Recruiting as an SME can be really tough. It’s likely that you don't have a dedicated recruiter and recruitment admin can quickly eat up a lot of your day. If you feel you’re reaching a point where your recruitment is no longer a manageable ‘ad-hoc’ task, then it’s probably time to start adding some thought and strategy behind it all.
Don’t worry, this doesn’t always mean it’s time for you to hire a recruitment manager. But there are plenty of small changes you can make that’ll help boost your recruitment success.
Here are 5 (mostly free) things you need to start doing that’ll improve your recruitment as an SME with a limited recruitment budget and resources:
Remember, you’re competing for talent against organisations who are bigger and, at a glance, better than you. This means you’re up against internal recruitment teams whose sole purpose is to nab up all the great talent before you even get a peep at them. It doesn’t matter how busy the candidate market gets, good talent will always get hired fast.
So, how can you get to the good talent first? Try implementing these strategies:
Review and respond to your applicants faster and set up internal service level agreements for this. For example, ensuring your managers know to set aside time to review all applicants every 48 hours or on a Monday, Wednesday, and Friday cycle. It’s best practice to move forward good applicants to interview as soon as they come in, rather than waiting for 5-6 perfect applicants before you start booking interviews.
Related article: How an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) streamlines recruitment for SMEs
Make your first interview stage a web meeting or telephone call. It’s easier and faster for you and the candidate to make time for a phone call than to organise a face-to-face interview.
If multiple people are interviewing the candidates, make sure they all attend the first interview together. Meeting the candidates at the same time means there’s less chance for someone in the current team to decide at a later stage that a candidate isn't the right fit, potentially causing disagreements among the interviewers. After all, it’s the first impressions that really count, so make sure all interviewers are on a similar page.
This is where online job boards become your best friend. There’s literally a specialist job board for every type of vacancy you have, plus the generalist ones like Indeed, Total Jobs and Reed. It all depends on what you’re recruiting for but if you have an easy to fill role, putting it on just one job board - even a free one like Indeed - could find you your new hire. For a more challenging role, you may want to consider posting on multiple boards - this means you’ll get a better idea of the different candidate markets on each job board. So next time you recruit for the same or a similar role, you’ll be able to make a more informed decision on where to advertise.
Deciding to advertise on multiple job boards directly can become costly if you’re not buying in bulk, so we recommend you consider looking at a flat fee recruitment advertising service provider. A good provider will post on all the major UK job boards on your behalf, optimise your job advert, look after candidate queries & provide you with one central place to view your applicants. And most importantly, they’ll save you time and money compared to managing it all yourself.
If you’re up for taking on the job boards directly though, be warned - it can be tricky to make your advert stand out and generate applications from the right candidates. So if your experience in job board advertising is limited, hireful has a great free webinar that’ll help you get it right, first time. Check out when we’re next running ‘Why your job adverts are broken - and how to fix them’.
An employer what-now? It’s not as scary as it sounds, honest. An employer brand is the way existing and prospective employees perceive you as an employer - and what they think you have to offer them as an employee.
So the good news is, you almost definitely already have one. You just need to work on shouting about it to get the message out to candidates that you’re a great employer.
Start thinking about what makes you different as an employer. For example:
It’s these kinds of things that attract candidates to your organisation, so make sure you start putting them out there. Talk about your perks in the following places so candidates don’t miss seeing these all important details:
If this feels like a big task, don’t be put off - grab a free employer brand report from hireful and, based on what we find out about your employer brand, we’ll generate you a checklist on where to get started.
Using assessment tools throughout your recruitment process is a great way to minimise your risk of making the wrong hire. They essentially help you understand if your candidate can do the job before you make them an offer. Depending on the role your recruiting for, you may want to choose from the following assessment methods:
The results of these assessments mean you’re far less likely to be relying on your gut instinct and feelings to make decisions on candidates’ abilities - also known as your unconscious bias. There are a bunch of reasons why it’s important to minimise your risk of being influenced by your unconscious bias, but a key part of it is that this will help you build a diverse and inclusive environment and workforce.
If you’re interested in taking steps to tackle your unconscious bias, why not check out our minimising unconscious bias in your recruitment training course? On completion, you’ll receive a certificate and know exactly how to stop being influenced by your unconscious self.
Related article: Recruitment bias: why workplaces stay the same
Once you’ve found the person you want to hire, you need to act fast to keep them engaged. After all, you can’t be certain they haven’t got other job offers on the horizon.
And there it is, 5 ways you can improve your recruitment as an SME. Act on all of these points and you’ll spend less time recruiting, attract better applicants, hire the best candidates and best of all, engage them in a way that once they’ve started working for you, they’ll never want to leave.
Webinar: The 7 recruiting habits of highly effective SMEs
Article: How effective recruitment contributes to business success
Article: 8 alternative recruitment strategies to find your next employee