How to Avoid Losing Momentum in Your Startup's Hiring Process

Hiring can be one of the most challenging aspects of growing a startup. Many founders initially try to handle the process in-house, without an agency partner or a dedicated talent acquisition (TA) team. However, if you’re doing this, there’s a crucial aspect to keep in mind: constantly fill the top of your candidate funnel until you reach the offer accept stage.

Why Hiring Processes Fail

One of the most common reasons startups reach out to us is because they’ve attempted to manage a hiring process themselves, but it’s fallen apart at the final stage. Typically, the role has been open for weeks, and everything seems to be going smoothly—until it isn’t. A candidate makes it to the final interview but doesn’t receive an offer, or they get an offer and reject it, and there's no backup candidates in the pipeline.

This scenario leads to a few problems:

• Lost Momentum: The hiring process stalls, and it feels like you’re back to square one.
• Wasted Time: Founders, hiring managers and interviewers have spent hours with candidates, only for the role to remain unfilled.
• No Pipeline: With no other candidates lined up, restarting the process from scratch can be exhausting and time-consuming.

How to Keep the Hiring Process Moving

The easiest way to avoid these pitfalls is to stop treating hiring stages as a linear, step-by-step process. Instead, aim to have all stages running concurrently, even if your resources are limited. Here’s how:

1. Maintain a Full Pipeline: Ensure there are always candidates at various stages of the process. For example, while you have two candidates preparing for final interviews, you should also have three others at the challenge or assessment stage, and five more booked for first-round interviews.
2. Think Ahead: If your top candidate doesn’t make it to the offer stage, you don’t have to panic because you already have other candidates moving through the process.
3. Reduce Downtime: By keeping candidates in the pipeline, you minimise the time spent waiting and reduce the likelihood of losing momentum if your first choice doesn’t work out.

The Benefits of Running Hiring Stages Concurrently

Running hiring stages concurrently might feel resource-intensive, but it saves a lot of time and energy in the long run. Here are the key benefits:

• Faster Hiring: With multiple candidates progressing at once, you can make quicker decisions and avoid long vacancies.
• Better Benchmarking: With multiple candidates in your pipeline, it's easier to benchmark and understand who is the best fit.
• Better Candidate Experience: Candidates aren’t kept waiting too long between stages, which improves their overall experience and makes them more likely to accept offers.

Conclusion

If you’re handling hiring in-house, one of the best things you can do is to keep your candidate funnel full. Don’t wait until your pipeline is empty before you look at reviewing advert responses or sourcing new candidates. Make sure your hiring process is designed to keep moving, even if a candidate drops out at the last minute. By treating hiring as a continuous process, rather than a series of consecutive steps, you’ll save time, maintain momentum, and ultimately find the right fit for your team.

Need help keeping your hiring process on track? Hired By Startups can partner with you to ensure your recruitment pipeline stays full, efficient, and effective, so you can focus on growing your business.

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