The Founder Guide: How to Scale The Hiring Process of Your SaaS Company

Talent affects any SaaS or Tech company’s Growth directly. That’s exactly why you need to ensure your team is built with talent that’s aligned with your goals. But, how do you do that?

Here's where a hyper-targeting methodology comes in to help you. At SaaS Talent, we have perfected ours, which has proven to overdeliver, and we wanted to share some insights with you as to what has worked for us.

1. Make the most detailed and clear Job Descriptions

Be very descriptive about the qualifications, duties, and expectations. This will help you attract great candidates, but more importantly, it will act as your blueprint for hyper-targeting exact-fit candidates. We'll elaborate a little further on hyper-targeting below.

2. Scale your processes

We're in the tech era. Use it to make your recruiting processes, and ultimately, your life much easier. Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS), AI-powered tools, Automation tools, candidate-search platforms, and contact finder tools are just some ideas to help keep track of your KPIs and OKRs already defined in your strategy & to scale up your recruiting efforts. Do your research and find what works best for you!

3. Cultural Compatibility

Talent needs to be aligned with the culture, mission, and growth goals of your company. Hyper-targeting your talent based on these 3 fundamentals will ensure that you find individuals who truly fit your company culture, vision, and goals.

4. Stay current with Market Trends

Listen to your candidates as they go through your interview process. They will be your best data source to stay up to date on things like current compensation packages, popular technologies used, and any other market trends for the jobs you’re trying to fill. 

This will enable you to adjust your offer, so it is competitive compared to what your competitors currently offer in similar jobs. Your success vs your competitors’ is directly impacted by who has the best offer to put together the strongest team.

5. Provide your candidates with an awesome hiring experience

Make sure your hiring process is efficient and concise. This will save you time and backfill costs. Sometimes, 2 interviews could’ve been just 1. Don’t waste your candidate’s time, and definitely don't waste yours. For instance:

- Ask pre-screening questions. You should only interview candidates that are worth your time. There’s no purpose in interviewing individuals who can’t make it past simple pre-screening questions.

- Be clear with your process and expectations. Reject and move candidates forward through the process in a timely manner. It’s very professional of you to communicate these updates as soon as possible.

- Make it effortless for your candidates. For instance, ask for the things you need from your candidates in just one email; i.e. documents + prescreening questions + availability. Or even just send them your link to set up an interview with you instead of waiting for candidates to let you know their availability. People appreciate that.

6. Hyper-targeting:

There’s a secret in the recruiting industry. I talked about a great job description above, and while this is useful for your recruiters, that’s not how you get the best talent. Get this straight: The best talent is not in the market.

The best talent is not in the market because the best talent is already thriving at their current job. Yes, not all the time great talent isn't in the market because they have a job. But 99% of the time, that's the case. You need to hunt them down.

You need to hyper-target the best talent and get them excited about your company and everything you’re doing. You need to get them to want to work with you!

We’ve perfected our Hyper-targeting methodology, and this is what delivers the best exact-fit candidates for our clients, making it one of the reasons they stick with us.

This methodology enables you to find the profile that best fits the job description. But this is a combination of 2 things: Clearly understanding the profile your company needs and knowing how to search for it. You have probably figured out the first part, so... How do we go about the 2nd one?

You first need to equip yourself with the right tools. In our case, we use LinkedIn and Sales Navigator as these will help us screen out most of the not-a-fit candidates that would otherwise appear in our searches, allowing us to see more of what we're actually looking for.

Once you have your tools, you have to learn how to best squeeze the search engine of each one of them. Learn about 'Booleans.’ This will optimize the way you use keywords in your search. When properly used, these will help you find exact-fit individuals. Keywords can be about tech stack, seniority level, relevant experience you want candidates to have, etc. Let me explain:

If you need a Senior React.JS Engineer with SaaS startup experience, then a search on Sales Navigator would look something like: “(reactjs OR react) AND senior AND saas.”

You could even add the word ‘startup’ in there. But you get the point. It’s all about narrowing down the search, so you find exactly what your company needs.

7. Talent Partner

All these things we mentioned above sound like a lot of work and time, doesn’t it? And if it’s not done right or by the right people, it will 100% cost you more time and money. Unless you’re a 20-year-old founder with deep pockets, that’s 2 things you can’t afford to waste.

The easiest way to go about growing your company is to get a talent partner who gets it done for you, and done right. In the long run, this will mean saving money, but more importantly, saving the time that founders (you) don’t have to spend on searching for talent.

You need an experienced, industry-focused talent partner who knows how to do this, takes care of the whole hiring cycle, and finds you talent with industry & domain experience. You should focus your time on growing your company, and let a talent partner fuel your growth with the right people. That right there is the definition of scalability.

Connect with Michael C. Bertoni on LinkedIn. If you would like to learn more about how SaaS Talent can help your SaaS or Hi-Tech business, set up a Free Strategy Session with us by clicking here, or set up a meeting using the calendar below.