Growing Your Business

Recruiting and Selecting High-Performing Employees

Earlier in this book, we suggested that new ventures are at a serious disadvantage when they enter the labor market to attract high-quality employees. Because they are new, they are relatively unknown to potential employees and cannot offer the security or “brand familiarity” of established firms. Although there is currently little direct evidence on this issue, it seems reasonable to suggest that unless new ventures succeed in overcoming these obstacles, they might be doomed to failure—after all, they cannot grow if they fail to attract and retain essential and dedicated employees. How, then, should entrepreneurs approach this important task? To provide you with some useful guidelines, we will ...