As any great business leader will tell you, hiring effective employees who are well suited to their positions is absolutely critical to the long term success of an enterprise. Big name corporations like Apple and Google obviously don’t have any shortage of brilliant young minds vying for a job within their illustrious ranks. But for many small businesses’ HR teams, recruitment poses a unique challenge.
Small businesses can’t depend on the popularity of their brand to consistently bring in eager, new recruits. Instead, they must carefully design, develop, and implement recruitment strategies specifically for a small business. Would you like to know what the most successful HR teams are doing to draw in prospective employees?
- Write comprehensive job descriptions. This may seem like a “no-brainer” but a surprising number of companies neglect this essential first step in the recruitment process. Obviously, employees who are ideally qualified for a position are going to be more effective in that role. For that reason, it is absolutely imperative that job descriptions contain information not only about the basics of the position but also what unique tasks and challenges the employee will be expected to perform. You should also include information about the skills and personality profile you are looking for in a candidate.
You also shouldn’t be afraid to get a little creative with your job descriptions. As long as it contains all of the relevant, required information, there’s no reason why you can’t also spice it up by including a bit of humor or unorthodox job titles. These small details can make your job posting stand out, giving you a competitive edge.
- Utilize social media. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Vine, and other bustling social media platforms are no longer just the domain of angst-y teenagers. Twitter in particular has become a popular medium for businesses to communicate with their customers and clients. With the number of social media users growing every day, it makes sense that a successful employee recruitment process would take advantage of the millions of people who are tweeting and posting. Social media platforms allow you to advertise your job postings to their massive communities in a manner that demonstrates your company’s ability to incorporate the latest technology and social trends in its efforts. You can even show off your originality by making a video about the position and posting it on video sharing sites.
- Aim for cohesion. If there’s anything that HR teams know well, it’s people. That’s why the smartest HR teams take employee cohesion into consideration with every hire. You may have found an absolute shining star of a recruit – he’s qualified, enthusiastic, and can even crack a good joke – but if he doesn’t mesh well with your other employees then you’re going to run into trouble further down the road. Always take workplace dynamics into consideration when making hiring decisions.
- Invest in recruitment software. These software programs can shoulder much of the burden of employee recruitment, from managing job postings on various online sites to organizing the job applications your company receives. Recruitment software places all of the hiring information you need in one convenient location so the data is always at your fingertips.
- Develop measurements for success. This is a key step to successful recruitment and hiring practices. In order to improve and streamline your methods, you must have some way to measure success. Indicators should include the length of time it takes to fill a position, how much money was required for the recruitment process, how many candidates were brought in, and the long term success of your hire. These factors will inform the future development of your small business hiring.
By following these steps you’ll be able to reap the benefits of an improved employee hiring process which will help your small business flourish.
Eric Foutch is a regular blog writer for Recruiterbox who writes about team building and how companies can best manage their applicants through recruitment software.