Welcome to the first edition of our StartupSeries!
In this collection of interviews with founders of some of the best Start ups in the country, we get down to the nitty-gritty of the current system of recruitment. If you’ve had questions about the same or are simply curious as to what it takes, read on!
Q.1 Please tell us a little bit about LinkMySport.
LinkMySport was launched in April 2015 after many brainstorming sessions and long chats with people running sports facilities and fitness studios across the globe. When we started, we wanted to reduce the operational hassles for our customers in terms of bookings and payments; shift them from pen and paper to a more sophisticated cloud based system, which they can manage from anywhere and from any device. We built a complete end-to-end business management software with smart CRM, Mobile App, SEO ready website, ePOS, online bookings, marketing automations and much more.
LinkMySport is a comprehensive, software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform optimised to work on the web, smartphones and tablets. Our aim is to provide rich customer insights and engagement tools to these businesses to woo their clients and keep them happy. Beyond this, we are integrating new features and functionalities every week.
Q2. How important is hiring for you, at this point?
Hiring is of utmost importance for early-stage startups like us. As the saying goes, ‘You are only as good as your team’, thus It’s very important to have good people in the team who can help the company move forward. Hiring plays a crucial role at this point as we are looking to have only right people possessing the right skills and attitude.
Q3. What are the common challenges that you face while hiring candidates?
One of the challenges is getting the right candidate(s). There are various hiring platforms but not every platform has a good candidate pool. We ended up wasting a lot of time waiting for responses from right people, i.e. people wanting to join a startup. With time, we figured out the right platforms and now we just stick to them.
Also,conducting interviews for outstation applicants is a bit of a challenge because you can gauge the candidate only upto a certain point via his/her CV and over the phone. However with ePoise, that challenge is also gradually being taken care of as we get to gauge the body language of the candidate while they record their interviews.
Q4. Do you use social platforms to recruit candidates? What has been your experience with it so far?
Yes. I post my job requirements simultaneously on relevant Facebook groups, our company social media pages etc. The experience has been good. I have had pretty good responses.
Q.5 Start ups are currently in demand in India. How do you stay in the competition and ensure you hire the best talent?
We are very proactive in hiring good candidates and we try to offer the candidates the best of everything. We make sure they have the best learning environment and opportunities. We not only provide the team-members a competitive pay, but also take active interest in their development. We sponsor their tickets to hackathons, startup weekends and relevant camps and workshops. We have our fun outings and pub crawls too.
Q6. Do you find yourself spending a lot of time and effort in hiring candidates? If yes, how would you change your current recruitment system?
In a small organisation, where we do not have a dedicated HR or recruitment team, I find myself spending a lot of time in sorting CVs, arranging multiple stages of interviews and so on. I would like to have a system, where instead of going through all those stages, it can be simplified into a simple 1-2 rounds hiring process.
Q7. What role do you think technology has to play in the process of recruiting? Do you think it could simplify the process?
Technology has been and will play a very important role in Hiring. The conventional hiring via campus placements, doing F2F interviews is there but with technology the process can be much less cumbersome, time saving and cost-effective. ePoise has been doing that effectively for us.
Watch this space for more insights from various startup founders!
To make your hiring woes disappear, visit www.epoise.com!