How To Hire And Retain The Best Employees: For Scaling Teams

Hiring one great person is hard enough. To hire consistently and make sure they stay – you can start to feel the cracks here if your business doesn’t have a sound hiring strategy in place.

It’s not that there’s a shortage of talent. It’s that finding the right people, at the right time and then keeping them around takes more than a good JD and a Slack welcome message.

In this guide, we’ll break down how you can hire and retain the best employees, with practical steps that save you time and reduce churn without wasting weeks on resumes or watching good people walk out three months in.

Start With What Top Talent Wants Today

If your hiring strategy still revolves around compensation, titles and ping pong tables, you’re probably attracting the wrong people.

The best candidates (ones who are sharp, driven and experienced) aren’t just looking for a job. They love what they do and are looking for ownership, clarity and a team that backs their craft. They want to be part of something that matches their energy and have exactly the kind of attitude that will help you grow. 

The point is: they’re filtering you as much as you’re filtering them.

If you’re offering solid pay and a fast-growing product but still losing strong candidates midway through the process, it’s worth looking inward. Vague job descriptions, drawn-out hiring rounds, and radio silence after the interview are red flags. For top talent, they’re also deal-breakers.

Shift your positioning from “why you should work here” to “here’s how we work and why it’s worth committing to.”

If you're still defaulting to resumes over real capability, have you thought about whether you're hiring for potential or just experience?

Build a Hiring Process That Filters for Fit and Capability

If you want to scale smartly, you need a damn good recruitment strategy from the start. Otherwise, you’re just stacking headcount, not building a company.

There are a bazillion AI tools out there promising to “revolutionise hiring.” Workflows can be automated and there’s a Chrome extension for everything from interview prompts to offer letters. We’re all for riding the wave but let’s not confuse convenience with judgment. You can’t automate what you haven’t built.

If you don’t have a clear, thought-through hiring process and are leaning on tools to figure it out for you, it’s not going to work long-term. AI can make your process faster. But if your process is broken, it’ll just help you make bad decisions faster.

You also don’t need seven rounds and a week-long project to find someone great. If you do it right, a 3-4 step hiring process is more than enough, depending on your team size and the role. Here's how to keep it simple and effective:

• Start by scanning CVs, then conduct a brief introductory call. This is just to cover the basics: background, communication and initial vibe check.

• Next – a role-specific assessment, ideally live on the call. It doesn’t have to be a full-blown task, just something that gives you a real-time sense of how they work.

• Optional: culture fit round. If you're still unsure, consider adding a final round that focuses on team alignment and ways of working. Or just make this the offer call if everything else checks out.

This doesn’t just save time. It also provides the candidate with a smoother experience, which (unsurprisingly) is one of the fastest ways to retain talent.

💡If you’re a startup founder looking to hire your first employee, this is a must-read on how to create a structured hiring process.

Make Your Offer Irresistible (Without Just Increasing Pay)

Let’s get this out of the way: yes, you absolutely should pay well. If you’re looking for top talent, your compensation needs to reflect their worth.

But money alone won’t keep someone around. And in a competitive market, if a stronger offer lands in their inbox while they’re mid-process with you, there's a real chance you’ll lose them.

So the question is: what do you offer beyond compensation? Why should someone choose your team and your role over everything else out there?

Here’s what you can do if you want to hire and retain the best employees:

• Clear responsibilities and a real growth path: People want to know what they’re walking into and what comes next if they do well.

• Ownership and freedom: Not micromanagement disguised as “high standards,” but actual trust in how they run their work.

• Signals of trust: Flexibility, autonomy, defined onboarding, and space to contribute from day one.

• A team that follows through: A well-run hiring process is often the biggest signal of how well your company operates.

How To Improve Employee Onboarding

If your onboarding is half-baked, your expectations unclear, and your culture something you only talk about when someone’s quitting, don’t be surprised if the new hire quietly starts browsing LinkedIn by week three.

But how is onboarding related to employee retention?

The answer is: retention isn’t a “later” problem. It starts the second your offer is accepted.

A good onboarding experience doesn’t have to be flashy, it just has to be thoughtful as the first step towards improving employee performance and workforce retention.

Set your teammates up before day one. Give them access to what they need early: emails, tools, org charts, calendars, and docs. Share context on what the business is solving and where they’ll plug in.

Once they start, block time for proper handovers and team intros. Help them understand who to reach out to, how decisions are made, and where to ask dumb questions without feeling like a burden. Give them structure: what’s expected in week 1, month 1, and quarter 1. And make sure they’re not chasing people for things you could’ve prepped with a 30-minute checklist.

Even the best people won’t figure it out alone. So, start by showing them that their time, output, and questions matter.

Keeping the Best: What It Takes to Retain Employees

If you’ve figured out how to hire well, the next challenge is keeping those people challenged. Stagnation is quiet and sets in when there’s no feedback, no visibility and no growth path. And by the time someone says, “I’ve been thinking about what’s next,” they’ve usually already made up their mind.

People don’t leave because they love to job-hop. They leave because nothing is changing and no one is talking about it.

So, how do you improve employee retention?

When we talk about retention, we’re not referring to the token 5% appraisal once a year. We’re talking about regular check-ins, real feedback loops, and actual growth. Are they learning something? Are they being trusted with more? Do they know how to grow inside your team or do they feel like they’ll have to leave to level up?

Remember to make space for internal shifts. Let people raise their hands when they feel ready for something new. And don’t wait until exit interviews to ask what they needed six months ago.

Conclusion

Hiring and retention aren’t separate problems. If you’re trying to scale, they need to work together, or neither will work for long. The best people want clarity, trust, and a path to grow. And if your process doesn’t show that from the start, they’ll move on (often before you realise what went wrong).

At GrowthBuddy, we help teams hire sharp, experienced candidates who fit their team – not just on paper, but in practice. Unlike traditional recruitment models, we help you hire someone you absolutely love and our post-hiring support makes sure they land well and stay longer.  

Whether you’re actively hiring or just unsure about your current approach and need a second opinion, feel free to reach out. We spend a lot of time thinking through these problems, so you don’t have to.