Boom time for startup staff

The 300 or so staff at online clothing retailer boo.com worked long and hard to make a success of the business, only to see their efforts crash and burn as the high-profile UK dotcom bit the dust.

But as they piled out of the company's flash Carnaby Street offices to seek solace in Soho's pubs, the vast majority appeared to be in remarkably good spirits. Although undoubtedly shell-shocked that the axe had come so swiftly, few appeared greatly perturbed by the prospect of unemployment.

And the reason? They'd already encountered the packs of recruitment consultants hovering outside the office like vultures around carrion, hoping to scoop up the boo workforce and whisk them off to their next dotcom venture.

As soon as news of the company's demise broke, the boo switchboard was jammed by headhunters in search of fresh CVs. In the pubs, the discussion was not only about what had happened, but also about the interviews lined up for the next day.

A risky business
The staff's experience in setting up a dotcom, together with proven technical skills, make them attractive to recruiters. They demonstrated that they were ready to take a risk and work for a company that might easily fold. That it did fold is unlikely to inhibit their career prospects in the future.

Simon Torrance, chief executive of UK firm NetMarketsEurope, which specialises in helping net market-makers set up shop in the region, said: "People in the UK do tend to be very risk-averse, and that impacts on the startup culture."

But getting the best people on board is critical if your dotcom is to succeed. Keith Krach, chief executive at e-procurement specialist Ariba, said: "The company with the best people wins. We're moving from rigidly hierarchical organisations to virtual organisations, from command and control to real empowerment, and from equity held by a few to mass equity."

So how do you attract the best people, including those whose risk-averse nature would ring warning bells at the mere mention of the word dotcom? Outrageous perks? Obscene sign-on bonuses? Share options? They're all ideas which have been tried out with varying degrees of success or failure. There's no foolproof formula for attracting staff, it seems.

Some companies will even pay out to win new recruits. UK ebusiness firm Entranet recently offered a finder's fee referral payment of £50,000 to anyone who can refer a team of 10 Java programmers to the company. But even if you offer 'telephone number' bounties, you may still find that some recruiting methods just don't seem to pull them in like they used to.

The digital economy is an employees' market, and recruiting is harder as the pool of CVs dwindles.

The training option
One option is to look outside the traditional recruitment pool. If you can't get someone with exactly the right skills, going for someone with comparable skills and then training them is an option. That's one of the strategies being adopted by UK electronic markets company Lost Wax. The firm employs 45 developers, having doubled in size over the past six months. Gary Vickers, director of professional services at the company, said: "We saw that the Java pool of resources was going to get scarcer and scarcer."

Lost Wax's solution was to take five "bright and talented" developers with plenty of software engineering experience, but which was not ecommerce or Java-specific. "We supported them in getting their Java certification through a combination of formal and on-the-job training," said Vickers. The firm intends to train another batch of developers following the success of the initiative.

Alternatively, you could always let the talent come to you. Internet-based communications firm YAC.com (You're Always Connected) opted for a remote corner of Galway on the west coast of Ireland, instead of the bustle of Dublin, when it set up its research, development and engineering operations.

Mike Feerick, chief executive at YAC.com, said: "When I'm hiring I know we are the most exciting business in town, so there's lots of interest in us. I receive phone calls from people all around the world wanting to know about working here."

"We're paying good salaries to people, but we don't have to pay London prices, so we are hiring labour cheaper than some other companies. There isn't really a tradition of the startup on the west coast. I don't have people leaving to join other startups," he added.