Every business owner wants to have the perfect team to enable desired growth. But, the COVID-19 pandemic became a major obstacle, preventing small business owners from finding workers.
Indeed, hiring is a time-consuming process that requires careful consideration. This is because you need to look for a skilled, passionate, and committed team player.
More so, recruiting is cost-effective. It applies whether you do it yourself or hire experts for the recruitment procedures.
What matters most is your whole approach to hiring. According to Harvard Business Review, most employers complain about how hard recruiting is. But, what makes the process seem difficult is the wrong approach.
Check out the practical recruitment tips for your small business.
1. Establish Hiring Needs
Why do you need to hire?
Before starting on recruitment procedures, it’s essential to assess and establish why your small business team needs to grow. Sometimes, a business can operate well without many employees.
Therefore, gathering the hiring needs will help you narrow or direct recruitment efforts. Better still, the assessment makes you set realistic hiring goals that help cut down on recruitment efforts and expenses.
Nonetheless, every company has varying hiring needs. But generally, you need to ask yourself this for your small business;
- What skills are lacking?
- Can current employees handle extra duties?
- How many employees do you need?
2. Use Hiring Tools
Recruitment processing includes many repetitive, tiring, and time-consuming tasks. This can be even more felt for small companies since most workers prefer giant businesses. Though most of them bear fruit in the end, others are a total waste of your time.
Even with the many recruitment solutions, nothing beats ATS recruitment. The ATS automates the recruitment procedures. Once the potential candidate applies for a particular role, the HR recruitment software screens and quickly selects qualified candidates.
The ATS optimizes your hiring strategy by:
- Posting jobs
- Filtering and tracking candidates
- Reporting results
While fast-tracking and reducing costs are the primary advantages, they also improve the candidate experience. Statistics state that about 98% of companies use the recruitment tracking and onboarding system.
3. Be Clear On the Job Description
Nowadays, employers and job seekers use keywords to find each other. Besides communicating your job expectations, a job description also needs to be clear to attract well-qualified applicants. This way, it’s easier for the employment agency software to eliminate those who can’t perform as expected.
Therefore, a small business employer should give more information under each keyword. Preferably, it should be something more precise and descriptive. This is because mostly, there’s nothing much to do in a small business so an employee needs to know their exact role.
Your job listing would help let the job seeker know things like;
- Daily tasks
- Importance of the role to the company goals
- Necessary skills required
The primary purpose is to make the job seeker understand the importance of the position.
Furthermore, a small business can grow; hence roles evolve with time. Therefore, it would help to look for a flexible job applicant.
While honest, include the salary package you’re offering in the job description. You want the new hire to come in ready to work after understanding and agreeing to what you want.
4. Provide Flexibility
Undeniably, the 8 am-5 pm work routine feels chained to the office desk. Apart from being tiring, it’s also dull, resulting in unproductivity.
Therefore, a small business employer should provide flexibility that most employees value. This means that you need to allow employees to even work from home.
As per the statistics, about 77% of people working remotely once in a while show increased productivity. In the end, remote work also enhances employee happiness and retention.
Besides, a flexible schedule would be a considerable advantage if your team can achieve their goals and work together.
5. Offer Benefit Employee Packages
Some research showed that 75% of employees would remain with their employer due to attractive employee benefits packages. Why so?
Most employees consider the benefit packages in a job role more than anything. Such benefits are undeniably a source of security and enhanced quality of life. Though most businesses only offer the common or few employee benefits, you should stand out as a small business employer seeking a motivated team.
It would help to offer a unique or high-quality benefits package as a way to lure qualified candidates to your business even though small. Besides the better package, it also shows you care more about the well-being of your staff.
In the recruitment process, your small company should inform applicants of the job benefits such as life insurance, medical insurance, education policy, dental insurance, and a retirement plan. Still, you can go further and top up the package with things like commuter or housing benefits.
6. Provide Competitive Salary
About 54.2% of employees would quit their job for a better salary. However, small businesses are challenged to compete with larger enterprises with wages.
Undoubtedly, qualified candidates have high demand, so they are likely to ignore low wages. Usually, a small business owner wants to pay employees according to the small budget. But, it would be best to offer salaries that attract talent as long as they align with the rate in the market.
Most importantly, research the market rate for specific positions in your area. This way, you’ll be in a better place to remain competitive with your salary offers.
7. Offer a Chance to Grow
Many employees don’t want to work in the same position for a long time. They want posts that provide the chance to grow. Luckily, small businesses have the potential to grow.
So, a small business employer should also consider the chance of growth for the job position being offered. Will it be a chance to grow new skills, better salary or more responsibilities? Ensure you tell the candidate the truth about the future possibilities of the job role.
Besides, employee growth is not just for their benefit but also for the company. So the company has to provide them with the right tools and opportunities. Failure to do that, you’re likely to lose a good team to a company that does that.
Allowing your team to learn, train and develop is a great way to reach their potential.
Wrapping Up
Recruitment procedures remain the most challenging part of any business. Typically, there’s a new opening for a position every day.
Yet, no one tactic for all job openings ensures gaining excellent talent. Incorporating different approaches for your small business is ideal. You can use recruitment management software or improve salary and benefits packages to speed up the process and achieve better mastery.
We believe you’ll use the tips above to recruit effectively. All the best!