How Houston startups can hire top talent amid 'The Big Stay' trend of 2024

Guest column

Here are some tips to help startups and small businesses break through to candidates who are content in their current position or afraid to jump to a smaller business in today’s market. Photo by Tima Miroshnichenko from Pexels

Attracting “A-plus” talent when job candidates are favoring "The Big Stay” is a challenge for small businesses today. This is especially true when small businesses are competing with larger corporations for the same top talent.

To help startups and small businesses break through to candidates who are content in their current position or afraid to jump to a smaller business in today’s market, small businesses need to strategically position themselves as an attractive, viable alternative.

The following tips can help small businesses increase their appeal and attract top job candidates.

Employer branding

The employer brand or managing your reputation among job seekers and internal employees, plays a crucial part in attracting talent. Your internal workplace culture influences current employees and potential job candidates, but it also includes your digital presence. You want to ensure your digital footprint – website to social media – reflects your values, culture and successes. Your career page is a first impression for the job candidate. Including testimonials, day-in-the-life videos and clear job descriptions enhances the appeal of your organization.

Online reviews are another area that needs attention from an employer branding standpoint. Managing your reputation on review platforms like Glassdoor, Indeed and LinkedIn, exhibits how you address concerns and take any corrective action. It is also a barometer for many job candidates regarding employee satisfaction and potential areas for improvement.

Unique selling points

Your product or service has a unique selling point (USP) for customers and your company has a USP for talent. Small businesses usually trump larger corporations in flexibility and innovation. Small businesses can make quick decisions and employees can make a big impact on the company’s direction and success. When job candidates desire to make a substantial impact and have a more dynamic work environment, this is a definitive USP.

Learning and development programs that offer greater opportunity for leadership, cross-functional work and rapid advancement than your larger competitors can be appealing to top talent. Many high performers desire to move up the ranks and make a notable impact as quickly as possible, which is quickly attainable with startups and small businesses. The pathways to career advancement are many times less rigid in small business.

Compensation and benefits

Startups and small businesses usually cannot compete head-to-head with salaries, but there are a number of other ways to make your business more attractive to top talent. Starting off, you need to do your market research to ensure your compensation package is competitive, but other desirable benefits to consider include work-from-home or flex work options, health and wellness programs, financial wellness programs and robust retirement plans. Offering flexible benefits packages that can be tailored to meet the needs of employees at different life stages can be a considerable draw as well.

Candidate experience

When you are trying to recruit candidates who may be content with their current positions, it is important to make the application process as straightforward and clear as possible. This shows attention to detail, tells the candidate that you know what you want in an employee and it is respectful of their time. Once they apply, being responsive to their communication, establishing clear timelines and providing constructive feedback further elevates the candidate experience.

Referrals

Employees are your best recruiting tool. A personal referral speaks volumes since very few recommend candidates who would not fit the culture or the jobs available. Additionally, encouraging current employees to share their positive experiences with the company on social media can help cast a wider recruiting net.

Even though many employees are choosing to stay in their current roles, startups and small businesses can position themselves as attractive employers of choice. When you intentionally position yourself in an authentic manner, top-tier talent looking for career-growth opportunities, influence and meaningful work can be lured away from large competitors that may offer more traditional stability and name recognition.

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Jaune Little is a director of recruiting services with Insperity.

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TMC lands $3M grant to launch cancer device accelerator

cancer funding

A new business accelerator at Houston’s Texas Medical Center has received a nearly $3 million grant from the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas.

The CPRIT grant, awarded to the Texas Medical Center Foundation, will help launch the Accelerator for Cancer Medical Devices. The accelerator will support emerging innovators in developing prototypes for cancer-related medical devices and advancing them from prototype to clinical trials.

“The translation of new cancer-focused precision medical devices, often the width of a human hair, creates the opportunity to develop novel treatments for cancer patients,” the accelerator posted on the CPRIT website.

Scientist, consultant, and entrepreneur Jason Sakamoto, associate director of the TMC Center for Device Innovation, will oversee the accelerator. TMC officials say the accelerator builds on the success of TMC Innovation’s Accelerator for Cancer Therapeutics.

Each participant in the Accelerator for Cancer Medical Devices program will graduate with a device prototype, a business plan, and a “solid foundation” in preclinical and clinical strategies, TMC says. Participants will benefit from “robust support” provided by the TMC ecosystem, according to the medical center, and “will foster innovation into impactful and life-changing cancer patient solutions in Texas and beyond.”

In all, CPRIT recently awarded $27 million in grants for cancer research. That includes $18 million to attract top cancer researchers to Texas. Houston institutions received $4 million for recruitment:

  • $2 million to the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center to recruit Rodrigo Romero from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City
  • $2 million to MD Anderson to recruit Eric Gardner from Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City

A $1 million grant also went to Baylor College of Medicine researcher Dr. Akiva Diamond. He is an assistant professor at the medical college and is affiliated with Baylor’s Dan L. Duncan Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Musk’s SpaceX spends $17B to acquire spectrum licenses from EchoStar

SpaceX Update

Elon Musk’s SpaceX has reached a deal worth about $17 billion with EchoStar for spectrum licenses that it will use to beef up its Starlink satellite network.

The deal for EchoStar’s AWS-4 and H-block spectrum licenses includes up to $8.5 billion in cash and up to $8.5 billion in SpaceX stock. SpaceX will make approximately $2 billion in cash interest payments on EchoStar debt through November 2027.

SpaceX and EchoStar will enter into a long-term commercial agreement which will allow EchoStar’s Boost Mobile subscribers to access SpaceX’s next generation Starlink Direct to Cell service.

Shares of EchoStar surged 19% before the market opened Monday.

Last month AT&T said that it will spend $23 billion to acquire wireless spectrum licenses from EchoStar, a significant expansion of its low- and mid-band coverage networks.

EchoStar said that it anticipates that the AT&T deal and the SpaceX transaction will resolve recent inquiries from the Federal Communications Commission about the rollout of 5G technology in the U.S. The FCC had been calling for hearings on whether Echostar was properly using the spectrum that it is now selling, and its efforts to make 5G more available to communities.

EchoStar said Monday that it will use the proceeds from the sale partly to pay down debt. Current operations of Dish TV, Sling and Hughes will not be impacted, the company said.

Houston students develop cost-effective glove to treat Parkinson's symptoms

smart glove

Two Rice undergraduate engineering students have developed a non-invasive vibrotactile glove that aims to alleviate the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease through therapeutic vibrations.

Emmie Casey and Tomi Kuye developed the project with support from the Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen (OEDK) and guidance from its director, Maria Oden, and Rice lecturer Heather Bisesti, according to a news release from the university.

The team based the design on research from the Peter Tass Lab at Stanford University, which explored how randomized vibratory stimuli delivered to the fingertips could help rewire misfiring neurons in the brain—a key component of Parkinson’s disease.

Clinical trials from Stanford showed that coordinated reset stimulation from the vibrations helped patients regain motor control and reduced abnormal brain activity. The effects lasted even after users removed the vibrotactile gloves.

Casey and Kuye set out to replicate the breakthrough at a lower cost. Their prototype replaced the expensive motors used in previous designs with motors found in smartphones that create similar tiny vibrations. They then embedded the motors into each fingertip of a wireless glove.

“We wanted to take this breakthrough and make it accessible to people who would never be able to afford an expensive medical device,” Casey said in the release. “We set out to design a glove that delivers the same therapeutic vibrations but at a fraction of the cost.”

Rice’s design also targets the root of the neurological disruption and attempts to retrain the brain. An early prototype was given to a family friend who had an early onset of the disease. According to anecdotal data from Rice, after six months of regularly using the gloves, the user was able to walk unaided.

“We’re not claiming it’s a cure,” Kuye said in the release. “But if it can give people just a little more control, a little more freedom, that’s life-changing.”

Casey and Kuye are working to develop a commercial version of the glove priced at $250. They are taking preorders and hope to release 500 pairs of gloves this fall. They've also published an open-source instruction manual online for others who want to try to build their own glove at home. They have also formed a nonprofit and plan to use a sliding scale price model to help users manage the cost.

“This project exemplifies what we strive for at the OEDK — empowering students to translate cutting-edge research into real-world solutions,” Oden added in the release. “Emmie and Tomi have shown extraordinary initiative and empathy in developing a device that could bring meaningful relief to people living with Parkinson’s, no matter their resources.”

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