bringing in a dedicated recruiting partner would be a better use of your time, we’d love to help with that too! 😉
About WithAgility
We are the Recruiters for B2B Marketing & Product teams. WithAgility provides executive search, fractional recruiting and talent consulting to the fastest growing technology companies in the world. For help hiring your next leader or scaling your team, contact us today. We look forward to working with you.