Directly hiring employees is a more involved, time-consuming process. Many startups begin with one or a few co-founders dividing up duties according to their strengths – i.e. CEO, CTO, CMO.
Most often it is the CEO or CTO conducting the hiring as an “added duty” – but not usually borne of experience as a hiring manager. You’ll be looking at four stages in the hiring process.
Stage One. You need to hire someone!
- Define the skill sets you need.
- Write the job description.
- Decide where to post it.
Each stage takes time. If you’re proactive, you can get the job description written and posted on the same day. Preparing detailed job descriptions tends to attract better candidates. So, it’s more likely this process will take a few days to a week to make sure you get everything right.
Stage Two. Make sure you’re hiring qualified people.
- Receive applications.
- Review applications to trim the obviously unqualified (Keep the top 20%).
- Conduct first Interviews (Typically 1 interview per 5 applicants, but variable).
It’s a good time management practice to do “like tasks” together, so you’ll want to wait until you have a decent number of applications. That can vary for many reasons. There are the emails or phone calls back and forth to arrange an interview. Interviews average up to an hour each.