'Startups': A View
Marie Brinkman
is an Associate Partner
for Radford, a group
within Aon Hewitt's
Talent, Rewards
& Performance
practice focused on
technology and life
sciences companies.
She is based in San
Jose, California.
Marie has extensive experience in both corporate and consulting
environment. At Radford since 2006, Marie is a global relationship
manager for key technology industry clients and is responsible for
providing support for all their survey data needs. She also provides
training and guidance for global compensation and Total Rewards
consulting engagements and the application of Radford's workforce
analytics database for organizational staffing and labor cost analysis.
Prior to joining Radford, Marie held consulting positions with Bowker
Consulting International and Right Management and was responsible for
executive compensation at Visa. She frequently presents on global compensation
issues and trends at client conferences in the US and Asia. She earned an MBA
in finance and a BA in psychology from the University of California at Berkeley.
Q. In the initial phase of a start-up, what are the top
five priorities for a CEO from a talent perspective?
A. Radford: That's easy - and almost unanimous: in
a technology company, the first four priorities from
a talent perspective are engineering, engineering,
engineering and… engineering! Technical talent rules
the day, because that's who provides the product.
Hiring and scaling up are the key HR activities
at this stage.
Securing talent requires a great job opportunity
and compensation package. Startups look for talent
from multiple sources: new college graduates, other
startups, and established market leaders. Often
employees at publicly held technology companies in
particular, are locked in with high cash compensation,
big stock grants and generous benefits.
Q. In the entire lifecycle of a startup, from VC
funding to pre-IPO to listing, how frequently
do you see the HR and talent priorities change?
Please shed light on a few of these changes.
A. Radford: Companies typically start from the
top and then fill in below. Initially, senior talent
is brought on board, is tied to the mission and
given a sizeable ownership stake. The next 50 or so
employees get in on the ground floor. At this point,
for junior folks, it might seem like just a job. But by
the time you get to 100-200 employees, employees
start expecting development opportunities.
An early priority - but one that shouldn't change
- is trying to create a brand and culture around the
company mission. Why come here? One practical reason
for doing so is social media. Employees will spread
the word on social media as to what it's like to work
for your company so you want this to be positive.
Q. In your experience of working with new age organizations,
what are some of the things that they got wrong?
A. Radford: For some, it's wishing they had put in
place at least some minimum guidelines so hiring
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