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In any organization, who you hire plays a key role. This rings most true in the case of
startup businesses, especially in the early stages. Startups face the additional challenge
of the initial hires becoming the DNA and building blocks for the culture and success of
those businesses.

But what are the first key positions and roles you need to hire for a startup?

The answer varies depending on the type of business/organization but below you’ll find
the roles that are absolutely necessary in an early stage startup and beyond.

Early-stage startup hiring: The first key roles your company needs to hire for at
the onset

 Operations Person

 Marketing Jack-of-All Trades

 Scrappy Sales Person

 Writer

 Product Manager / Engineers (for Tech Businesses)

Operations Person

Oftentimes, you’ll see founders occupying this role, but no matter who is doing it,
somebody who manages operations is key.
The operations person at an early stage startup is responsible for managing invoicing,
accounting, finances, employee operations, business filings, and day-to-day operations.

Think of this person as a hybrid of a CFO-COO-Office Manager, Business Analyst,

General Manager or Chief Anything Officer.

You’ll often find founders take on this role. But, depending on the type of company, you
may see them focus more on product and sales and leave operations to a trusted
operations person.

Responsibilities and Duties of the Operations Person

 Process design: The operations person is responsible for designing

business processes/systems that support continuous operations of the
company and managing/improving/automating these processes and
systems.

 Employee operations: The operations person must be competent in

training employees to complete required operations processes
independently, setting employee schedules/performance expectations and
supervising employees in their completion of daily operations functions.

 Finances: The ops person will be managing invoicing, accounts receivable,

bookkeeping, resource/funding allocation, approval of expenditures, tax
payment/strategy, and other financial matters.

 Business relationships: To ensure future ops continue, the

founder/opsperson is often engaging in high level talks to secure favorable
business relationships and funding for future company growth.

 Inbound communications: Operations people are often managing daily

inbound inquiries and/or providing guidance for other employees
responding to inbound inquiries/requests.

 Daily operations: Your operations person is responsible for ensuring

continuous operations throughout the company on a daily basis through
close supervision of teams and individuals, and through their own direct
work advancing business processes.
Marketing jack-of-all-trades

The marketing jack-of-all-trades can come from any number of marketing focuses, but
people with well rounded experience and a keen eye for presentation excel in these
startup roles.

Typically, when startups think about hiring their first marketing person, they think about
a director of marketing or chief marketing officer.
Whether you’re referring to them as a ”Growth Hacker” or “Marketing Manager”, you
want to find a well-rounded marketing person, who’s used to wearing multiple hats, and
is experienced in most areas of marketing.

Responsibilities for your first marketing hire

 Email marketing: Your first marketer will be managing all email marketing,
and should be able to drive leads to your scrappy sales person through
their successful campaigns.

 Web design: Your company website needs to give customers and

investors the right impression, and your marketer must be able to provide
you with this online asset.

 SEO basics: SEO is crucial for ensuring that your company’s site is seen
by the right people, and your marketer should have an understanding of
SEO basics to boost organic rankings.

 Management of paid budget: Your first marketer will be responsible for

managing PPC and other paid advertising initiatives, and for driving
maximum ROI for these marketing strategies through rigorous testing.

 Experience in events: Early stage startups need to have an impressive

first showing at events and trade shows, and your marketer needs to make
your company look good at its first public appearance through designing
promotional materials and managing all event details.

 Branding/PR: Your first marketing hire should have some experience in

building partnerships and relationships to build some buzz around your
brand. Being experts in the area of public relations and branding isn’t a
must, but they should be able to adapt and manage these processes for
your brand.
Scrappy salesperson

Every startup is going to need someone who knows how to manage high level sales
that increase the stature of your company. But, this salesperson also needs to be
scrappy and get their hands dirty no matter the sales deal size.

They need to be willing and able to hunt for deals, schedule them, and close them.

Responsibilities of a scrappy salesperson

 Prospect hunting: The scrappy sales person will have less support in
finding leads than if they were working for an established company, and
they need to get creative when hunting down prospects.

 Pipeline management: Pipeline management is essential for sales

success and the salesperson must use and update your recruiting CRM
religiously with pertinent data.

 Sales calls/system setup: Your sales rep will be the one testing your
product’s performance in the open market and will be refining their pitch
and your sales system as they go along.

 Closing deals: Salespeople need to close deals because that’s what

they’re here to do. Your scrappy salesperson can be the lifeblood of your
early stage startup, so ensure they are receiving competitive commission
rates for closing deals for your startup.
Writer (a.k.a. word magician)

The above roles may seem a little more obvious, but a good writer is just as necessary.

Your writer is responsible for crafting your initial website and product messaging, help
with building content that is used for SEO, and write your email marketing campaigns
and scripts.

Responsibilities of your first writer

 Understanding of product messaging: Your writer will be helping the

founder communicate their vision to the world, helping your sales and
marketing pros to craft compelling emails communicating product benefits
and creating other key written product assets.

 Technical writing ability: Beyond crafting compelling product benefits in

your brochure, writers need technical writing ability for internal process
documentation, internal policy writing, contract creation, user manual
creation and other technical writing tasks.
  Ability to match writing to personas: The writer may be asked to help
support the founder, sales or marketing, so they need to be comfortable
wearing different hats and shifting their writing style to match those of
individuals they are supporting.

Product manager/engineer

Looking for great product and engineering people in the early stages of your startup
hiring is essential, if you’re a tech-focused company.

Regardless of whether one of your founding members is acting as CTO or has built the
product themselves, you’re going to want to find them help in the engineering
department, or the visionary requirements of developing your next big product.

Responsibilities of a product manager/engineer

 Creating your products: This person is responsible for developing,

producing, or creating the product your company sells/plans to sell.
Whether its software, hardware or consumer goods, they need the
technical expertise to transform the founder’s vision into reality.

 Perfecting products: Every new product has glitches, and your product
manager/engineer will have their hands full post-launch ironing out the
kinks in the first generation of your product and implementing
improvements on original designs.

 Identifying market gaps/opportunities: product engineers need to have a

keen eye for the next big thing and are responsible for keeping your startup
competitive in your industry. You want product managers who are keenly
aware of what is considered to be the cutting edge and someone who
always wants to be ahead of this curve.
The above roles are all required for the successful operation of a startup of any size.

By prioritizing these roles — and sourcing for them with a modern ATS + CRM solution
— you can cover your bases for the time being and move on to driving the growth of
your startup.

Find out how early-stage organizations elevate their startup hiring strategies and
scale their businesses with LeverTRM, our complete talent acquisition suite.
Schedule a demo today.

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