“First-rate people hire first-rate people; second-rate people hire third-rate people.” —Leo Rosten
Everyone knows the standard ways for companies to find employees. There’s Monster.com and CareerBuilder, which are still very popular. There’s Indeed.com, which searches all the other sites. LinkedIn has become extremely popular for job postings, and more recently ZipRecuiter.com boasts that it posts to all the job sites. Other than the most popular, there are some lesser known sites such as Snagajob.com, Simplyhired.com, and ClearFit.com among others. Even Craigslist has become a popular site for companies to post positions. If a company doesn’t want to post the position, a recruiter or headhunter, as they are still affectionately known, may be called in to help.
If you do decide to post the position, realize a couple of things. First, these job sites are not cheap and second, you will get a lot of candidates, whether they are qualified for your position or not.
This poses a few problems for small business owners. First, many small business owners don’t have a Human Resource Manager, much less a Human Resources Department. Additionally, if they do have a Human Resource representative, the majority of the job involves compliance, employee issues, etc., and not recruiting. Second, there is the cost of posting on these sites, which can range from a couple of hundred dollars a month per job posting to almost $400. If you’re posting one job, not too bad. If you’re posting a few, it can become quite costly. Third, once you post a job, you will most likely receive the resumes of anywhere from 10 to 50 applicants per day, most of which are not truly qualified for the position you posted. So given the first problem, who will go through those daily 10 to 50 resumes?
It can be quite daunting just to go through the resumes and find candidates that you think might be qualified. Now you’ve got to set up the phone and face-to-face interviews to further weed out candidates while you’re continuing to go through the 10 to 50 additional resumes that came in yesterday!
And after all that, do you find the candidate that’s best suited for the position?
Hiring a candidate is a costly proposition. HR.com stated that it costs approximately $7,000 to hire a salaried employee, $10,000 to hire a mid-level employee, and $40,000 to hire a senior level employee. How much more will it cost to hire another employee if the first one doesn’t work out?
Is there a better way for small businesses to find good candidates? I think there is. Given that all small businesses run lean and mean, they can’t utilize the same methods that larger companies use to find candidates. They just don’t have the same bandwidth. So here are six things to consider trying when you are looking for your next employee:
Use your referral network – Instead of running to the job boards, talk to your business colleagues, networking groups, friends, and associates. Did you know that approximately 80% of jobs are found through networking? Everyone knows someone who knows someone who might be a potential great fit for your position. And wouldn’t you rather have a potential candidate that was referred by someone you trust rather than pulling a name off the Internet? What do you have to lose by going there first? Don’t just ask someone if they know someone. Provide them with a formal job description so that at least they know what the requirements and expectations are for the position. This helps them and of course helps you get more qualified candidates.
Go beyond the resume and the interview – The resume provides experience, the interview helps you decide cultural fit and gives a candidate the opportunity to talk about their experience. However, it doesn’t give all the dimensions to help you decide whether they are the best candidate. Try job benchmarking using scientific assessments. If done correctly, a job benchmark will help you identify the types of behaviors, motivators, and soft skills the particular position requires. Then as candidates take a similar assessment, the job assessment is compared to the candidate’s assessment so that you can better match those specific areas that are important to you and the company. This added dimension helps further qualify a candidate for success.
Hire for what you need and what you will need – Consider what your needs will be three to five years down the road and not just for now. Consider what you want this position to become and match the candidate’s skills and experience to not only being able to perform the current duties of the job, but also the future planned duties. This will help you to provide a career path for the candidate, avoid employee turnover, and save yourself from having to potentially hire a new person in three years.
Hire problem solvers – Having the skills to do the job is one thing, being able to resolve problems as they occur can be quite something else. During the interview process, ask questions of the candidates as if they were already on the job. Instead of asking them what they did in the past, concentrate on the type of everyday problems and situations they might run across and see how they would resolve them. This is another reason to utilize the job benchmarking assessments—to help identify problem solving skills.
Hire for longevity – Look at candidates who will be there with you for the long haul. Hiring employees can be a pain in the neck. The entire process of resume reviews, interviews, and candidate selection can be a long, tedious process, which takes away time that is needed to perform your day-to-day operations. So when interviewing candidates, do all you can to make sure that they not only want a job, but a career. How long they stay depends on how they are treated and utilized.
Hire attitude, train skills – Being able to perform the tasks and responsibilities are obviously very important parts of the position. However, hiring someone who performs the job while making life miserable for everyone else will have a much greater negative impact than hiring someone with fewer skills, but a great attitude and cultural fit. Skills can be learned. Attitude, behavior, personality, and general demeanor they bring with them. Lack of skills can hurt for a while. A bad attitude can destroy a team.
It’s important for small businesses to be able to hire the best and the brightest the first time out. Hopefully, these six tips will help you to find those candidates while alleviating the stress and strain of the entire hiring process.
About the Author — Ron Feher is the Chief Improvement Officer at WhiteRock Business Solutions. Ron’s business is to help make your business better. He is an executive advisor with The BoardRoom (executive think tank) and specializes in improving all aspects of business operations including career coaching, hiring, business planning, business processes, and day-to-day operations. He is a certified project manager and a certified professional analyst with TTI Success Insights® utilizing their behavioral, motivational, competency, and emotional intelligence assessments to help businesses hire, retain, and improve their team. Ron does Career Coaching as an outreach to the community. WhiteRock is located in Orange County, California and can be found at www.whiterockbusiness.net; or contact Ron directly at rfeher@whiterockbusiness.net (949-466-0943). #employees #hiring #SMB @RonFeher
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