What Is The Toughest Challenge For An Entrepreneur?

For me it has to be, hands down, finding the right team.

Let’s face it, an awesome team can make an average product a winner, and an average team can make the great product a looser. Therefore, find the right person for the job is extremely important!

The problems of recruiting start right at the source, i.e. screening of resources. We use/used various platforms for this – Naukri, LinkedIn, our own website, manpower consulting companies, employee referrals and recruitment drives. Let me try to tell you about the pros and cons of each system that we have experienced.

Online Job Listing Sites such as Naukri.com
Pros:

1. Has a huge database; it claims to have more than 50 million registered job seekers!
2. Is an old company, hence the trust factor becomes important.
3. Improvement in the customer service, it had deteriorated a while back

Cons:

1. The system is outdated, yes, it’s the same offering since quite some time now.
2. Pricing is for a pack of 10+ jobs, nothing less than that.
3. UI/UX of their application is pretty crap and most of the resumes are also in the doc format, there are no guidelines for resume submissions, not much automation in the system (as it seems)
4. The validity of these jobs expires, so you need to use your 10 jobs irrespective of the fact whether you got your candidate in your first post or the tenth.

LinkedIn
Pros:

1. Brings in the degree of separation via the social factor
2. Makes more sense for experienced hires, as freshers/recent grads usually do not have a LinkedIn profile (though I have seen a change in the trend)

Cons:

1. LinkedIn has become the new Facebook, and the social aspect is clearly not the strength it was when it started. People have started using it to pat their own backs.
2. LinkedIn has become expensive, when it started it was more affordable with Rs. 1700/- per job posting, not the model has changed to a more advertising-based model.

Manpower Consulting Companies
Pros:

1. Takes the burden away from you for sourcing the candidates.
2. There is a replacement clause in the agreement in case your relationship does not work out (which is a huge plus)

Cons:

1. The databases used are again Naukri and its likes, you have to choose your poison by settling for the 10-post package or 7-10% of the CTC of the candidate selected
2. The Manpower consulting personnel are not equipped to handle and match multiple skill sets.
3. Very basic screening is done, there is no way to find the actual competence in a skill-set.

Your own website
Pros

1. You do not have to pay anyone for this
2. Someone who is genuinely interested in your company would apply in this case
3. The candidate chose you instead of the other way around

Cons

1. Getting organic traffic on your website is a different ballgame altogether
2. Considerable effort and money is spent behind to scenes to generate traffic on your website
3. You need to have a lead generation funnel on your website

Referrals
Pros

1. These are generally good

Cons

1.  You end up creating a group culture, for small companies, this might not be the best strategy
2. Too few and far in between

Placement Drives
Pros

1. Able to go through multiple candidates in 1 go, therefore a bigger set to choose from
2. You build relationships with institutes
3. You can find outliers via this practice

Cons

1. It is a time-consuming process, thereby keeping you and your team away from work for pretty much the whole day
2. Does not make sense for smaller companies at all

Having presented the above, we found out that the unmet needs in the recruiting space are as follows:

1. A consolidated place having the applicant’s information along with their competence in real skills required for a job position
2. The system needs to be able to test the candidate on a consistent basis
3. Should be mobile based
4. Should add more value to the user of the application
5. Should present the users the ability to make a specific community

Having kept these basic requirements in mind, we set out to create a product in this niche space, after a lot of trial and error, A/B testing (this is rather continuous), we came out with myQs – the Micro-Learning app for Technologists.
We have been using the same for our recruitment along with 12 other companies. We have saved at least Rs.10,000 per candidate that we have hired using the platform.

If you feel that you are on the same boat and feel that the existing talent acquisition techniques do not fit the bill, do get in touch with us at https://myqs.app/contact/ and our representatives will be in touch.