Talent Strategy For Startups: Finding & Keeping The Best People - Podcast Recording

Automated Transcript

Alastair Cole  1:03 

Hello, good afternoon and welcome to The Sales Scoop, a show for startups who want to improve how they sell. We tackle the hottest topics in sales and bring you the shiniest pearls of wisdom from experts across the spectrum. I'm Alastair Cole, your host for today and the co-founder of The Uplift Partnership. We simplify sales for startups.

One of the important ways we do that is through people and team and team structure. And I'm delighted today to have as guest on our first show of the year, Louisa Maglieri, a talent acquisition partner for startups, and someone at the cutting edge of talent strategy. Hi, good afternoon, Louisa. Hi.

Louisa Maglieri  1:49  

Hi Alastair - good afternoon. It's a pleasure to be here.

Alastair Cole  1:52  

Yeah, thank you so much. Really excited to get into it. You know, it's January, it's the start of a new year. People have had funding, they're looking to grow their teams and can't wait to get your insights on all things. talent strategy, especially around finding and keeping the best people. Let's start just by you. Tell us a little bit about you, and your journey to where you are now and your area of expertise that will be really useful. Thanks.

Louisa Maglieri  2:17  

Sure. So I've been a recruiter since around 2006. I started purely delivery for IBM. And then I've grown up to manage key accounts such as BP, Barclays. And then I moved in house directly working in very large HR teams as a talent acquisition partner. For big brands such as societe generale, Credit Suisse, the FCA WPP, and s&p Global. I decided to take a turn, I suppose, in the later half of 2023, and start my own talent consultancy - Startup Resources where I provide that same in-house Talent Acquisition Service to startups at a low cost fixed rate.

Alastair Cole  3:10 

Yeah, thank you, that's really helpful. I mean, you've got quite a following on LinkedIn, and so many years experience in the market. It's fascinating to have your view now on the startup world. And we've talked ahead of the show about what's happened in the lab, or what's happening right now as we move into 2024. And it feels to me like you're in the best position possible to see both sides of the marketplace. You know, you're talking to startups on an almost daily basis, about their needs for growth. And you're also talking to candidates who want to go and join the most exciting, the most lucrative opportunities around from what you've seen in terms of the market landscape, what you've seen that last quarter of 2023 and these these just handful of business days, this year, what are you expecting to see in the in the talent market for startups in 2024.

Louisa Maglieri  4:03  

So, the talent for startups, particularly those who very much work within the world of AI, Blockchain, web three, all that kind of sphere, the market remains robust, there is a high demand for candidates, particularly of data engineers, Blockchain engineers, front end developers, etc. However, in turn, that means that the availability of candidates is quite short. And I when I mean by availability of candidates, I mean, those candidates who are particularly experienced who are really going to provide you with expertise to really get your product up from the ground up, and that's what every founder needs is is that experience and as the market is robust, those sorts of candidates are proven to be quite harder to source?

Alastair Cole  5:01  

Yeah, I mean, that's, that's something we've covered off, that kind of the lack of absolutely top talent, we're going to cover off how startups should be addressing what they can do to raise their game and where else they should be looking? Yeah, it feels like a very positive start to 2024. For me. I mean, I know of several businesses that have got funding that maybe I wasn't expecting to get at the end of last year. So yeah, things are certainly on the rise, which is great. How would you say the availability of talent is for bootstrapped startups versus those that are funded? What differences are you seeing there in the marketplace?

Louisa Maglieri  5:40  

It all really depends on budget availability. You know, it's, we understand ultimately from a talent perspective that if you're bootstrapped, you may not be able to afford, like a very special senior developer, or so forth. Or you might want to go down the fractional route, but at the same time, you need people to get your product from A to B. And it's the same with those who have recently secured funding of whatever amount, you need those people. So you do have to invest in some ways. But also, at the same time, you don't want to procrastinate, because the market at the moment is tight, I'm not going to lie. It's you. There are a tonne of candidates out there who say they are, you know, data engineers, they are data scientists to data scientists, but it's when you really assess them, that you really get down to the nitty gritty of whether they are that good or not. And there are founders out there who don't come from a technical background, who are completely off, you know, from a completely different sphere, who need help, in helping you know, assessing candidates, you know, whether they'd be a good fit for them. And that's, that's where I come in, to really provide that help.

Alastair Cole  7:19  

Yeah, that level of vetting, you know, what, you know, not just speaking from your point of view and Startup Resources, but what should what, what kind of vetting should be done of candidates, certainly the taxpayer, but across the board for startups Amazfit vetting? should, should founders be doing?

Louisa Maglieri  7:35  

Oh, God. I would say it needs to be thorough. You want to be, I mean, these candidates, they're going to be interviewing, they might have offers elsewhere. So yes, you do have to be quite fast. But at the same time, vetting is really key. And you have to when you are screening them, for example, and this is what I always do is really ask them open ended questions, and really go down to the nitty gritty, you know, really use the job description that you've created as a backup, and so forth. Because in that way, you can really get a sense that this person might be just trying to wing it just to get a job, or they're actually keen. And that kind of really tallies with when you get someone you also want to see like, you know, are they really keen to work for you? You know, do they have any? Do they really want this job because it sounds interesting? And so when you vet them, you need to get a sound of their passion for your startup. And whether they are really thinking, Well, you know what, I want to work for this startup, I don't want to work for anybody else. I'm totally committed to this startup. Because as we know, the first year of a startup, it's hard. And you have to be super dedicated. And so during the vet vetting process, when you're speaking to them, and the more you speak to them, you're not just assessing them on technical skills, but you're also assessing them whether, you know, they are dedicated to you, and they're going to put the work in.

Alastair Cole  9:33  

Yeah, thank you, um, that that that kind of, you know, you want to dive into as much detail as possible, right, as you do with the sales hires that we help with and across the board. At the same time, you can't go on forever. Right. And, and, you know, what are the dangers of taking too long in the recruitment process for startups?

Louisa Maglieri  9:53  

Because the competition is competitive. I've seen Yeah, some of the startups I've worked with, they've taken quite a long time. They've left, you know, they've done maybe, I suppose the order of the hiring process has been quite fluid as well. Like, for example, they do two face to face interviews. And then right at the end, they decide to do a technical test. And just being quite slow about it being slow to arrange interviews and all this kind of stuff. Your candidates are just, you know, they're being interviewed, they're being offered jobs whilst you are still in the process, or is this person right or not? Or, you know, I'm too busy this week to interview. I'll do it next week. I mean, candidates don't hang around, you know, they have got jobs aplenty coming to them. So you need to act fast to secure them. It's the only way you can do it. And you know, if it feels overwhelming, if it feels too much, you can't you know, you need help. This is where I come in and just take that load off. Because it's my job to support founders at whatever stage in their startup journey to really facilitate that process. So they do get candidates who are dedicated to them onboard quickly, and ready to go.

Alastair Cole  11:21  

Yeah, fascinating. already. I think the procrastination thing is key, they've got to move fast. You've already talked about GDS. And we're going to come on to definitions, the kind of cornerstones, the basics. And we're seeing that across the board, one of our 360 product that assesses the maturity of startups across the board, we when we analyse team structure of sales teams, the average score across all the almost 50 startups that we've run through the fi six is a 42% kind of readiness across people and set up a compensation model and onboarding. So the results of our 360 show that a lot of startups are still a little bit immature. And they could probably do with the real basics more than three later. So I want to keep diving into the right talent strategy. And that's what we have, that's the title of the show. What are the absolute fundamentals? What are the basics? Louisa has a talent strategy that a startup should have in place right now so that they're successful in 2024? What are the cornerstones of a good talent strategy?

Louisa Maglieri  12:24  

So first of all, market intelligence, what's the market saying? Who's out there? Who's not out there? Budgets? Do you have the budget to pay for an immediate senior developer? 90,000? Basic? For you know, do you have that budget now? And how long do you have that budget to pay them at that salary? So do get some market intelligence, salary intelligence, you need to plan but obviously, for that budget and for that payroll? And then second of all, just like the hiring process, you know, are you going to do two stages? One stage? I mean, obviously, I'm assuming it's going to be more due up if it's a technical person that you want to scrutinise how you're going to technically test them? Are you going to be using a platform to do that, or even using free platforms, such as we transfer for them to do a technical test, and you receive it back in seven days, three days, whatever.

Think about, you know, how you're going to test them, how you're going to screen them, and then linking onto that, as well as when you are writing your job description? How are you going to pitch to candidates to say, work for me, I am the best because you have to think about it. You know, when you are advertising a job, or you have a job description, when you're writing that job description down, you really have to think about it, it's similar to when you were pitching for funding, you're going to that VC, you've got your deck, and here you go. Asking for money. And it's kind of the same thing is that you have to think about employee branding, how you're going to sell yourself on that JD, because that is the first connection point between you and your ideal candidate. Or what I say is like your ICP, so that your ideal candidate profile, that job advert is that first connection point, or, you know, it could be you know, with a talent partner with me or whatever, but branding, market intelligence, knowing what your hiring process is.

And then finally, and it might sound obvious, but knowing what you really need from a tax perspective, or from any kind of skills perspective, but also the amount of hires you need to make, because, you know, for example, you might say you might need to senior developers, but actually you only You can have like one and two juniors. So it's having that definition down, planning it out. And, you know, use, you know, there are a tonne of resources out there, or you can use me to help you get that information quickly. But you do need to kind of think about those sorts of things as part of your talent strategy.

Alastair Cole  15:23  

That makes perfect sense. And, you know, we've been talking recently about how much harder it is for startups to hire when they've got a lower growth, right. They're not, you know, they're not they're not they're not, they're not stellar. They're, they're growing, but it's not stellar growth. And that is harder, because obviously, the people want to go and work for a faster growing company. So is it just a case of them having to work harder and do those things you've just mentioned, and turn them off? Or other other things you know, other tricks and quick wins that people with low growth can use in order to hire great people?

Louisa Maglieri  16:00  

Yeah, I think it's a lot of what I just mentioned before, but there are avenues, other avenues, if you really want to change things around quickly, for example, fractional hiring, it's sparkling. It is super on trend at the moment. But if you want that quick result, you want to get, you know, you want to transform, you know, what, you know, and maybe you don't even know what's going wrong, or you don't even know what, what really is behind slow growth, or you probably do but you just like maybe don't know how to really get there and transform your products. So fractional hirings great, you can onboard them as consultants, they can be with you for a maximum of two years, because you don't really want to get caught out by ir 35. So that's something that you could consider as a quick win, or you can outsource as well. There are lots of outsourcing companies that provide developers like in Tunisia, for example, up to 100 pounds a day. But really, if you need to have a quick read when you want to improve growth, you can go down the consultancy Route, Route, but it is expensive. So, yeah, that is one avenue you could do. Okay,

Alastair Cole  17:31  

Thank you. It seems obvious how important people are and growing a team and a start up in 2000 into in 2024. But I saw a stat from Gartner last week that 26% of CEOs were ranking talent shortage as the number one determining factor. I'm sure others had it lower, but 26 said it was the number one factor in terms of their business outlook. And we've heard loads of stories about slow hiring or poor hiring leading to a kind of misfiring growth. Have you? If we think about starting with the finding piece, you know, how should talent teams go about? Working on how they find candidates and specifically, how they need to assess the cultural fit, what would be your recommendations about ensuring that they get the right person so that they're going to stay for the long term?

Louisa Maglieri  18:34  

I think you need to get someone who I think, I suppose maybe get someone like me involved in the process, because, you know, I've, I've worked in very large, I suppose, very corporate compliant HR divisions where you really have to screen candidates very diligently for whatever risk. So I would very much, yeah, get someone who is really experienced in screening candidates to really drill down whether they're not only a good technical fit, but also whether they have a good cultural fit, because you need to, as I mentioned earlier, you need to have someone who is dedicated, but at the same time, you know, they you have to your stars have to be aligned, you have to you know, you have to have a common goal with them.

And that can only be done through screening, and that starts right from the start. I wouldn't advise sometimes, you know, a lot of founders obviously they just advertise a job on LinkedIn and then they Go straight out, Oh, I like that CV, I'm going to interview them and you just request for the interview, get someone in beforehand who can read like, like myself startup resources, where we really screen those candidates and sift out the wheat from the chaff. Because you don't want to have an exit after a month or whatever and think this person is a drain, it's costing me 1000s, I don't need this, because you didn't have those kinds of boundaries in place before, right at the start. So that's really important to have.

Alastair Cole  20:38  

Okay, awesome, thank you. And then let's just touch a little bit on on on keeping, right keeping great talent, what would be your one, one piece of advice or one recommendation or one thing startups should be thinking about about, you know, from from the moment somebody has accepted that offer all the way through to them still be part of the team in two or three years time, what would be your your one piece of recommendation for keeping the best talent,

Louisa Maglieri  21:03  

listen to them, listen to them. Sometimes they will throw you a curveball or they will, you know, they're going to provide you with great ideas that you may not agree with, but will really help elevate your product. So listen to them. Get them in front of you, you know your key players because they can really, really I know they can really transform your business, quite frankly. So listen to them, listen to their ideas, and listen to their needs as well. You might have to show a bit of flexibility from time to time, that doesn't mean all work can be you know, they might have to work from home some days or, or so forth. So show a bit of flexibility, I think and listen and support them elevate them. Especially when they're doing a good job. Or if they're showing maybe they're a bit nervous, a bit lacking in confidence, find out what that is, be empathetic, be supportive. You don't want to, you know, everybody talks about, you know, not wanting to work in a toxic environment. And I'm sure there are many founders who are here at the moment who have worked in toxic environments and thinking, Oh, God, I really, I don't want to foster that environment in my company. But it can so easily happen. So just listen, be supportive, raise them up, but challenge them to ensure that they are constantly raising their game, because you are paying for them. And you don't want it to be a costly error.

Alastair Cole  22:40  

Yeah, there's so much investment of time, money and emotional investment, I find when you're hiring somebody new. And if you're having to make a change, you know, in a probation period or even afterwards, it is you know, it can be seismic, for any business, especially a small one, when they if they haven't heard the right person. Have you ever got an example of some work you've done recently, with startup resources of somebody that could bring to life that kind of the beginning to end hiring process or to somebody coming on board? Have you got an example you could share with us?

Louisa Maglieri  23:17  

Yeah, so currently, I'm working with a hospitality tech startup. And they have around about, obviously, they're quite small, but obviously, they're funded, they have around about 30 employees at the moment. And they hired me to first draft up their hiring strategy for the hiring process, because when they were they didn't have it in, they were just, you know, having a lot of exits. They weren't didn't know what was going wrong. So I came in, I completely, I produced a whole deck, what was going wrong, and how to fix it, and what resources they needed to invest in, and, and so forth. And then the next week, I get a call from the head of their head of HR, who's fractional himself saying, there was a need for a lead data engineer.

And so I've gone out there, and I've provided a candidate who's now going to go to offer stage and, and it's great that you know, not only have I supported them in maybe changing their hiring processes, giving ideas on their job descriptions and stuff like that, you know, really, what maybe simple to me, like really simple fixes for me, are not always so obvious to those who are, I think really stuck in it. And now it's gone to the office stage, which is great. I do want to touch on onboarding because I do think it's a really critical piece to talk about and it's actually not. I don't think that She's broken enough. And you, especially if you are hiring a remote employee, compliance is everything you need. Own, you know, you've got control of client data, you know, assets and so forth. So just a really simple thing, make sure that they are using your tech rather than theirs. NDAs Yeah, obviously, they've signed it. But really, do you have control of what they're doing on a day to day level?

If, you know, on, you know, if they're working remotely, so just having that layer of protection can really help, I suppose, you know, me, you know, ensuring those, I suppose, no legal hiccups on the way. And it's just onboarding as well, giving them a clear development plan, clear expectation plan. And then yeah, I think it's just a couple of things like that. I just wanted to touch on. Yeah.

Alastair Cole  25:58  

Given we're on that, are there any other kinds of bear traps or watch outs that you'd recommend for startups hiring this year?

Louisa Maglieri  26:08  

Yeah. So hiring employees abroad for it. So you know, I had a startup who wanted to hire a guy from Cyprus, but because he's, and the startups based in the UK, but because he was based in Cyprus, they weren't sure how to employ him due to tax reasons. So that's another thing to really consider, like, if you are going to employ someone remote, and then from another country, how are you going to pay them? And what sort of contractor they're going to be on, they're going to be on a localised contract or in a UK, or contract or whatever. So that's something you do need to think about hiring consultants in the UK, and what I mean consultants, freelancers, contractors, make sure that you know whether they're going to be paid within or outside ir 35. So if you want more information on ir 35, appreciate it within three minutes, do let me know, just give me a shout out on LinkedIn, and I can explain it. But if you are paying, paying them within ir 35 is very expensive, it's much more expensive. And you could be paying, you know, six or 750 a day for a freelancer so it's just things to think about.

Alastair Cole  27:34  

Yeah, thank you. And we're dropping Louise's email address and link to her LinkedIn profile in the LinkedIn comments now, for those following along live. You know, something that I want to get out of you before we wrap up is, you know, if you found us people responsible for hiring for startups right now, they've just had funding or they had some at the end of last year. There was one thing, Louisa from your experience, one thing you think they should do in order to get their talent strategy right for this year? What would that one thing be?

Louisa Maglieri  28:14  

I think don't procrastinate and get help. You may not be an expert in what you're trying to hire. So get help. You need help. I know it's costly. That's why, you know, I don't charge anywhere near I suppose what you could call it up headhunters do. But I offer more. Suppose that there is in -house service, so get help. Don't procrastinate. And if you need help on devising a talent strategy, get in touch with me. But yeah, don't because ultimately, your product could suffer. And you could be losing great candidates to your competitors, which is something you really don't need. So yeah, that's my one piece of advice.

Alastair Cole  29:08  

Thank you. I mean, there's some real cracking talent truth bombs you've dropped there over the last half hour. I mean, the one that came through loud and strong and repeatedly for me was about moving fast, moving faster than procrastinating. In the middle. You talked about that due diligence time with a candidate to research market research, just the hiring process, just basically doing the work, especially if you're not, you know, would be unicorn or growing in a stellar way. You've got to put the hours in. I love to point out compliance in a hybrid world. You might just think it's normal, but there are some checkboxes. Yeah. It's working right. Yeah. And then, you know, home from abroad as well and get help, you know, we all need a little help from our friends at times. And so, yeah, so anyway, I'm in need of a talent acquisition partner as a startup, you know where to come. The reasons here we put her details in the comments. I talked a little bit earlier about our 360. Startup, our fixing sales diagnostic product. And that is a 75 minute meeting with teams, we create a 25 page personalised report. And then we present back our findings. And if you're interested in the 360 sales diagnostic, you can head over to our website at the MF partnership.com forward slash 362 weeks from now, Kevin and I are going to be live again talking about sales playbook for 2024. We had such a hot interest in the playbook, just before Christmas that we're rerunning it. And we've got a very exciting new AI tool in this space that we're going to unveil and launch in two weeks time. So two weeks is going to be a sales playbook. 2024 Plus AI. Really all that's left is for me to say thank you, Louisa, for all your insights. Really great, you know, for founders and people responsible for hiring, there's a load of truth bombs, there are lots of things to take away. So thank you very much for making the half hour and helping this LinkedIn audience. Thank you very much. I will take a copy of this recording and the transcript and make it available for those who couldn't make it last minute. I'm very excited about 2024. I don't know about you, Louisa. But I'm feeling a lot of things have been added already.

Louisa Maglieri  31:43  

Absolutely. Me too. You know, things are on the up. We know that 2023 was a hard year to get funded. But I think things are very much changing. And yeah, I'm happy to hear about being on that journey with you guys and supporting you.

Alastair Cole  32:05  

Fantastic. Well, that's a wrap as they say so we'll head off. Thank you very much for your time. Goodbye, everybody. Thanks, everyone. Thank you. Bye bye