Help Your Portfolio with Modern Recruitment Strategies

Talent acquisition strategies have changed, but many businesses still go about hiring in a traditional way, such as collecting applications on a job posting. Today’s recruiters use new skills to attract the right candidates, especially when it comes to sales. PE firms and Venture Capitalists who want their funded businesses to be successful know where and when to outsource their recruiting efforts.

Brand awareness and sales are essential to a start-up’s success. However, while some businesses focus on the product, most go into hiring talent to help with their Go-To-Market launch.

Innovative venture capital firms are now providing more than funding. They’re also providing recruiting services through vetted and trusted firms. They know that to build a successful portfolio requires skilled sales and marketing talent to bolster sales strategies, branding, and product launch campaigns to ensure their companies scale faster. VCs and PEs deploying the same sales model throughout their portfolio can use similar recruiting strategies to increase the success of their portfolio.

Why VCs Should Use Recruiters to Help Companies in Their Portfolio

When funding a start-up, it’s easy to let the company take over hiring, but does it set you up for success? Most private equity and venture capitalist firms don’t always get involved in hiring, but if they were to recruit the right people for their start-ups, they’re likely to see sales and marketing teams fill up quickly. Only then can a start-up start to gain more visibility and conversions that ultimately allow you to 3x, 5x or 10x the company.

Much like marketing has turned to leveraging an account-based marketing model (ABM), so has job recruitment, particularly for sales. Venture capital and private equity firms should use external help from recruitment agencies to reach top talent quickly – with the right targeted messaging approach.

Successful recruiting isn’t just a hiring manager clicking through online applications. Top talent also doesn’t submit online applications. Instead, VC firms need to build a repeatable and scalable process for hiring top talent for their portfolio companies.

Hiring is the top problem after funding.

Who do you hire to help your start-up get off the ground? You may think it’s as easy as putting a job posting on Facebook, but it’s actually not so simple if you want to hire the person who can take on the role and responsibilities to accelerate your business growth. Sales recruiting should be a part of a venture capitalist’s process to onboarding a new start-up.

When you hire a recruitment team, you’re gaining much more than a hiring manager. First of all, recruiters have strategies to find and secure the top talent. It can be a huge burden for a start-up to find the right people. It’s time-consuming and unrewarding, and much of that can be attributed to using older online job applications, instead of new tactics.

Another issue is that start-ups often have founders or a single person handling multiple functions, such as talent acquisition. Will this person really know what to look for in a top web developer, sales leader, or marketing specialist? A recruitment team has several members who specialize in finding these types of talent, which expedites the process and makes it easier to find the exact candidates you want to interview.

How Recruiters Help VC Firms Find Talent

Finding and engaging the right candidates is the goal of every recruitment agency. Through sourcing tools, referrals, extensions, and connections, recruiters are able to recruit top talent even if they weren’t interested in a new position.

One of the biggest advantages of working with a recruiting partner as a VC or PE firm, is that you now have a dedicated resource and team of consultants who know the characteristics, traits, and skills you’re looking for and can make small tweaks as needed for each company.

The second greatest benefit is that you will have the ability to access more candidates. Working with a recruiting agency means that your team has access to a huge network of talent. This is key for start-up organizations that don’t have as much brand awareness or market exposure as the competing top firms in their industry do. Most of the candidates presented from a recruiting agency are passively entertaining opportunities and not active on the job market. Ultimately, this means that you have the best opportunity to fill a role with the perfect candidate.

Finding the Right Candidates

Recruitment agencies know that their primary job is to find a candidate who is right for the position. It’s not about quantity. In this case, you want to find the people who will take on the challenge of a start-up and lead the way. You can filter out all of the subpar candidates just by working with a recruiter who understands the skills you’re looking for.

Quickly Locate the Best Talent

You can spend tons of money trying to advertise your available roles. As your role stays open for so long, you’ll spend more money and time trying to find anyone suitable for the role. However, recruitment agencies are on the clock, connecting you to the right person in their network. This speedy recruitment is especially important if you need a critical hire or an urgent contract.

Tap Into Recruiter’s Intel

Recruitment agencies have worked with thousands of companies and candidates, learning all about their skills and companies they’ve worked for. It’s easy to spot the right talent when you have that kind of knowledge. Agencies typically have departments where recruiters specialize in finding sales talent for specific industries. Perhaps you’re looking for a skilled software salesperson or you want to hire a marketing leader who has launched new products successfully in the past. These types of talent can quickly be pinpointed and sent over for you to review.

Schedule an Interview Tomorrow

Wouldn’t it be awesome to talk to the exact candidate you’ve been looking for tomorrow? Recruitment agencies have the speed and knowledge to ease your workflow and make it easier for your start-up’s internal team to hire the right person. When you have a role that’s hard to fill, recruiters can spend all of their time finding this person. That frees up time for your team to focus on what they do best. Everyone’s workload becomes easier to manage this way.

Don’t Run Out of Money Hiring Talent

Funding a start-up is risky today. There are a variety of digital companies looking for talented people, but they don’t have the expertise in finding the right person for the role. Over 1 in 4 startups fail because they run out of money, and typically that’s because sales and marketing specialists weren’t considered a top priority in hiring.

Both the start-up founders and VC backers need to invest in the success of the business by looking at people who will support it. That’s why many VC firms are connecting companies in their portfolio with recruitment tools and services to solve for their biggest needs.

VC and Private Equity investors put many hours into their investment decisions and portfolio companies. The research guiding these investments is critical in choosing the right companies to invest in. Once an acquisition has been made, they all agree that hiring is a critical step for their success. If hiring is just as critical, then the market research required to find top talent can only be done by industry leading recruitment firms. These firms offer the insight, information and recommendations required for portfolio companies to learn about the market and compete to find and hire great talent. Working with the right recruitment partner that can provide the resources to build a sustainable growth strategy, these portfolio companies will be headed in the right direction for achieving 10x revenues.