Career
Are You the Big Boss Now?
Ask any Nigerian where they want to be in 5 years time and you’ll probably hear “running my own business”. If they aren’t already. It’s in our blood! But let’s not be fooled starting out on your own is tough.
After 4 years in a big company – I gave up the safety of a 9-5 steady salary, gave myself the “You can do it speech” and started my own digital agency.
I used every wedding, birthday and family get together as a shameless opportunity to promote my business. Hustling on my own as long as I could with my one man show, doing a bit of everything: operations, marketing, finance, HR and chief house girl. Then after dropping the ball a few times and endless late nights I finally admitted that it was time to bring in some extra help.
Expanding your empire sounds fun at first and then the pain begins. Recruitment is one of those areas in business that is essential, but in this Nigeria you learn to quietly dread.
So you only ever have three options:
- Spend big money and outsource it to a recruitment agency
- Posting a job and waiting for the CV’s to slowly trickle in.
- Or the inconsisent but preferred ‘word of mouth personal refferals’ which means taking on someone’s cousin’s friend’s brother’s flatmate’s stepsister ‘Cos they just moved back and they are looking for something’
I followed the footsteps of a friend that had gone through this. She suggested I try a talent pool. I started with Linkedin and reached out to a few people but it was inconsistent, not everybody had filled in their profile and of those I reached out to, only a few responded or said that they weren’t job hunting.
Then the same friend suggested SHORTLIST, she’d moved on to the next thing– a new talent pool from Phillips Consulting. She said it worked in a similar way to Linkedin and I could use some criteria to pull out candidates and contact them directly.
I loved the idea that there were already experienced candidates there waiting! The signup was straightforward. In minutes I had the opportunity to cut through thousands of resumes to find professionals that met my requirements. All ready for interview and available to hire. It was free to sign up, free to search and free to contact candidates. You could pay for premiuim services but the basic level was still enough to get me 3 great candidates for interview.
Just because I’m a start up doesn’t mean I wont pay for talent. If you’re in my position starting or thinking of starting a busines, you’ll appreciate that we need people that are adding value to our business from day one.
I still don’t exactly enjoy recruitment but this platform has made it less stressful and more efficient for me. I know when my business expands I have a reliable, convenient and steady source of great candidates
Ready to grow your empire? Try it for yourself at SHORTLIST Nigeria…the new way to recruit : www.shortlistnigeria.com/employer
Contact SHORTLIST before the 2nd of December and they’ll help you fill your vacancy for absolutely free. Contact them at [email protected].
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