For small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) in any field, the process of finding, attracting and keeping the right employees can be crucially important and can make a major contribution to overall competitiveness. Just take a look at these employer branding examples.
With that in mind, here are five ways that SMBs can aim to improve their recruitment processes.
1. Take the process seriously
There are no shortage of potential distractions for SMB bosses or management staff at any company but it’s important not to overlook or underestimate the significance of the recruitment process.
Time, resources and the right people need to be committed to finding and appealing to quality candidates if you want to ensure that your company keeps standards high throughout its workforce.
Some companies see recruitment as a chore that amounts to little more than a lottery but with the right focus, there’s good reason to believe that efforts in these areas will be more than repaid once the right people are successfully recruited.
2. Approach interviews with a clear focus
For talented individuals with a lot to offer, a job interview is only partially about being able to impress a potential employer. In fact, for the best candidates for a particular role, it will often be as much the other way round, with the potential employee effectively assessing the interviewers and the company they’re in contact with.
Ultimately, recruitment is about getting the right fit but it can be important for employers to be aware that their preferred candidates might well have other offers of employment from rival SMBs to consider. So the interview process should be approached with a clear focus and regarded not as a chore but as a potential opportunity to sell your company to someone who could make a positive contribution to it.
3. Clearly define the role you’re recruiting for
For your own purposes and for the benefit of any potential candidates, it is generally very useful to define as clearly as possible the details of a job that your company is recruiting for. Doing so reduces the potential for confusion internally or externally and makes it more likely that the right candidates will take the time to complete an application.
It may not always be possible to define every detail of what a particular role will entail but, as a recruiter, it tends to be advantageous to advertise a role with as much certainty and clarity as possible.
4. Explain the challenges as well as the benefits
As an SMB, finding the right recruits to help take your company forward is such an important process in part because hiring replacements for departed employees can be costly and time-consuming. So it can be worth thinking about some of the reasons why employees might take a job with your company and then leave after a short time. From an employee’s perspective, a short stay with a particular company will often be the result of miscommunication and a job perhaps not being quite what had been advertised.
For employers, it is important to be clear about the challenges that a job entails as well as its benefits. It’s also crucial to avoid the temptation of overselling a position simply to fill it because doing so will usually increase the potential of having an employee take up a role only to leave very soon after.
5. Be proactive
It could be that posting an advertisement for a vacant position in a variety of places online and elsewhere will lead to a healthy flow of potential candidates applying for the role your company has made available. On the other hand, it could be that the best candidates will remain unaware of what you’re offering.
A proactive effort to identify specific individuals and invite them to consider applying for a job with your company can help improve the way you recruit new people. Reaching out to individuals on professional networking platforms such as LinkedIn can personalise the process and allow you to target candidates with precisely the kind of skills and experience that your SMB needs.
