Hiring well is essential for the lifeblood of a business. Good recruitment will give your business the best possible chance of succeeding in the short, and long term. However, this is easier said than done. As a result, small and medium businesses often struggle with recruitment. When it comes to looking for new team members, we’ve identified some of the big issues they face.
Reputation
If your business is a start-up, or still making a name for itself, you still need to make a reputation for yourself. Developing this can take time. Resultantly, you can lose out to higher reputation businesses that are more familiar to your candidates. To counter this, you need to make sure your business has strong unique selling points to mark your brand out.
Resources
Recruiting the best takes time and needs a lot of resources. It isn’t just big salaries either! There are a lot of things that could put off potential employees and consequently, businesses need to consider these.
Additional tangible benefits such as flexible working hours, uncapped holiday quotas and company technology can help alleviate salary issues and make your business more appealing. If you can’t offer these immediately, having a plan in place for getting these benefits in the longer term can be a persuasive factor.
Advertising Poorly
If you have an exciting vacancy, chances are you still might not get the right candidate. People who don’t advertise their vacancies well can’t expect to get a plethora of good candidates because they don’t realise the position is available!
Spending appropriately on advertising your post can help you attract good candidates, however, businesses also need to use social media channels and PPC marketing effectively to promote their vacant positions. Networking platforms, such as LinkedIn, can also be a great way to encourage people to apply. By taking this more varied approach, you have a better chance of attracting quality candidates, which can make the time you spent on recruiting worth it in the longer term.
Efficiency
The recruitment landscape is ever-changing and competition is now increasing every single day. As a result, you need to ensure your business is positioning itself ahead of the competition.
Keeping on top of industry trends is a great way to ensure your business’s recruiting process is efficient and smooth. However, you also can’t underestimate the benefit of good communication and organised processes. This means you have an adaptable, streamlined strategy.
Internal Friction
Finding the right recruits is tough and internal issues between staff can cause even more problems. Challenging other members of staff – whether it is on results or speed. Being picky or setting bars too high can also cause issues.
Sitting down with your colleagues and discussing the state of the market, as well as stressing the need for flexibility can help. Stay polite, professional and focus on the bigger picture.
Cost and Time to Hire
Businesses increasingly need to spend less time onboarding recruits to save costs where possible. As a result, the time and cost spent on hiring needs to be reduced to give the extra bandwidth to train new staff.
Getting an efficient process in place is the first step, but it’s always worth stepping back and reviewing your activities regularly in order to make sure that you are evaluating all areas and thinking about how you can cut back on costs and time taken.
Investing in the right technology to streamline processes can also be helpful. Job boards online can offer access to a massive talent pool and give you better coverage compared to manual prospecting, although it can also alert competitors to what you are doing.
Making the right investments in tools might seem counter-productive when you are looking to save money, but they can be extremely beneficial in the longer term.
