Many small and medium businesses, and especially startups, dismiss the important role of Human Resources Recruitment as they feel they’re “too small to have an HR department.” Consequently, due to a high turnover, they are faced with high direct and indirect costs such as loss of productivity, hiring expenses and weakened morale among the existing employees. The cornerstone of success is based on effective hiring practices and finding and retaining the best candidates for an extended period of employability to grow with the company.
Workshop leads Iryna Maystrenko and Gurkirat Sangha built and delivered an interactive, hands on approach to help ICUBE startups develop skills in this often-overlooked area of business to help set them on the right path from an early stage.
This workshop was presented in part with the Global Entrepreneurship. The workshop was designed to award each participant an important take-a-way regarding human resources and how it affects businesses, no matter what stage they’re at. Many participants stated that they found the soft skills question of the interview process the most enlightening, as many would have primarily looked for a particular skillset to help them build their business.
Iryna and Gurkirat led participants through a chain of very important steps of full cycle recruitment, engaging the participants using a variety of interactive platforms including speech, video, open discussion and first-hand activities. It included hands-on writing a job description, ensuring that all important elements of the job description were included. Guests partook in role playing activities including screening the applicants and held a discussion on why they chose those candidates for the interview. In the next section participants practiced interviewing successful candidates and rating their answers according to the templates. The participants were also introduced to the onboarding procedures and how to retain and motivate a new hire.
This workshop was an action packed two hours with lots of moving parts due to mock interviews, developing job descriptions for jobs you may not know what they are and practicing additional skills taught in the workshop. In speaking with participants after, venture leaders with ideas, startups and scaleups all stated they found the workshop useful and gained tools they could implement within the next two weeks.
