When you need stellar employees, how do you compete with larger businesses if your business, brand, and offerings are less well-known – and your recruitment budget is limited? Fear not! By implementing these tips for small business hiring success, you can turn challenges into advantages and build a talented and loyal team to support your small business growth.
Why do good employees matter?
A great team is one of your most valuable business assets. From the inside, they help you innovate, strengthen profitability, and grow. To the rest of the world, they serve as brand ambassadors between your business and the public, bringing your vision and culture to life.
Getting and keeping a talented team is essential, so small business hiring strategies must go beyond the usual outlets to compete effectively. Here’s how to make being a small business a competitive advantage when hiring great employees.
Step 1: Build your brand to attract talented candidates
If your business already has a great brand – people know your business and have positive associations with it – then you’re in a good position when it comes to seeking candidates. But what if your business is new or simply doesn’t have a strong brand identity yet?
To make the most of small business hiring opportunities, you need to take a few steps to strengthen your brand identity. While these are most effective as part of an ongoing branding and marketing strategy, the recruitment process is a great time to hone your image and messaging, and get your business and vision known.
With so many easy and inexpensive branding strategies and digital tools, you can begin strengthening your brand today. Here are ways to start honing and promoting your brand identity:
- Build or refresh your website: If you don’t already have a business website, create a simple one – they’re still one of the most-often-used sources when people want to learn more about a business. Your website is also a great way to promote your services, goods, vision, and values. Many hosting platforms have AI-assisted website development tools so you can have a new website in a couple of hours for a few hundred dollars a year (or less).
- Review your social media sites: Ensure that your social media pages accurately reflect your business’s values, culture, and other brand identifiers.
- Gather online social proof: If you have existing employees, ask them to post testimonials about their experiences working in your business. This can go a long way when potential candidates compare job opportunities.
- Promote your community support: If your business participates in fundraisers or other initiatives that support your community or industry, highlight them – people like to support and work for businesses that give back.
When your brand is strong, people will want to work with you, even before you look for them.
Step 2: Define your hiring needs
Before you bring on new team members, be sure you’re making the hires you need. Assess the reasons: For example, maybe you’ve run the business alone and need your first employee, maybe there are skill or knowledge gaps, or maybe you just need more hours covered. Try these tips:
- Identify gaps in your team: Before you bring on new employees, review your team’s current skills, availability, and areas where they’d like to grow. Then, determine whether an existing employee could fill the need with some additional time and training. Even if that’s the case, you may still need to hire employees to fill gaps that result from promotions or other changes.
- Define new roles and responsibilities: Once you’ve identified a need, define the new position’s responsibilities, reporting structure, and expected result. Every role should allow you to build revenue or operate more effectively.
- Budget for the position: Determine how this hire impacts your business and bottom line. For example, will the cost of a new salesperson be more than compensated for by an increase in revenue? Will the expense of an executive assistant free you up to focus on building sales and profitability? Your goal is to make the right hire for the right role with the right investment in salary and benefits.
Be sure you consider all potential impacts to make the best decision for your business.
Step 3: Attract qualified candidates
When you’re ready to post open positions, you want to attract candidates who are a great fit for the roles and your culture. Here are some tips:
- Create a job description. Clarify essential skills, experience, and qualifications. To reach a wider candidate pool, you could include whether the requirements can be satisfied through a mix of work experience, education, and volunteer work or hobbies.
- Post your position. Use recruitment channels relevant to your business, brand, and needs. Local job boards, social media sites, networking organizations, and local colleges are good places to start.
- Leverage employee networks. If relevant to your business and roles, it can be helpful to ask existing employees to get the word out to their networks.
- Broaden the candidate pool. You can also consider using “Fair Chance” hiring practices in your search. This can expand your candidate pool and help people who may have difficulty getting a foot in the door.
Once you receive resumes or applications, have a process to review them: Make sure any relevant team members are included, be fair and transparent in your process, and respond to all candidates, whether they’ll move on to an interview or not.
Step 4: Own the interview process
The interview process is multifaceted: As you’re interviewing them, candidates are also evaluating your business. Present an honest and authentic assessment of your goals and needs so candidates can determine whether a good fit exists, while also following legal requirements and best practices.
Make the most of the interview process by following these tips:
- Prepare: Create a list of relevant questions to assess existing skills and the potential to learn and grow in the role. If needed, run them by legal or human resources advisors to ensure they’re appropriate. Include any team members involved in the interview process and make sure they’re comfortable with asking questions, getting input from candidates, and making recommendations. Holding practice interviews can be a beneficial exercise.
- Conduct the interviews: Your goal is to get the best candidate to help your business while supporting your culture, so keep in mind that everything you and your team do as part of your process will reflect on your business. All communications should be professional and approachable before, during, and after the interview. Be respectful and considerate by letting candidates know when they’ll hear back from you.
- Evaluate candidates and make an offer: Following each interview, note whether a candidate’s skills, experience, capabilities, and attitude would be a good fit. Once you’ve found one, make an offer dependent on a reference check. Hopefully, all will be well, and you can move forward with onboarding your new employee soon. Be sure to thank other candidates who took the time to meet with you.
Once your offer has been accepted, follow through with an onboarding process so the employee can learn about the business culture, responsibilities, and how they fit into the bigger picture of your overall success.
Pursuit has financing to help you grow
If you need financing to help you grow your team and achieve your goals, Pursuit can help.
We’re a leading small business lender serving businesses in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Nevada, Illinois, and Washington. We offer loans and a line of credit for working capital, commercial real estate, equipment, and more, including financing to help your business be more competitive during the small business hiring process. We’ve helped thousands of small business owners get the funding they need, and we can help you too.
Apply today and give your business a boost.
