John Smith, Senior Engineer, is the candidate you want for your new development division. He has competing offers from some big name companies, but he is looking for a startup with massive potential. After the initial offer is made, you find that you will need to increase your salary offer by $10k annually to make the offer acceptable.
You don’t do it. Instead you decide that you will find additional candidates who fit into your budget. So you interview and offer, interview and offer, interview and offer, no one accepts. Without knowing it you have been competing with companies for candidates at every level of seniority, and you have not been winning.
If this was the only problem you experience, it’s not a killer. Though, something else is happening that you don’t see right away. With every offer/decline, your current employees begin to doubt their commitment to your company. The $10k/year you thought you saved on John Smith has now cost you employee belief and now you see your current teams lift their heads to see what the commotion is all about.
When current employees see their company unwilling or unable to compete with other companies for talent, they begin to wonder what else is out there for them. It is not long before people begin to leave. Maybe they go to the same company that paid John Smith his asking wage.
The cost of continually missing out on talent at the offer stage is far more than losing 1 candidate. The more often it happens, the more likely your employees are to begin looking elsewhere.
Make sure to consider the value you get from momentum and enthusiasm when building your team. The velocity at which you bring on new team members is what will spur the culture and enthusiasm of working for your company. Each new employee/colleague brings a new burst of energy and a renewal of faith for the current team.
This is definitely worth more than $10k a year.
If you’ve been in a hiring rut, perhaps it’s worth it to do whatever it takes to bring on the next John or Jan Smith, because with each new hire, faith is renewed.
Yea, there is definitely a fine line between being scrappy and being cheap.
The highest quality candidates can typically provide a benefit that easily outweighs a few percentage points in their annual salary, especially in the software world. A great developer is your product and walks out every evening with knowledge of the duct-tape, the spaghetti code, and the bugs throughout the system. Its easier to be nice to them.
So true, they walk out with your IP every night. That's a great point. It's far better to pay them a comfortable wage as security of your proprietary tech.