Guest Article
Recruiting staff for a small business can be quite complicated and challenging. Balancing the budget is the biggest challenge faced by most startups. They are likely to spend way too much on attracting and hiring employees. Here are some useful recruitment tips for small business owners:
- Define your hiring strategy:
- Avoid large hiring at one time:
For a startup, it is hard to know when to hire someone and if the business will sustain the growth. Also it’s difficult to manage too much change.
- Keep your start-up lean:
Scratch off roles that you’re not going to need initially. Avoid hiring for jobs where employees need to work few hours each daily. Instead try to hire freelancers to complete these tasks. Try to avoid hiring employees you may not really need till 2 to 3 months into a project, even if your budget can afford it. Many startups hire just to ‘avoid missing out on talent’, leading to waste of funds. Outsource some of the processes, if you need a full-time employee, hire offshore staff.
- Write accurate job descriptions:
The job descriptions should reflect the roles the individual will fill, the skill sets they must possess, the personality attributes that they must have, the relevant education and experience that they should have in order to successfully undertake the tasks defined for the role.
- Approach recruitment with caution:
Each and every hiring is important. Hire after thoroughly evaluating candidates. Introduce a temp-to-permanent policy to avoid difficult situations due to wrong hiring.
- Attract talent from different sources, without paying for advertisements:
- Working with fresh graduates:
Hiring fresh graduates straight from university is great and if your small business / startup has the time to train the fresh talent, you will be able to mold them to your business requirements. Also, they are not biased or influenced by habits from other companies. If you invest time in them you will have talented employees who are dedicated to the success of your company.
- Referral program:
The existing employees of the organization know the company culture and requirements better than any external recruiter. Make it easy for employees to refer candidates. Introduce some perks to boost employee referrals.
- Chalk out benefits for potential hires:
- Emphasize the benefits your small business offers:
Make your company more attractive to potential employees by offering things such as flexible hours, work at home options, etc. Offer employees some way to take up different projects or move upward.
- Work on skill enhancement and job advancements:
Most employees are looking for challenges and change in the work they do. They’re looking for opportunities for advancement, developing new skills or taking on new responsibilities. Whatever it is, in terms of attracting employees, work on all of them and offer these opportunities to your employees.
- Introduce a profit sharing plan:
There is no better way to give employees a stake in a company’s success. It makes employees take responsibility, accountability and ownership in their work. Profit sharing is a great motivator to make employees stick around and work towards the benefit of the company.
Evaluate candidates thoroughly:
- Pay attention to skills rather than credentials:
Sometimes a candidate may appear to be great potential hire based on the resume and communication skills, but hiring him/ her might not turn out to be a good decision. Hence it is important to objectively test each candidate. Design a test for evaluating the skills needed for the position you are hiring for.
- Evaluate culture fit:
While employees must have the skills necessary to do their jobs, it is essential to understand that skills alone don’t make great employees. It is equally important that they have the right personality to succeed in the culture of your business. Make sure that you identify the personality traits required and evaluate the hires on that basis.
- Probationary periods:
Make sure that all new employees are hired with a probationary period written into their contract. This ensures that if the relationship isn’t working, you are able to let them go with little impact on the business. If you do have to let somebody go at the end of the probationary period, hold an exit interview where you can discuss what went wrong.
About the Author: This guest post is written by Geetanjali Kulkarni. She loves to write about recruitment tips and hiring guidelines. She helps people search the right job and develop a bright career. Learn more at www.CareersUnbound.com
Tremendous tips for hiring new employees within a small business! I especially believe that hiring from different sources is a great way to make sure that you are being introduced to a wide range of potential recruits. We have a few more tips that came from an interview with Indeed Director of Employer Insights Kevin Walker that focuses on a href=”http://fitsmallbusiness.com/small-business-hiring/”>hiring tips that allow small businesses to compete with the Goliaths.
Thank you. It was very interesting to read, really good advice.