Now that we have the 7 Non-Standard Interview Questions from yesterday, let’s go up a level and talk about non-standard recruiting tactics. When an entrepreneur needs help with recruiting, I ask about their current tactics and it’s typically LinkedIn listings, job boards, and recruiters. Well, here are five non-standard recruiting tactics:
- Culture Blog / Engineering Blog – At Pardot we used to have a culture blog called Pardot Wave where Pardashians shared stories and experiences to help prospective employees better understand our culture. At Netflix there’s an excellent engineering blog called The Netflix Tech Blog that highlights many of their open source contributions.
- Sponsor Meetup Groups – Go to where the potential team members do their networking and continual education. For example, if recruiting for iOS developers check out The Atlanta iOS Developers Monthly Meetup.
- $10,000 Employee Referral Bonus – Don’t do the basic $1,000 employee referral bonus. For really hard to find positions, make the referral bonus substantial (it’ll still be much less than using recruiters).
- Public Career Fair – Host a happy hour at the local pub for anyone that’s interested in learning more about the open job positions. A casual group setting is a great way to meet potential candidates that aren’t ready to go through a full recruiting process but might be with a little more information.
- LinkedIn InMail from the Entrepreneur – Found a good candidate on LinkedIn but haven’t received a response? Have the entrepreneur reach out with a personalized InMail message expressing how much they’d enjoy getting together and start the process that way.
Recruiting is a serious endeavor that requires tremendous effort to do well. Run a process with the basics and incorporate some of these non-standard tactics as well.
What else? What are some other non-standard recruiting tactics?
David Cummings on Startups 