Talent capital is vital in a fast-growing company; however, with the average time-to-fill sitting at just over a month—36 days!—talent acquisition can be a growth hindrance.

Talent acquisition can also be a burden without the proper systems, considering the labor-intensive and time-consuming hiring process.

Don’t let hiring hurdles slow your company’s growth. Learn from these seven hiring experts to inform your hiring strategy. 

Sure, it’s fine to support the wildly creative ideas of the kids in your life, but what if your best friend, family member, or life partner comes up with a business that may not have potential? 

Or even worse, what if you’re the one with the product that’s destined to fail, and you don’t even know it? 

The thing is, even a great idea might not succeed if it isn’t solving a real problem. But when you only surround yourself with people who think like you or want to make you happy — your friends, family, and peers — they may never tell you the flaws they see in your plan because they don’t want to hurt your feelings. And how could you blame them? It’s human nature to want to encourage the ones you love. 

Becoming a sales leader is one of the many roles you have to take as the founder of a startup.  And as a sales leader, your job is to do much more than sell — you have to inspire a team to solve their customer’s problems and put people first. 

If you’re like many new entrepreneurs, you might feel intimidated or not know where to begin. But if you want to drive revenue and growth, understanding your customer and articulating a vision that your team can follow is the first step.

The best way to accomplish this is to rely on six essential questions: why, how, what, where, when, and who. Once you have those answers, you can set a foundation to build your own sales leadership and accelerate your startup to success. 

Keep reading for a breakdown on how to use each question and grow into the sales leader your company needs! 

Humans are biased by nature. Our brain finds patterns and makes associations to simplify decision making. And while forming assumptions and creating biases may have helped our predecessors survive, today it can cause your business to fail before it starts. 

What is your best advice for onboarding new team members and training your employees moving forward?

When startups hit a growth phase, they need to onboard new team members fast. To make sure you’re prepared, we asked HR experts and business leaders for their best advice. From making paperwork simple and secure to opening up multiple channels of communication, we have several tips that may help your employee onboarding be more efficient.

What do you wish you knew before going into business that you had to learn the hard way?

To help you prepare for starting your own business, we asked business leaders and entrepreneurs this question for their best tips. From dedication to asking questions to establishing proper hiring, there are several things we wish we knew before going into business.

Last year’s Big Pitch competition coincided with an unprecedented shift. Our team and the students involved with last year’s program vividly remember the last few days of our Spring Break accelerator — as the students were preparing to pitch for the $20,000 grand prize, news broke that cases of COVID-19 were identified in the United States. Towards the end of the week, the community college school district announced spring closures; at the time, no one had any idea about how long this would last. 

To help start-ups with setting up an advisory board, we asked HR experts and business professionals this question for their best advice. From determining your advisory board goals to starting small and avoiding long-term appointments, there are several pieces of advice that may help your startup set up its advisory board. Here are nine tips to get started!