From 0 to 1, how do start-up business owners think about recruiting and retaining people?

Startups

How to recruit and keep people

Recruiting, employing and retaining people is very important for many small companies in the early stage of their business.

For start-up companies, resources are often very limited, and everyone has to focus on company development.

If the recruitment process is not done well, suitable employees cannot be recruited, and the team does not perform well, the boss can only often act like a firefighter, fighting fires everywhere, checking for leaks and filling vacancies.

The mobility of employees is also large, and often the desired talents cannot be retained.

The first thing to pay attention to is: for a small start-up company, it is always the first thing to say about survival. Don’t talk about the reserve of strategic talents first. When recruiting inappropriate people, instead of teaching them by hand, keep them and cultivate them well. It's better to take good care of this part of the recruitment.

Talent is a key part of a company's development, and founders must make plans for recruiting people, so that the company can move forward steadily.

1. How to recruit people?

Use dimensionality reduction thinking to recruit people.

There is a saying in Ali - ordinary people do extraordinary things, we do not pursue elite culture.

For example, if you want to recruit people with a monthly salary of 10,000 yuan, we usually choose among those with a monthly salary of 8,000-10,000 yuan.

We found that after people came, the turnover rate was very high. Because he thought that it was normal for me to change jobs to earn 10,000 yuan after earning 8,000 yuan.

What is dimensionality reduction thinking?

Specifically, it is to lower the thinking level 1-2. You have to recruit people with a monthly salary of 10,000 yuan, and you have to find people with a monthly salary of 3,000-4,000 yuan.

After he came, he would have the feeling of turning over to be the master, and the sense of accomplishment was particularly great. I am especially grateful to the company for giving him this opportunity. Because, he has no such opportunity outside.

Of course, that's easy to say. It is easy to choose from people with 8,000 yuan who can give 10,000 yuan, but it is not easy to choose from people with a monthly salary of 3,000-4,000 yuan.

But it's easy, why do you need HR to do it? We are here to do the hard things.

For example, if you pick 10,000 yuan out of 8,000 yuan, you will probably interview 1 of 3 people.

But you have to pick out a person who is willing to pay 10,000 yuan in the 3000-4000 yuan. You will probably see 30-40 people, but there will be some.

Just like the college entrance examination was one point short of the year, this person went from a famous school to an ordinary college.

At the beginning, Ali rarely went to Tsinghua University to recruit engineers, but went to Huazhong University of Science and Technology, where more than 1,000 people crowded into more than 2,000 people.

Many of Ali's best engineers are from Wuhan Post and Telecommunications and Huazhong Science and Technology. They are not famous schools like Peking University and Tsinghua University in everyone's mind.

Tsinghua and Peking University students will always have better jobs than Ali, and when you go to Wuhan Post and Telecommunications and Huazhong Technology, Ali is their best chance. This is called cross-level recruitment of talents and cross-level selection of talents.

2. Who will go to the pre-job training?

Insist on in-person training

When people are recruited, they need training. Many companies know this and set up training departments.

I would like to say that recruitment in the early stage of a business is not a matter of human resources, and training is not a matter of the training department. It's the boss's business and the business manager's business.

Jack Ma insisted that when Alibaba had 4,000 people, he still did the training for new recruits. From 4,000 people, I took over to 16,000 people.

Recruitment spans four levels from senior vice president, vice president, senior director, and director. There are 200 team directors under my management, and I will interview them all.

In addition to the new employees added every year, there are 4,000 new employees, and each session is generally 200. I have to do 20 new employee training sessions a year.

I think the CEO has to spend time on people, and there are a lot of things for the right people to do, you don't have to.

Many companies often make two mistakes: First, they are very superstitious and invite external experts for training.

If external experts don't know your company's culture, system, and products, and the best sales of another company, can they train your company's sales?

Second, the instructors trained by the company are people who are not doing well in the business sector. The company was not very good at arranging him, so he had to be in charge of training.

Ali always brings back the best cadres on the front line for training.

Unlike some companies, these people get tired of working on the front line and call him back for training. You have to be willing to bring back the company's best business elites for training, and keep it close to actual combat.

Ali's culture is high intensity and high elimination rate during training. The intensity of training should be far greater than the intensity of work, and the realism of training should exceed the realism of real work.

Alibaba is a master with apprentices. There are excellent engineers and excellent salesmen. I will show you how to do it again. I tell you, listen, why am I doing this. You do what I see, whether it's writing code or running clients.

Whether you do it right or not, you tell me and I listen, and you tell me why you do it. Do it again and again, do it again, if it fails, do it again, and if it fails, forget it.

Make good use of the training, give newcomers a unified mind and a unified understanding, explain the company's policies clearly during the training period, and leave during the probationary period.

When Ali reached a few thousand people, Jack Ma still insisted on giving the first training class to the newcomers.

Some people say that this is brainwashing for newcomers, yes, it must be done by founders.

wash what?

What is your original entrepreneurial intention, why does our company exist, what are our company's cultural values, what things are encouraged in our company, and what things are opposed by the company.

The CEO does not do skills training, but does training on mission, vision, and values.

The first lesson of training cannot be outsourced.

3. How to attract people?

High commission, high performance reward

Adopt the market average basic salary, high commission, high performance reward, result-oriented, attract excellent old salesmen and experienced employees to join the company.

After employees have achieved results, they should be rewarded in time, and the way of high commissions can easily become positive incentives for employees.

Shape dreams, paint hopes

As a leader, to learn to dream, you must show them the vision you paint. Learn to boost employee morale.

First talk about dreams, talk about the great future, talk about great prospects, opportunities for growth, talk about salary, and then talk about requirements, linking the growth of employees with the development of the company.

Diversified appreciation (job) system

Optimize the promotion (value) system and salary system of employees, set up several more steps, and step up, so that employees have higher expectations.

Regular positive incentives

The emotions and actions of employees will be disturbed by various external factors. If we ignore it, the mind will be disconnected from the company and the team.

Therefore, after employees join the company, they should follow up in time, communicate regularly, solve problems, and unify the thoughts of employees.

To sum up, do two things in the early days. When the days are good, it brings trust and makes the company simple and efficient; when the company is dying, it can be carried over.

Learning these contents will allow you to recruit more loyal people under the treatment of market value, truly retain core talents, and make your business management smoother.