Your tech startup has just received its first round of funding and you’ve been given the go-ahead to scale. It’s the decision you and your team have been dreaming about and it’s finally here. By all means, celebrate your success but come Monday the real fun (chaos) begins. The nature of investment means your product/project delivery times will come under the microscope, so notwithstanding the need for a bigger (cooler) office, a “Friday afternoon breakout area” or a need to hire more people for the operational side of the business, you need to hire more IT resources e.g. Developers. How are you going to do it? Freelancers of course. However, in the fairness of debate let’s deal with what I consider to be an unnecessary and somewhat distorted opinion of freelancers. "Freelancers..."[FILL IN THE BLANK] · Cost more money than permanent employees · Don't enhance company culture · Remove the option for skills to stay in-house when they leave We can go on and on...I get it, I really do, but to support these opinions is to ignore the current context and objectives of your start-up. The fact you’ve got funding means someone believes in your business. You must repay this faith by ensuring they get a return on their investment. To put it simply, you must deliver a marketable product. While you may argue (fairly) that this is perfectly achievable and not time restrictive enough to have to take on Freelancers, you need to also consider how hard it is to hire experienced permanent IT employees. So why Freelancers? 1. Efficiency - The No.1 issue facing startups is the hiring of great talent. I’m sure you've got an excellent product and it’s essential to believe in the success/growth of your company. However, consider the associated downside of joining a startup. If you've just purchased a new property, relocated countries or started a family for instance, then the following factors are going to work against, rather than for you: · Low employee numbers · The uncertainty of future investment · A small IT development team · A low public profile The advantage of the Freelance solution is that it can be scaled up or down. It gives you the freedom to hire people immediately, but the temporary nature of their appointment keeps your decision making flexible. Additionally, your decision to hire permanent employees can then be more reflective of quality rather than just time. The efficiency of flexible freelance contracts means you also benefit from: · Short term notice periods · Flexible working hours · Longer payment terms 2. Financial Responsibility - Having just received funding you're technically flush with cash. However, miss a couple of deadlines and hire the wrong permanent employees and you're in the throes of a cash flow crisis. Hiring Freelancers gives you greater control of the balance sheet: [y Freelancers] x [y hours] x [y weeks] = Controlled expenditure Remember to be fair to the company. I support the theoretical 3-year business plan but it's the rolling 90-day plan that aligns with the reality of your business. You have a responsibility to permanent employees, where hereby promising long-term job security/L&D investment and then not delivering, will undoubtedly lead to in-house cultural issues as well as public relation problems. The last thing that any startup wants to be doing, is making people redundant due to cash flow issues. You might not come back from this. 3. Culture - Hiring Freelancers gives you access to talent that otherwise wouldn't be available. Their CV’s are inundated with startup/scaleup companies and projects that describe the use of the latest technologies. Hiring managers constantly talk about the positive impact that these Freelancers have on their team and the lack of management they require. They will give you your time back to focus on core related tasks. To look at it from another perspective, you’re ideally looking to attract permanent employees and what does a permanent member of staff want from a career change??? "MANAGER, I'd like to work with…” [FILL IN BLANK] · Cutting edge technology · A large, experienced Development team · A company that has TIME for me to develop and train me · Mentors The impact of hiring freelancers - Freelancers will enhance the efficiency of your projects and give you more time to focus on other areas of the business. - Freelancers will give you greater control of your financial expenditure, leading to a more secure future for the business. - Freelancers will positively affect company culture. A culture that will then attract more permanent employees. If you're currently planning the growth of your startup and would like some recruitment advice, then feel free to drop me a message for a free consultation call. If you found this article useful, I'd really appreciate you liking or sharing the post to help spread the word!

The Negotiation Norm The negotiation stage is unarguably one of the most important parts of the application process. As the employer, you want to be careful not to overspend or cause rifts within the existing team by paying too much. From the candidate’s perspective, you want the best deal possible and to be paid well for the value you provide. This can cause challenges for both sides and in my opinion, so many companies out there could be doing this way better. Just imagine it from a candidate perspective for a second. You apply for your dream role. The company's great, location is easy and the role sounds perfect. You clearly state your desired salary at the start of the process (for the purpose of this example, let’s say 65-70K) and the company invites you for an interview. You nail it, spend hours on the subsequent technical assignment and that gets the nod of approval. Finally, you get to the last stage and the company decides to make you an offer. You've been building up to this moment for weeks, remembering the role ticks all your boxes, and then the offer comes through. It is 64K. Yes, it's only 1k less than the minimum but as a candidate you were hoping for more, after all you did say 65-70K! Why managing expectations is so important How is the candidate feeling at this moment? In one word, deflated. Their balloon of excitement has been well and truly popped. Remember, the decision for any candidate to apply for a new job is mainly logical. But as the process nears its end, emotions have a much greater part to play. The candidate in this example has gone from sheer excitement at the start of the process to now feeling like they've been short-changed at the final moment. On top of this, they now face a tough decision; do they begrudgingly accept the offer or face the awkwardness of negotiating and the risk of losing their dream role? There's a chance they may feel anger towards the company after they felt they were clear from the beginning when it came to salary demands. Even if the rest of the application process has been amazing, as humans, we're way more likely to remember how we feel at the end of an experience rather than the start (immediately after a roller-coaster ride, you remember the feeling of elation at the end, not the nervousness beforehand). This means that by negotiating at the end of the process, the company has turned an enthusiastic candidate into someone feeling disgruntled. Whether the candidate takes the offer in this example or not isn't the point, your aim as a company in hiring mode is to have candidates finishing your interview's feeling that was the best application process ever and if possible, loving the company (even more) come the end. So how do you achieve this and be able to negotiate? There is a better way The two key factors when it comes to managing the negotiation phase are managing each others expectations early on in the process and not hitting anyone with a nasty surprise right at the end! Some ideas to prevent this include: Have clear salary brackets for each role and communicate these to the candidate right at the start of the process. If the candidate is asking more than your company structure allows, discuss it now, not later. Create opportunities to discuss salary expectations at different parts of the application process. Once you've completed the first interview, if the candidate's knowledge & experience isn't adequate for their salary demands within your company structure, have that conversation. Again, it stops any nasty surprises later down the line and a good candidate will appreciate the honesty now rather than wasting hours of their time only to disappoint at the end. //Another great opportunity is after technical assignment stage. Employ fairness within your negotiating phase. If a candidate has been clear from the start with their salary expectations, these demands are doable within the current pay structure and their interview process backs-up these demands, don't try and low ball that person at the end of the process just to save a couple of thousand for the hiring budget. Yes, you've made a short term saving, but for what in return? //The candidate might now not even take your offer (think of all the time wasted) or does but now has a bad taste in their mouth. //Are they now spreading the word when it comes to your brand or telling all their friends (who could now be potential hiring targets) how crap it was that they had to come down on salary? That 2k saving could come back to bite! In Summary Have a clear salary structure for each vacancy and know what a candidate needs to achieve within that banding to achieve their desired salary - make sure this is communicated to the candidate early on! Don't leave salary negotiation to the end of the process - instead have the conversation throughout the process so that everyone knows where they stand and expectations are managed. Don't try and low ball candidates at the eleventh hour just to save a few Euros! It could cost you a lot more in the long run!

The world of freelancing is more competitive than ever, and it is becoming clear in the Netherlands that there is a supply surplus for freelance developers. You only have to look at the job boards or speak to a hiring manager to know that for most freelance roles, clients will receive approaches from a plethora of agencies, each with their own candidates. That is without even mentioning the approaches from consultancies. This high level of supply means that one of the objections I hear regularly when approaching clients is: “You’re all dealing with the same candidates; whenever we’re in the market we just end up getting the same profile from numerous different agencies.” Firstly, if yours is the profile in question, congratulations. You have clearly got a badass CV and it is a nice ego boost to have agencies fighting over you. However, is this really helping you? Recently, I picked up a requirement with a client and phoned one of my “go-to” guys who ticks all the boxes (let us call him Joost). I explained the role in detail to Joost, we looked through the client’s website together and decided to progress the application. Everything was looking good, until that dreaded response. “Sorry, we’ve already received this CV from another agency, so we won’t be progressing.” How could this be possible? Joost had never heard of this company before our call, further to that he had never even applied to a role in that city before. Surely a simple fix, right? We will call the client, explain the situation, and book in the interview. However, clients are becoming understandably bored with being caught in the middle of two agencies battling over a candidate. So, they are starting to say, “look, it’s not worth the hassle, we’ve got other candidates in the process so let's focus on them.” Suddenly, Joost is discounted for a job through no fault of his own. So, what can you do as a candidate to avoid this? One thing I hear more and more regularly from freelancers is “I’ve got a number of applications out, but I don’t actually know where my CV has gone.” To me, this does not make any sense. How do you know if that role is suitable for you when you do not know basic details about it? I know some recruitment agencies are cagey and won’t give you their client’s name on the initial submission but you should always try to note down some details about the role so that you can keep a log for future conversations i.e., Specific Location, Industry, Duration, Technologies. That way if two agencies approach you about a Freelance .NET Position with a Green Energy Company in Oosterhout, then there is a 99% chance it is the same client. What can you do as a hiring manager to avoid this? Firstly, I totally understand your predicament. You have a day job to do and recruitment is only a small % of that. You do not want to spend even more time playing judge and jury to two agencies fighting over a CV. One simple thing I would suggest is holding your agencies to account by asking for a receipt of representation. A receipt of representation is a simple email from the candidate along the lines of “I can confirm that has permission to process my application with ”. If you ask your agencies to supply a receipt of representation alongside the CV when they initially submit it, this will completely eradicate the issue. You will also be able to quickly identify the agencies who speculatively send CVs without having first spoken to the candidate. There should be no excuse for an agency not to do this. It takes 2 minutes to complete and ensures that a candidate is aware of their application and the sharing of their details is GDPR compliant. The elephant in the room I am not trying to point the finger at the candidates or the clients in this scenario. This is undoubtedly a problem caused by recruiters adopting poor practices and treating people’s CVs like SPAM. But instead of complaining about it and seeing good candidates miss out on jobs for no reason, let us start putting some simple steps in place to hold the cowboys to account.

Applying for a new job? The first thing you need to do is make sure your CV stands out from the crowd. While a well-presented CV arguably isn't as valuable as an awesome GitHub repo or smashing a technical test, it's usually the first thing that recruiters and hiring managers will see so it's essential to get it right. According to a study by theladders.com the average time someone spends reading a CV is just 6.25 seconds (about the same mount of time as it took you to read the paragraph before this). Crazy, right? To ensure you're making a good impression your CV needs to grab attention, fast. Here are some tips on how to do this: Visual Appeal You need to immediately engage the reader. The first thing your reader needs to decide is the relevance of your CV so you must ensure that this information is easy to find. Always include a Technical Summary of the programming languages, technology and tools that you have experience with towards the start of your CV so that the reader is immediately presented with the reasons why you're a match for the job. Infographics are a great way to make this information pop off the page but keep them simple. If you choose to use them, ensure the information remains easy to find! A key piece of advice is to make sure that your headings stand out so that your CV is easy to navigate and therefore easy to scan for information. Content There's no point in having a pretty CV if it doesn't contain enough information. However, let's face it: a wall of text will likely be met with "tl;dr". Remember that relevancy is the key to engaging your reader so it's a good idea to give yourself a 2-page limit. Personally, when writing my own CV, I found this difficult until I asked myself: "Is this information going to influence the reader to invite me to an interview?" Beyond your personal details, the key pieces of content you should include are: Technical summary Relevant work experience (Company, Dates, Job Role, Achievements, Tech Used) Education Links to your GitHub profile / Portfolio / Projects you're proud of, etc. In an ideal world you should try and tailor your CV to each vacancy you apply for, providing more information on your expertise in the specific areas that the company is looking for. Looking for a quick hack? Highlight specific keywords in your CV that match the job description. To Summarise The current economic climate means that there are more candidates applying for fewer vacancies so now more than ever you need to ensure that your CV is on point. First impressions are everything and due to the volume of applications that recruiters and hiring managers will receive the reality is that a book will be judged by its cover. Make sure that your CV is visually appealing, easy to read, and only contains information that is relevant to the vacancy you are applying for to stand out from the crowd.