Tariq Ahmed serves as Executive Vice President, People at Achilles Therapeutics helping navigate their growth from a small private bio-tech to a NASDAQ listed company.

He brings a wealth of experience gained across multiple business sectors to Achilles. These include: Chief People Officer at London Business School, International Communications Director at RSA Insurance and VP Talent & OD at Visa Inc. where he led the People & Culture workstream for Visa’s IPO. His passion is in coaching and helping people and teams unlock their potential in order to improve their performance. He holds a Masters in Strategic HR, has passed his Chartered Director exams with the IOD and is a certified Leadership Coach.

“The cost of getting an early hire wrong is really high.” - Sam Altman (Former CEO Y-Combinator)

The hiring process matters for start-ups because, without one, there’s an increased risk of making hiring mistakes.

In the early stages, when only three people are needed to run the company and one or two hires are made in any given year, you may be able to get away with not having a formal process in place. But when you’ve received a round of funding and need to hire 20 people within the next few months, a hiring process is crucial to making the best hires, avoiding costly mistakes, and achieving goals for growth.

It starts when candidates see your ads on LinkedIn, are referred by a peer, or you pay someone from a recruitment firm to approach them . Are they inspired by roles and your brands and so they apply for job? They then go through the interview and evaluation steps (including reference checks) and are either offered a position or sent a rejection email. And then there is onboarding.

How you conduct the hiring process will have an influence on what quality of candidates you can attract, hire, and retain.

At the end of this session, you will have a template for setting up a process for attracting candidates and then guiding them through all the steps.