Small businesses usually cannot afford to spend many resources on finding the right candidates. Still, this doesn’t mean that it isn’t possible for small business owners to develop a strategy that would allow them to recruit workers effectively. If you know what to focus on, you’ll be able to do that.
That’s why today we’re offering you 8 HR hacks that could help to attract the right candidates for your small business.
- Make the job description clear.
Most job ads are very specific about the skill sets of the candidates they’re looking for. However, they aren’t as specific about their responsibilities and the perks the candidates will get.
Therefore, the first thing you can do to maximize the reply rate is to make the job description as clear as possible. Be specific about the responsibilities, the benefits, and the salary range. Also, make sure that the information is easy to read and understand.
- Have a social networking strategy.
Being a small business owner, you cannot afford to waste opportunities. Therefore, it’s important to ensure your social media presence as well as post your job ads on social media.
These days many candidates look for job offers not only on job search websites but on social media too. It never hurts to reblog your ads on social media just in case someone you need stumbles upon them. It also doesn’t hurt to make your social media informative and appealing. After all, when you are a small business, candidates probably don’t know much about you, so naturally, they’ll be looking for some information. Investing time and efforts into building your social media profiles could pay off well in that case.
- Encourage education (and emphasize that).
Many employees don’t want to settle for one specific set of responsibilities. They want to learn something new, to develop professional, to build new skills, etc. By showing that you support that, you might be able to make your job offers even more appealing. So if that’s the case, don’t miss the opportunity.
Being a small business, you might not be able to afford courses and training programs for your employees, but that’s okay. You can still encourage education by allowing your employees to take new responsibilities, to learn from people working in other departments, etc. So be open about that in your job ad.
- Make the application process easy.
Think about how much time would it take for a candidate to apply for your job ad. If it seems that they’ll need to spend a couple of hours just to do so, maybe you should change something about your application process.
Do your best to make this process easy to understand and to complete. Maybe you do want to ask the candidates something to test their skills or knowledge: find out whether they can use different writing techniques, work with different software, and so on. However, there’s also a chance that you’ll be able to do that later: after viewing their resume or during the interview.
- Talk about your corporate culture.
You probably want your employees to come and stay – and most of them want that too. People usually expect to stay in one company for a long period of time, so it’s natural that they want to know more about the company’s culture.
If you take your time to talk about your company’s corporate culture on your job ad or on your website, you will instantly make the position more clear and appealing to the potential employees. Writing a couple of lines and posting a couple of photos doesn’t take much time but can make a huge difference.
- Respect candidate’s time.
Not all companies need to hire new workers immediately. Some of them take their time to explore the job market, select the potential candidates, and ask them to complete a couple of test tasks or to attend a couple of interviews.
Not all candidates agree to that, however. There are plenty of people, who look for a job because they need to switch it (or find it) quickly – and they cannot afford to wait. Keep this in mind and do your best to show that you do respect the time of your potential candidates.
What can you do to achieve that? Reply to the resumes quicker, specify how long each stage of the recruiting process would last (and make them as short as possible) and don’t hesitate to make an offer.
- Be transparent.
Of course, you shouldn’t share all the information with the potential candidates. Sharing some, however, won’t hurt, just as getting them into more details about your business processes.
Therefore, you should be clear about your expectations, about the candidate’s responsibilities, about the challenges they might face and the things they need to achieve. Don’t specify everything but be clear about what the candidate will get from working with you and what should they expect from it.
- Ensure communication.
You probably won’t hire all the candidate but it’s still important to reply to each one of them. Sadly, many companies don’t do that, which increases candidates’ frustration.
If you take some time to write all the candidate about your decision not to hire them and do your best to give some feedback, even a brief one, this would be greatly appreciated by them and could help you boost your company’s reputation, which is generally good for small businesses. So don’t waste an opportunity.
Wrapping this up, the recruiting process for the small businesses doesn’t differentiate much from the one for bigger businesses. It might be hard to find the right candidates at first but if you do implement those hacks into the hiring process, it will get easier – and more beneficial – for you.
About the Author:
Alice Jones is a tutor & high skilled web content writer. Love sharing tips and topics about education, management, and marketing. She studied Arts in English at the University of New Orleans. She likes to read different book genres, to attend refresher training and various personal development courses. Connect with her on Facebook and follow her on Twitter.
