Streamline Your Hiring Process: Hiring Strategies for Small Businesses
The talent market is tighter than ever and streamlining your hiring process might make all the difference. Check out these SMB hiring strategies.
Have you ever spent weeks or even months trying to fill an open position? The hiring process can be a time-consuming and expensive process, and at the end of it your new employee might decide the position isn’t what they expected. At that point, you have another open position that needs to be filled. Keep this from happening by creating a hiring strategy.
What Is A Hiring Strategy And Why Do I Need One?
Hiring strategies are crucial in order to fill an open position quickly and without wasting time, money, or energy. It can take weeks to find a good candidate for an open position, and if they don’t happen to be a great fit, you’ll have to start the hiring process all over again. A good hiring strategy helps you hire who you need, within your time and money constraints.
What Are The Best Recruiting Methods?
Treat potential employees like they are your customers, make them feel welcome, be respectful of their time, and give them your contact information should they have any questions.
A popular method for recruiting is to use social media. On social platforms, you can position your company as a great place to work by taking photos of staff events and sharing employee acknowledgments. This gives people interested in working there a glimpse into the company culture that they could be a part of.
Another way to use social media for recruiting is to find talent and advertise open positions. Even if the people you reach aren’t interested, they can share the post with someone who may be a better fit.
How Do I Create A Hiring Plan?
Follow these steps on creating hiring strategies to make your own hiring plan.
- Define the position, job expectations, and how the employee’s success will be measured.
- Understand the company values and culture, and how the department functions.
- Set a timeframe with an ideal start date and a deadline for taking on a new employee; be sure to leave enough time for the hiring process and employee training.
- Determine a budget plan that accounts for the related costs and all possible hiring resources (industry-related events, advertising, staffing agencies, colleges, referrals, corporate websites).
- Evaluate your options: consider looking internally first, restructuring job expectations among existing employees, or hiring temporary or contract work for the position instead.
How Do I Recruit For A Difficult Position?
To fill a difficult position, you may need to go above and beyond the hiring strategies already mentioned above.
- Encourage employee referrals and consider implementing an employee referral program.
- Target people early in their career, possibly in college or recent graduates, who may be interested in an internship program or job shadowing placement.
What Is A Strategic Hire?
Strategic hiring is one of the hiring strategies that can seem unfair but usually works well for companies. It involves hiring the person with the skills, knowledge, or connections that are valuable to the company, even if they aren’t the best fit for the position. These traits are considered to be advantageous in advancing the company in some way.
Having a hiring strategy for your company can save you time, energy, and money. The next time you need to hire a new employee, you’ll be able to stay on budget and meet your hiring deadline with a new hire that is a better fit for your company.
