How to find & hire the best candidates in the UK?

Should I hire friends or my network?

If you have anyone in your network that you know personally who you think is in the top 2% of what they do, I would try to hire them immediately. Ideally, they are acquaintances but not your best friends. We have hired & worked with friends in the past. With people you know, the risk that they have the right skills, mindset and work ethic is greatly de-risked, but it can change things. If the person is in the top 2% of what they do, then your quality of friendship will likely fall a little whilst working together (especially if you are unequal in the same hierarchy), but they will deliver great work & you can remain friends. If the person is in the bottom 80% of what they do, it may well not work out and your friendship may be ruined. I have seen both outcomes.

Should I hire for this role at all?

I think a useful test when deciding whether to hire is to evaluate how you would measure success in the role using a number. Usually, I think the number that you should judge against will be revenue. So, does this role increase our revenue? I avoid hiring non-revenue-generating roles as much as possible. There are stages in a company’s growth (e.g. a freemium model or similar) where the metric should perhaps be users or partners instead of direct revenue, but usually I would ask, will hiring this person increase our revenue or not?

How to hire the best people in the UK?

The best places to get volumes of candidates are:

• LinkedIn Jobs
• Indeed
• Reed.co.uk
• Jumpstart
• Welcome to the Jungle (formerly Otta)
• Cord
• Traditional recruiters

Of these seven, I would use Jumpstart, Cord, Welcome to the Jungle and traditional recruiters. Jumpstart, Cord & Welcome to the Jungle are more verticalised around startups, which means people are looking to work at early stage companies, rather than big corporates. This is very important as hiring people with big company mindsets usually doesn’t work in the early stages of a startup.

Cord, Jumpstart & Otta all have great digital platforms. Jumpstart, in particular, specialises in junior to mid-level generalist roles, marketing, sales and software engineering hires. Click here to connect with the Jumpstart team.

I used to try to avoid traditional recruiters as the fees of 10-20% of first year salary can be prohibitive, however, they have led us to most of our hires at Novabook, even if you try to avoid them because of cost.

How to test if a candidate will be good at the job?

I would write out what you would expect the candidate to spend their week doing. I would then focus on the single task that will take up the most of their time and design a take-home task that perfectly imitates this process. Usually hiring processes struggle when someone has a broad role, and your task is surface-level or doesn’t reflect the day-to-day work that will happen. Doing a rigorous (1-3 hour task) that imitates the job allows candidates to see what the work at the company will be like, but also allows you to see if the output is as you would expect. Avoid broad job descriptions or broad tasks and focus on the one thing that is done in detail that matters the most. Tasks also test motivation. A lot of candidates drop out of a process at the task stage, which is another good indicator that they weren’t right for the role.

How to make a job offer?

Before signing a contract, send a written offer letter which says that the offer is subject to references and usual employment checks. I used to think this step was boilerplate, but if you sign a contract, then do references, if the references expose major issues, you are still contractually obliged to employ the person. Instead follow this process:

1. Send offer letter (including salary, start date, etc.)
2. Do references, criminal background checks, etc. 
3. Then sign the contract