Recruitment is consistently one of the biggest challenges that SME businesses face. It's a problem for both sole traders making their critical first hire or a larger businesses looking to grow and expand. Here's a list of recruiting tools and techniques that when used, will increase the likelihood of making better recruitment decisions.
Before we begin, it's worthy saying that recruitment is not an exact science and works differently for different businesses. However, the cost of recruiting the wrong person into the wrong role can have serious financial implications; it is better to continue with a vacancy than hire someone not right for the job.
For any recruitment activity to start well, it is important to create a detailed and engaging job description. Start by writing a list of the 'must-haves' for the role and then the 'nice to haves' and this will form the basis for the clear requirements of the role. Don't forget to check that the other members of your team involved in the recruitment process are happy with the lists you've created. It might also be an idea to create a scoring system to the importance of key factors such as qualifications and levels of experiences. This means that after the submission of multiple CVs, there will be a objective process for selecting those candidates who will progress to the next stage of recruitment.
Whilst interview will always be the ‘work horse’ of recruitment, try not to rely solely on this. If you can, deploy other selection techniques which will increase the probability of making the best hire possible or to put it another way, reduce the likelihood of hiring the wrong person. Other techniques could include: presentations, group exercises, report writing, tests specific to the roles e.g. excel, psychometrics, and personality profiling.
Clearly, not every role warrants use of all of these. But, by adding even one additional exercise, recruiters will be able to observe far more of the candidate’s actual skills and competence than they would by just interviewing.
Additionally, not everyone performs well at interview. So, giving the candidate(s) more opportunity to demonstrate their capabilities makes sense. By adopting a more sophisticated approach to recruitment, the business will present itself in a positive light which leads us on to our final recruiting tip.
The recruiting process is also an opportunity for the candidate to decide whether they like the company. For this reason, it is important that recruiting companies are present themselves well. This means that the most valuable and suitable candidates will most likely accept the job it's being offered to them. In fact, even candidates that companies reject should walk away with a very positive impression. They will tell others about their experience which increases the chances of quality candidates applying for roles in the future.
In summary, it is important that recruiters for SMEs are clear about the following: who and what they are looking for; how they are going to find them, and that the company is presents itself well so the right successful candidates choose them too.
At TAB, we help business owners of SMEs with many challenges and opportunities including recruiting. 96.5% of our members say that since joining TAB, their ability to address personnel and organisational issues has improved. Discover TAB's business support services and how we can help your business give you what you want out of life.