Startup From The Ground Up by Cynthia Kocialski

Author:Cynthia Kocialski [Kocialski, Cynthia]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2011-06-11T14:00:00+00:00

Convincing People to

Join the Team

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.

-Margaret Mead

You have finally found that person that you want to join your start-up. They’re interested as well. So how do you get them join? In the beginning, there is no human resource person to handle hiring; the founders will need to negotiate compensation with the workers.

Experienced hires, who have worked for large corporations, are used to the compensation packages offered by these companies. Candidates may place a price tag on each of the benefits of their current job and expect to be compensated for the loss of those benefits. For example, if a candidate is currently covered by a 401K plan with matching company contributions, the candidate may expect to receive the matching portion in salary. They may calculate the value of after work educational benefits, and even though they don’t use them today, they will ask for the additional salary to cover the loss of the benefit. Candidates from large corporations can also ask for salary boosts due to the risk associated with a start-up. Such candidates do not thrive in a start-up environment. Typically, they expect a 9-to-5 job that is safe and secure. The itemized comparison between their former corporation and the start-up will not stop at the job offer. They will also point out the lack of resources and equipment available at the start-up. For example, they will complain about the number of servers and software licenses available per person.

As goes the current economic conditions, so goes a start-up’s ability to attract people. As the economy heats up, it becomes more difficult to hire interns, college hires and experience—and the more attractive the opportunity has to be. Today, many start-ups have large number on non-paid employees, often unemployed and looking to keep their skills sharp while searching for a job. These volunteers offer little consistency since they often go away when a paying opportunity emerges.

When I first started hiring people, I was given advice that still holds true—if you can’t offer a candidate a compensation package within 5% of their expectations, you won’t get the candidate.

Sales is a pay-for-performance position and sales people are evaluated based upon performance. While sales is one component of the start-up team, the sales staff members tend to be truly view themselves as individual contributors. Sales people expect marketing to determine the applicable market segments for the product, promote the product in these markets, and to generate the leads. A sales team is an execution team. The sales team often works on a salary plus commission basis. It’s not unusual for them to ask for a minimum guaranteed level of commissions when a start-up is new and unknown. Good sales people don’t want to work on a salary only basis—the more experienced and confident they are of their sales skills, the less salary and the more commissions they want. Therefore, attracting great sales people at the inception of a company is difficult; they often adopt a wait-and-see attitude.

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