Recruiting employees is not easy for small businesses. They have to compete with large enterprises and well-funded start-ups with an enormous budget to spare on recruiting efforts or paying the highest salaries.
So, how to recruit employees for a small business? There are two options:
Option one: You can rush through the recruiting process and choose the candidate you deem the best fit at the last moment. Many small businesses do that but end up with employees who are not the right fit. This will usually end badly and result in the employee leaving meaning that valuable resources are needed to find a replacement.
Option two: You can follow a strategic approach to hiring. This option is more feasible as helps you find qualified candidates, make a competitive offer, and cut costs throughout the recruiting process. Ultimately, you can retain your employees long-term and lead your business towards success.
Does the second option sound great to you? In this simple guide, let's discuss how to hire employees for a small business.
The last thing you would want to do as a small business is to hire candidates who are not the right fit for your organisation. It is because hiring unqualified candidates would mean you have wasted your time, effort, and money – and all these are a luxury for small business owners. Hence, defining your hiring needs before recruiting candidates for a position is essential.
While hiring needs may differ from company to company, here are three steps that small businesses can follow to define hiring needs:
The goal of hiring new talent is to fill the gap your team is experiencing to meet its goals and achieve success. The only way to find such talent is to ask what skills or talent your team needs to succeed. It gives you an idea of what type of candidates you want to hire and for what positions.
Hiring new talent is unnecessary if your current employees can fill the skill gap. But if these extra responsibilities are overwhelming employees, hiring new staff is better.
Hiring employees is a costly business. You need money to recruit, hire, train, and pay new talent. Hence, deciding how many employees you need to fill the skill gap and what type of employees can fill it is crucial.
When it comes to hiring employees, you have three options:
The best approach to decide what kind of workers and how many you can afford is to compare projected income vs costs.
Once you have defined your hiring needs, use the gathered information to write a catchy job description that attracts and engages job seekers. It is an essential step in the highly competitive hiring landscape. Especially if you're a small business, job descriptions can be a great chance to create a positive first impression for your business and attract top talent.
Here are a few tips for writing catchy job descriptions to attract top talent as a small business:
Here is a great example:
See also: How to Attract Candidates with a Company Careers Page
Defining your hiring needs and using the result to craft a compelling job description is only one step in recruiting employees for small businesses. The next action is to promote the job post on multiple channels to increase visibility and attract suitable candidates.
You can also save time and effort in the recruitment process by promoting a job. There's no need to spend hours weeding out unqualified resumes when you can easily reach the right ones through promotions.
Here are a few ways small businesses can employ promote a job post to attract suitable candidates:
Social media and online job boards are among the most cost-effective ways to promote job posts for small business owners. You can leverage platforms like LinkedIn and Twitter to engage potential candidates, promote your company's culture, and expand your network without spending a penny. Even their promotional plans are affordable.
Besides these social media platforms, there are also job board sites like Indeed, where you can easily reach potential clients without breaking a sweat. Millions of job seekers and recruiters are active on these sites. So, you won't face any problem finding the talent you're looking to recruit for your company.
Also read: How to Post a Job on LinkedIn?
Here are a few tips you must follow to use social networking and job posting websites to their maximum potential:
If you don't have enough budget for job promotions and social media marketing, employee referral programs can be your best bet for recruiting talent. By setting up formal employee referral programs, you can encourage current employees to refer their former coworkers or classmates in exchange for a reward or incentive.
An employee referral program helps employees, job seekers, and employers alike. Employers get a candidate, the employee gets a referral on bonus, and the job seeker gets a job opportunity.
However, here are a few things you must keep in mind to make the most out of employee referral programs:
Sometimes online promotions don't have the same impact that offline events like a job fair or an open house can have. It is because offline events allow for a personal and meaningful connection between recruiters and candidates, which rarely happens in online promotions. Also, in offline events, recruiters can answer candidate questions, provide information about the company, and evaluate candidates face-to-face.
However, in online promotions, candidates and recruiters only interact on a call or through messaging, which are not always the best ways to assess a candidate. Hence, you should also conduct job fairs and open houses to recruit candidates.
Job fairs or open house sessions also:
Here are a few tips to help you make the most out of the job fairs and open-house sessions:
Recent or soon-to-be graduates are the best bet if you want to hire for entry-level positions. It is because they're motivated, enthusiastic, and unshaped by the experiences of working with various employers. Instead, you can shape them by offering training and employment opportunities. They're the talent that can move your company forward.
Hiring fresh talent is also cost-effective as you don't have to engage in heavy promotions and relationship building. Moreover, there's a potential for long-term hires as new candidates strongly commit to their employer and are likely to stay long-term, thus increasing employee turnover. Hence, you should partner with local colleges and vocational schools to hire fresh talent.
Here are a few things to keep in mind while hiring fresh talent from a college or university:
Once you have created and promoted a job post and received applicants' responses, the next step is to screen and select candidates. It is an essential step because interviewing candidates for the interview is a costly endeavour, and the company may not have the time and resources to call each candidate for a personal interview.
By screening and selecting candidates, you can:
Here are the phases involved in the process of screening and selecting candidates:
This step involves scanning each candidate's resume and job applications and rejecting job applications and resumes that don't match the job requirements. In the past, recruiters used to do this manually.
However, many large and small businesses nowadays use applicant tracking systems like Gohire to save time and effort. These applicant tracking systems automate the process of resume scanning and rejection, thus saving teams from the worry of reviewing resumes manually.
In this step, candidates who have completed the resume and application review phase are called for phone interviews. In this interview process, hiring managers call the candidate to assess their qualifications, experience, and interest in the job. The idea is to determine whether a candidate is a right fit for the organisation.
Recruiters will schedule a personal interview with candidates who make it through the phone screening phase.
During the personal interview process of recruitment, the hiring manager meets with candidates for a face-to-face interview to further assess their qualifications and decide if they're the right fit for the job.
A personal interview is an essential phase because your decision to select or reject the candidate will affect the future of your business in the long run. Hence, use it to understand better the candidate's skills, experience, and potential for your hiring position.
You would not want to hire the wrong candidate after the personal interview process. It is possible that a candidate lied about their work experience or education qualification. That's why you should run background checks on them.
Besides, running background checks on candidates can also help you ensure you don't hire someone with a criminal history, thus protecting your brand reputation and avoiding potential lawsuits.
Ask the candidate to give three references you can contact to enquire about their background. Ensure that the job offer only stands valid after success background check. Even verify the references because sometimes they may not be genuine. The idea is to be vigilant and avoid hiring the wrong candidate than making a bad hiring choice and repenting later.
Once you've evaluated the candidate through all these phases and found serious candidates for the job post, you can move on to the next step, i.e., onboarding and training the new hire.
Onboarding and training new employees are as essential steps as hiring them. It is because every organisation's way of working is different. Equipping them with the necessary knowledge, skills, and understanding of your organisation's code of ethics before they start working on a project is best. It helps them understand and perform their job efficiently.
Here are a few more advantages of onboarding and training:
Here's how you can make onboarding and training effective for new employees:
An onboarding plan will serve as a blueprint for onboarding and training new joiners faster. It ensures new candidates quickly integrate into the company and adapt to the new role. With an onboarding plan, they can become familiar with the organisation's culture, values, and procedures – thus feeling comfortable and confident in their new position.
Here are a few additional advantages of an onboarding plan:
Here's what an onboarding plan should include:
New candidates need training to perform their responsibilities efficiently. Otherwise, they'll be clueless about their role and fail to meet expectations. Eventually, the frustration will build up, and they will quit. That's why you must provide the necessary training and resources to employees.
Training and resources will also:
Here are different types of job training you can offer to employees:
Each type of job training has its advantages and disadvantages. You can combine different training methods to train new candidates to the best of their abilities.
Onboarding and training can engage and prepare the employee for the new role. But it's a positive company culture that will make them stay and become incredible members of the organisation. Hence, fostering a positive work culture in your organisation is best.
Especially if you're a small business, a positive work culture will help you bring in more talent through word of mouth and employee referrals. Hence, a positive company culture is a must.
Here are a few things you can do to foster a positive company culture:
These steps help create a positive work environment that fosters employee engagement, satisfaction, and retention.
Here are a few more things you can do to enhance your recruitment process to hire good candidates and avoid a bad hire:
Hiring candidates is challenging if you're a small business with no budget and dedicated resources. But with the right recruitment strategy, you can quickly nail it and hire the top talent for your organisation. To recap, here's everything you need to do to hire employees for a small business:
Define your hiring needs and use the findings to create a compelling job description.
Promote job openings across all platforms. You can use various means for job promotion, such as social networking sites and job boards, job fairs and open house sessions, employee referrals, etc.
Screen and select candidate applications based on your hiring needs. For this, you must follow an elaborative process involving resume scanning, phone interview, personal interview, background checks, presenting the job offer, etc.
Onboard and train new joiners to ensure maximum productivity.
If putting in so much recruitment effort seems daunting, you must consider investing in an applicant tracking system (ATS). ATS software will aid your recruiting efforts by automating the hiring process, from resume screening to client onboarding – saving you time and effort. You can hire qualified candidates faster, reduce recruitment costs, and maximise business productivity.
Gohire can be a great option if you're looking for a reliable and affordable applicant tracking system to ease your hiring process. There are also a few other best ATS software in 2023 listed in this blog if you also want to know about other alternatives.