How can Startups Build a Strong Engineering Team?

For a start-up, building a strong tech team may be hard. Finding the right technical people is challenging because of limitations on size, compensation, location, brand name etc. So, cracking startup recruitment is not quite a cakewalk. When you build your startup from the ground above, you need a strong tech team that can help you grow. Here’s what you can do?

Setting the Right Foundation: Engineering Recruitment Plan

It doesn’t matter whether you are the startup founder, or someone responsible for building the core team. You find yourself in a challenging situation because the technical people don’t want to bear the toil of management. They would instead take “technical decisions.” This can sometimes make the team-building exercise difficult. Hence, it would be best to have experienced partners who can dance the delicate trot of people and products. Or, you could build your founding team with specific roles. The right people by your side from the very start can help develop a very efficient tech team.

Build a Promise for the Team

Remember, when candidates apply at a startup, they also evaluate your startup and their prospects as much as you test their skills. They need to see that there is a promising career ahead for them in your startup. The simplest way to ensure that there’s something for everyone is to start small. Weigh your needs against the wants. You may want 50 people, but do you need all of them right now? Keeping the staff size tight will help you compensate them better and cut out a career path for them to find you more inclusive.

Decide on the team composition

When building a startup tech team, experts recommend that you keep it cross-functional. Break it down into smaller groups, not over three, not including the manager. Have a manager/supervisor for each group. Three is a good number to have structured communication and reduce the risk of isolation. Typically for engineering teams, one staff-level engineer, three senior engineers, and four engineers led by an engineering manager/principal engineer make a good start. Encourage the team leads to mentor and train their subordinates to boost team dynamics and accountability.

Automate the startup recruitment system

Finding top-notch tech talent for your startup is a cost and time-consuming process. And startup recruitment can become an expensive affair if you don’t do it right. Moving to an automated process can bring remarkable results. With a state-of-the-art, AI-driven recruitment and hiring software that has advanced tech assessment tools, you can identify the right skills, and assess them using automated tests, and reach data-driven results. It is not only timesaving but yields in the better evaluation of candidates, finding the people you need.

In a startup, things will always change. With right recruitment of people, you would have managed the teething problem of a startup and grow it into a successful enterprise.

Tags: Recruitment, startup, startup recruitment, tech team