Think people, not algorithms

In two decades spent connecting companies with the candidates they need, one thing has always been abundantly clear – Scotland is a great place to start a business.

The nation has always been entrepreneurial, with a rich conveyor belt of bright business brains with brilliant ideas in sectors from textiles, healthcare, hospitality, and creativity to energy, sustainability, and technology.

One of the shining lights in Scotland’s start-up community caused a stir recently when he turned down investment for a second time on BBC’s Dragon’s Den.

Unfolded founder, Cally Russell, cited the difficulty giving so much of his business away early would create when seeking future backing – one of the main challenges founders face when growing a business. Russell’s uncompromising position may have left Peter Jones and Deborah Meaden baffled, but it showed exactly the kind of foresight founders need to make a start-up succeed.

Michelle Lownie is CEO and founding director at Eden Scott, one of Scotland’s leading independent recruitment agencies, which is set to celebrate its 20th anniversary this year.

The same principles apply to one of other great challenges start-ups face as they grow – attracting the right talent. Scotland’s size makes it rich in opportunity for start-ups, but equally creates fierce competition amongst a relatively small talent pool.

Take tech for example, the most recent UK Tech Talent Tracker figures from Accenture, which analyses LinkedIn’s Professional Network data, found demand for technology professionals in Scotland increased by more than 200% in 12 months, despite the technology jobs market easing in the first half of last year.

Larger, more established firms can and have offered perks and higher salaries to attract talent (which, incidentally, are proving unsustainable even to them). Those options aren’t necessarily available to start-ups, where no person is bigger than the organisation, and that’s where founders need expert support and guidance to help them find other ways to secure the expertise required to scale their businesses in a fiercely competitive marketplace.

Some believe solutions exist in technology and the value innovation such as AI can bring to the search for the right candidate. I disagree. While there may be uses in large scale hires for major organisations, for start-ups the key is and will always be in people and relationships – that can’t be left in the hands of an algorithm.

Start-ups must be laser focused on what they need and the type of people they hire.

Businesses can be set back years by bringing in the wrong person at the wrong time. There’s no use in asking a recruiter to find you a CTO – and the large salary that brings – when really all you need is a developer. It’s about analysing and truly understanding your business needs early and matching that with candidates on a level beyond the experience on their CVs. It’s about finding people who have the talent but may not necessarily be attracted to life in a big corporate organisation. It’s about identifying candidates who see the value in working on a particular piece of technology or towards a purpose – on health, sustainability, or simply to improve the way people do things.

Bridging that gap was the inspiration for our TalentSpark programme, which is now woven into the fabric of Scotland’s start-up community and has helped secure talent at multiple stages for hundreds of start-ups across dozens of sectors including some of Scotland’s most successful stories such as Pufferfish, Current Health, and tech unicorn Skyscanner.

Not every startup can be a Current Health or a Skyscanner, but strong, long-term relationships with companies and candidates enable us to identify the talent start-ups need to set them on the route to whatever the realisation for that business will be.

Technology has moved on significantly during our time in business, from Blackberries, to smartphones, and the evolution of jobs platforms such as LinkedIn. That won’t stop, and there will be roles for advances such as AI, video interviewing, and the rest.

However, they will never replace the need for an understanding of the one constant throughout our 20 years and far beyond – people. Recognising the importance of that should be the number one priority for any founder looking to find the talent they need to make their way in business.

Michelle Lownie is CEO and founding director at Eden Scott, one of Scotland’s leading independent recruitment agencies, which is set to celebrate its 20th anniversary this year.