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Hiring The Right Talent for Your Startup.

Posted on by Laxmi Hamal

Finding the right talent, recruiting, Hiring new employees is a crucial part of a startup’s growth. As the new hire plays a crucial part in shaping the organization. Thus it is very important to find the best candidates for the role in your organization. 

Hiring the best candidate is hard for any organization & business, but it’s equally hard for startups. Startups have to continuously and actively look for potential employees for their organization. In spite of the hundreds of options available, it can be difficult for a highly qualified candidate to choose your start-up.            

If you are wondering what could be the best ways to hire employees for the startup then here are a few points to consider.

Manage the applicants.

If you are advertising the job through the right platform with the right job description, you’ll get a larger number of applicants than ever and this will create issues during the hiring process. Many great candidates slipped and mails got lost, delayed in response from both sides, attachments buried and a few papers have been misplaced. And in the meantime, there is a huge chance of losing the potential candidate. It is advised to keep track of all these things in software so even in the future if something misplaces things will have the chance to get found. 

Look beyond resumes.

As a startup, you may be in search of an experienced or highly potential candidate. Well looking only on the resumes and deciding about the candidates in and out is just not right. Applicants in the world of digitization are present on different media platforms and update about their life and work. There are high chances of the applicants not mentioning everything on their resume. Linkedin is one such platform where most of the employees update about their work and work-related stories be it personal projects or professional projects. Emphasizing the candidate’s capabilities about the practical skill testing. Ensure that the candidate is willing to learn and ready to put in the effort. Because the person with the knowledge but without willingness is a waste of sources and time to hire. who doesn’t show enthusiasm about the work?

Remote Staff:

Since the world is moving to Hybrid working opportunities, some companies are still sticking it to the work-from-home opportunities to their employees. Hiring remote staff opens up a vast amount of talent that may not be present in the location you are present. Offering remote working opportunities attracts the best talents with no additional cost. For the candidate, the availability of remote opportunities saves them from the hassle of relocations. If you think remote work doesn’t work then you can switch to the Hybrid plan.

Unique Incentives:

It is good to know the tastes and preferences of your employees in advance so that you can give them the incentives based on their likes. Example Branded clothing, there are always t-shirts, coffee mugs, bags, water bottles given by the organizations and we all love such goodies don’t we?

Premiums/Subscriptions: if your employee is a nerd or loves streaming or loves music then it’s perfect to give the subscriptions and premiums of Netflix, Amazon, kindle unlimited, and Spotify. 

Plants: If any employee is obsessed with gardening and loves to be in nature or loves decorating their spaces then plants would be the perfect gift.

Book a Month: Any book worms? then you can offer the subscriptions to them from https://magicpin.in/blog/book-subscription-box-india/ 

Yoga Classes:  offering yoga classes to employees would be a really great reward since it helps them focus on the hectic schedules.

Music Lessons:  Has any of your teammates wanted to play piano, ukulele, or violin? Sign them up for the local music school and encourage their personal interest.

Encourage Wearing many hats:


Once you hire the right and potential candidate, do you think that your job is done? Encourage the candidate to take several opportunities with different and interesting work. Never discourage and say the words that you are not capable enough to take up that work. A bit of trust is all you need when you are offering new opportunities to the candidates. If it’s the other way around then the capable candidate might lose the confidence he has for himself. Empower your team to always be multi-talented and work in all the fields that interest them. Never ever discourage them to take up the project and lead it. If they are capable you should give them the chance and guidance about the project then they will definitely give better results.

Interview and the questions that need to be asked:

It’s always difficult to hire the right talent and it’s too difficult to know what kind of questions to ask the candidates. It is not about the skills they have but, sometimes more or less it’s about the Natural Human tendency to know what kind of a person he/she might be & How well one can manage the things.

Few Interview questions need to be asked when hiring.
1. I have read your CV but tell me about your story.

2. Tell me about the hardest moment and how you overcome it.

3. One achievement of yours that you are proud of.

4. What motivates you.

5. What are your strengths and weaknesses?

6. What’s the biggest mistake you make?

7. What’s one thing that people have misunderstood about you?

8. How do you decide what to do next in your life?

9. What did you like about our organization?

10. Any questions for me?

How to make a decision on what your brand stands for and what it doesn’t.

Posted on by Analog

A lot of brands have no idea what they stand for. They keep thinking that if they keep pushing out new products, they are doing the right thing for their brand. But this is not the case. What you need to do is make sure that you are communicating your brand’s values. You need to make sure that you are consistent and that your customers know what to expect from you. This blog will take a look at these things and will show you how you can pick up on the subtle cues to understand what your brand stands for.

There are a number of reasons why this is important, but one of the biggest is that it helps you handle crisis situations. When something goes wrong, it’s important to outline the story as clearly as possible. This blog will look at how you can outline what your brand stands for and doesn’t stand for.

Let’s see what affect your decision as a brands

Archetype

Archetypes are like the heart of a brand. They convey meaning and tell the story behind a brand so that customers can begin to relate to it or as if it was something real. Archetypes help define brands by giving them specific properties and characteristics which will give the brand a personality in the eyes of your customers. Using archetypes for branding allows you to show people what you have to offer by creating stories and scenarios that reflect what your company does so they can get closer to you and end up caring about what you do.

Types of arcetype

Brand archetype

Innocent

Sage

Explorer

Outlaw

Magician

Hero

Lover

Jester

Everyman

Caregiver

Ruler

Creator

Read more about archetypes.

Let’s see an example to understand how archetypes work –

Nike

When you hear the word Nike what do you think of? Do you feel inspired or empowered? Nike sells more than sportswear and gear; they’ve also built a brand around a certain kind of lifestyle called the Greek Hero. This concept empowers their customers to live up to their best selves by having the drive to achieve goals, take on challenges and give themselves a chance at greatness. In other words, as they say, “Just do it.” And for those interested in tall tales about gods – I suppose their branding could be considered very ***-like since they are #16 on Fortune magazine’s list of best global companies (source).

Hero

Wonder Woman, Nelson Mandela, the Olympics and the Red Cross are all great examples of the Hero archetype. Heroes surmount challenges that seek to undermine their or their community’s stability and want to make a difference in this big world we live in. The Hero strives where challenges await being courageous enough to do something about it when there is conflict. For example, they may take up arms on battlefields, on the court or within politics among other places but will do what they need to restore peace and harmony.

Nike’s Use of the Hero

“The company’s central mission is to understand and inspire the soul of the athlete, and its current slogan “Just do it,” promotes the heroic virtue of the courage to act.” – Mark and Pearson, The Hero & The Outlaw

How archetype helps in decision making

Marketing

Brand archetypes create concrete marketing strategies, powerful word-of-mouth campaigns, killer product updates and more by uncovering what resonates with your brand. For example – When using the archetypal hero as a marketing tool for all their advertisements, Nike’s strategy is to allow the public to see themselves as heroes with the qualities of famous athletes. By deploying images of both famous athletes and everyday people in their ads, Nike has been able to advertise to an audience who feels they share similar heroic qualities that are admired by others.

Voice & Tone

Archetype is the choice of style. There are many choices in the literary world – from the cold, precise “Scientific” to the easygoing tone of the “New Age” with its multicoloured, sometimes childlike iconography. And in between is a variety of options. For example, Nike chose to be a hero and it also reflects in their voice and tone like By pitting the customer (positioned as the Hero) against physical odds, Nike empowers them to triumph over any struggle they encounter. More importantly, Nike’s been able to help the customer triumph over internal struggles as well. By positioning their products to synonymously represent the overcoming of obstacles, Nike’s ability to empower customers to get off the couch and onto the pavement.

Keeping momentum

Brands can choose to ignore the negativity but sometimes ignoring it may make things even worse. If the situation is too big to ignore, responding to it properly is not only important but it’s also vital to the brand’s survival. Responding to negative situations should be done quickly but carefully. And how to responds to this situation, voice, a tone that reflects your brand and connect with your audience depends on o your archetype. For example – Nike on Corona situations, typically using the themes of determination, inspiration, and performance. Nike has capitalized on times when activity levels for various lifestyles across global communities have been disrupted due to climate change. At a time when everyone’s day-to-day activity has been disrupted – including both global athletes and humble joggers – Nike has created a campaign that aims to unite us all in our ‘new normal’. The ‘Play for the World’ campaign, created by Wieden + Kennedy, reinforces the message that we must all do our bit for the world and ‘play inside’.

Why your brand story matters & simple ways to tell it?

Posted on by Analog

Let’s first understand what a brand story is, most people think of the brand story as a brand’s history, how it started. They are not entirely wrong, these can be essential parts of your brand story. However, your brand story should be much bigger.

The questions ” Who are you?” can be either be very simple or complex, depending on what philosophy you want to convey. A good brand story is enough to tell what are your core values, mission, vision, it is a narrative that passes facts and feelings created by your brand. A story must inspire an emotional reaction.

Brand story telling

Brand story telling is just a fancy term for what is brand is all about, how it will behave in certain circumstances. For example you started your company 10 years before, so it is quite possible the circumstances are changed but your core values are still same. So conveying your core values through story is brand story telling.

It’s different from traditional marketing, where you just be neutral and sell your products. And compete on functional or technical aspects. Being neutral is boring, not inspiring.

Telling stories inspire people towards your brand, people love sharing stories, particularly on social media. Your brand feels like a human not just profit making machine.

Let’s see how some of the best story telling done by brands –

Let’s take a real world examples of brand story telling –

Spotify

Spotify is a Swedish audio streaming and media services provider founded in 2006 by Daniel Ek. A brand having one the best creative marketing and story telling.

So what is in the Spotify DNA –

  • ADAPTABLE
  • DIVERSE
  • QUALITY DRIVEN
  • WARM & FRIENDLY
  • HUMAN CENTERED

We surly can see in there story telling too. For example Spotify has large user data, containing their users behavior. So they use this data very creatively by combining user data with a human touch.

Spotify advertise

For example in the above image they uses their one of the users data of valentine day, how spotify helped him in his lonely times. It makes total sense for brand like Spotify to create content around emotional needs like love, loneliness, enjoyment, humanly things. Because it create a sense of connection with the brand.

How to create a great brand story

Keep it simple

Even though the company’s origin story has taken years but when making your brand story you should focus on key terms. When it comes to telling a story it could have different length for different situations like you should be able to tell it with very few words or it can be a movie too, simply said it should be straightforward.

  • Beginning : Problem – Explain what problem you faced and are going to solve.
  • Middle : Solution – How you solved it’
  • End : Success – What the end result look like.

That’s it, this is how most of the people expect from a story. Make sure end is exciting and inspirational to connect with people. And this end is just new beginning of a new adventure.

What is your values

Look at this as long term thinking. For example with time situation and circumstances can change but your core values remains same. And try to communicate higher purpose.

Ask your self if your brand is human how it will behave in certain situations.

Put a face behind the story

A good brand story features a main character that your audience can relate to. Think about your main character’s goals and desires. Add some conflicts and challenges so it will feel more realistic.

And make sure the main character’s actions align with your brand’s core value.

Conclusion

Though there might be still some confusion around brand story and brand story telling. Summarizing both it could be said that both are about using emotion evoking narrative to connect your brand to customer. Where brand story is about your history, how you started, problems you faced, solutions your brand is providing, your core values. And brand storytelling is how you curate this story for your audience.

Reference –

Story telling

The best brand storytelling