For small businesses, finding the right employee for a position can be a daunting task and present several challenges. Smaller firms may have difficulty gaining enough visibility to attract top talent and traditional recruiting methods, such as posting on job boards or classifieds, can often flood them with overwhelming amounts of applications, many from unqualified applicants.
Being innovative and using new technologies to support your recruitment efforts can pay off. Social media, industry associations, and networking events provide the opportunity for small businesses to gain visibility in their community and industry, as well as the possibility of identifying potential hires.
“Social media provides us with this great technology at our fingertips, and it’s a great way to find talent and gain visibility,” HR Anew President & CEO Deborah Stallings said.
Posting company profiles and advertising the benefits of working for your business on a profile on LinkedIn, a Facebook page, or a video on YouTube, is an easy and free way to promote your company to potential candidates.
“Social media also provides us with the opportunity to maintain our professional relationships and contacts, which can be incredibly valuable when looking for talent,” Stallings said.
Stallings said many great candidates for small firms are ‘passive job seekers,’ or those who do not apply directly to a position, but instead are referred through a professional contact. “Recently HR Anew hired six new employees, and all of them were passive job seekers,” she said.
Even your current employees can serve as recruiters. They can advertise the benefits of working for your company to professional contacts and friends. Industry associations and networking events can also provide you with the opportunity of identifying potential hires without having to go through the process of posting an ad and sifting through applications. Attending job fairs and working with career centers at local universities is another option to indentify new talent.
Wherever your recruitment efforts take you, it is important that they are continuous, and do not just start when a new position needs to be filled. Maintaining professional contacts and relationships will make the talent-finding process easier when it is time to bring on that new hire.
