About the author: Christian is an experienced talent acquisition leader in the Silicon Valley community, having worked with companies like EA, Twitter, Yelp, Zynga, Adknowledge and many more. His specialty has been in the technical recruiting space and has won multiple nationally recognized awards as well as contributed to TechCrunch, HRP and more related to HR and talent acquisition topics. He is now the CEO of Kansas City-based Briefcase, powered by Cobrapps, which is a product that aims to be the Kayak of job searching for colleges up and down the Midwest.
Since coming to Kansas City, I often get asked how the area stacks up to the valley. My answer is simple: This city reminds me of the valley six years ago. The biggest thing missing is the influx of talent. We are in an age with startups popping up like daisies and companies going public at a rate faster than what we have seen in almost a decade, where talented individuals have the upper hand over the businesses. The Kansas City startup community is struggling to locate and convince that talent to move to this area. So how do startups attract talent from outside the area?
When I joined Kansas City-based Adknowledge, it became immediately clear to me talent was needed but we simply could not compete with geography and coastal cities to get that talent. After working with startups my entire career back home, I learned everyone has an entrepreneur in them. It’s a matter of finding that “pressure point” to loosen them up out of their chair to explore new opportunities. So let’s look at two important things you need to know and do to make you and your startup more attractive to talent on a global scale:
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1. Know your competition. Too often founders secure the funding, take a look at the landscape of their team and figure “if we get the injection of capital, talent will come.” That unfortunately is no longer true as companies are securing capital every day and from all over. Knowing what the competition is doing in your space helps to stay on top of trends that will make it easier to plan your strategy of where to go and who to talk to. Free resources companies can use are all around: resources like Chubby Brain Insights, a real-time public platform that showcases IPOs, acquisitions, mergers, layoffs, product releases, etc. Chubby Brain provides the startup with an opportunity to see what big moves are happening in the space and, as a result, make them more informed of who might now be looking to move on or jump ship.
2. Use back channels to communicate. LinkedIn, recruiters, friends of friends and job boards are the most common ways startups look for talent. In the valley we used a variety of different resources companies here are just not aware of. Take Angel.co for example, which provides a place to market your jobs at no cost to a community of strictly startup-minded individuals. The site has networking and communication tools that allow you to let talent know you like what you see from their profile and you want to talk to them about an opportunity. It’s also a great way for you to showcase your company to a larger untapped talent pool that recognizes the hustle and shuffle of a startup. Another one of my favorites is “The Muse,” which enables companies at virtually no cost to showcase themselves in a way that highlights an awesome culture, plus it throws profiles right next to companies like Yahoo! or Google, which shows talented individuals you are to be taken seriously. My favorite job board, VentureLoop, is fairly unknown to the KC community. VL is a hot board in the valley because only startups that have secured funding from an accredited angel or VC can use the board. Traditionally, it’s structured in a way that once you set up your company account, you would include an email address and phone number for one of your investors for verification purposes. Once they are able to validate the funding, you are off to the races and reaching people who live to work for startups.
Working with young talent as well is a huge deal. We should always focus on farming locally grown talent from our schools here, but don’t limit yourself. I worked with an accelerated programming school called HackBright Academy in the valley. The school is a 10-week fellowship for women wanting to turn basic coding principals into something more. With resources like this, you are able to focus your sights on talent that may not be the 5-7 years we would all love to see on a resume, but what you get is exposure and an opportunity to work with “students” who are hungry to learn and be a part of our startup community. In addition, relocation and less-than-Google pay are not a problem as they are the type of talent looking to come in and make a splash for whatever opportunity comes there way. I know because some of my talent acquisition teams have successfully followed this model.
