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Surround yourself with great people. This may sound
like an overused sound bite, but there is nothing more important
to building a great company than hiring great people. This should
be in the forefront of your mind when hiring managers, associates,
directors for your Board, advisors, and service providers.
In addition, you need to make an honest assessment
of yourself to determine what you are best at. Are you right for
the CEO job, or are you better off hiring a professional CEO and
contributing more in a CTO or operations role?
Another key factor to consider when building a
team is ethics. We have gone through a historic period of corporate
greed and scandal. This has lead to investor concern and increased
regulation and legislation. As a small start-up company, you can
not afford to have your integrity harmed by such problems. Bring
in good people with solid ethics and LEAD BY EXAMPLE.
The quick and easiest way to find people for your
business is to use a retained search firm. The main problem with
this is that they are expensive (with fees sometimes running anywhere
between 30% to 50% of the candidates first year's salary). Since
you're operating as a start-up, you need to conserve cash. Here
is a list of some other less expensive ways to find prospective
hires:
A. Internet posting sites:
B. Professional societies:
Many professional societies, like the American Society For Mechanical
Engineers (ASME),
maintain a list of resumes of members looking for jobs. Here are
some other sites:
C. Career placement offices at colleges and
universities
D. Services Firms
like your accounting auditors and/or legal firms will have resumes
given to them by former clients who are looking for new jobs.
It is always a good idea to periodically check in with the partners
in these firms to check over the resumes they have.
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