A proactive approach to recruitment for small business 

In recent years, we’ve seen major shifts in how companies hire, who they hire, and what will give them the best chance at securing the highest quality talent. As a hands-on recruitment partner, we’ve made practical suggestions to help you reframe your hiring process: 

• Hiring for potential; 
• Generating “recruitment leads” with social media; and, 
• Speeding up your hiring process with mobile recruitment tools to increase your chances of a successful hire. 

These proactive solutions remain key to your success in 2023. We’ve gone into a little more detail below about how you can turn strategies like these into real goals for your business, to help you hire quicker, better, and in less time. 

So, what’s ‘in’ and what’s ‘out’ for small business hiring? 

Recruitment trends to capitalise on in 2023

In: Prioritising skills over experience

What does “5 years of experience” mean? Does it mean they are 3 years more qualified than someone with 2 years of experience? Does it mean they have more talent? More ability? Does it mean that they are ready to start the job immediately upon hire?

What more and more organisations are realising is that it doesn’t necessarily mean any of those things. 

Experience is not exactly the same as talent, ability, or capability. It is not proof of strength, on its own. There are even situations where it can be a disadvantage, as they may not be agile enough to adjust to your new needs.

Skills and potential, on the other hand, are universal. Maybe the person has less experience, but they demonstrate that they can learn quickly and that they’ll be able to competently do the job. It’s also good to consider that all new hires – including those with 5, 10, or 20 years experience – take weeks if not months of training and handover to adjust anyway. 

Finding people with the right skills is the new way to hire, especially when the labour market is tight. 

Out: Posting generic job ads

People are no longer desperate for work. The best talent is already employed and, if anything, they are trying to find an organisation that speaks to them, one that makes them truly consider leaving their current job and finding a home somewhere new.

An engaging job advertisement is your most important tool to attract new candidates. You need your job ad to be written in a way that is unique to your business, and you need it to excite people to work with you, kind of like you are trying to sell them a product. 

Although copying and pasting a generic job description from the internet will save you time, it’s not going to attract highly motivated, skilled candidates to your role. You can learn to optimise your job ads like a pro, or you can get expert advice on how to market your vacancies most effectively from one of our recruitment consultants. 

As a small business, you can offer unique qualities and benefits to your new team members. If you offer a close-knit team or a flexible culture, candidates want to know that! Pay transparency is important, but marketing your uniqueness will go a long way to entice candidates who resonate with who you are. 

In: Extensive onboarding, training, and handover 

Recruitment doesn’t stop at the hire. Extensive onboarding and training is the best way to make sure your new hire not only thrives at the job, but stays. 

Along with training and handover, the first few days with your new hire should be spent sharing your business’s story, and inducting them into your culture so that they feel supported professionally and socially. It goes a long way to build trust and lines of communication that will help your new team member to feel like they belong, and like they are empowered to be highly productive in their new role. 

Try to support your new hire with handover notes that outline key processes and procedures, what to do if things go wrong, who to ask for certain kinds of information. Plan ahead to spend a lot of time with them particularly in the first week, and ongoing to check in and ensure they feel comfortable in their first few months. 

Here’s a guide to onboarding your new hire to help you. 

Out: Targeting only active job seekers

When recruiting, there are two groups of candidates to consider: 

• Active candidates, who are actively looking at job boards for new roles, making applications and scheduling interviews; and, 
• Passive candidates, who are not actively seeking a new job, but could be interested in the right opportunity if they come across it. They might browse job boards occasionally, but they’re not actively applying for roles. 

Your unique job ads will help you grab the attention of the active candidates, but it helps to have a plan for attracting passive candidates, too, particularly when the labour market is so tight. 

Reaching out to passive candidates directly can be very effective, particularly when you can follow it up with really engaging information about the job and the benefits of working with your business. 

If this kind of outreach is a little bit time-intensive for your team, we do offer a digital headhunting service that can be used in conjunction with our standard recruitment service to help you expedite the process. Combined, the package helps you to pool together active and passive candidates, and make even better hiring decisions on account of having more options. 

In: Maintaining relationships with ex-employees

Sometimes, the talent you need is the talent you had. We’re in an era where people leave companies for things like more money or more excitement all the time, even if they generally like their job. This isn’t the same market as a few decades ago, where employees were loyal or felt like they couldn’t experiment and try new things.

This change in attitude can be beneficial to your business: it means that an employee that leaves your organisation may be more than willing to come back, and that person may be exactly what you need. Often, hiring “boomerang employees” as we affectionately call them, can reduce the time taken to onboard and train, as they may remember a lot of your processes and procedures from days gone by. 

We highly recommend maintaining positive relationships with all of your ex employees, as you never know when one of them will be open to returning. 

Out: Ghosting unsuccessful candidates

We live in a connected world, with online reviews, social media, and so much more. It is not only bad ethics to forget about unsuccessful candidates – it can be harmful to your business and your hiring efforts. 

Those “ghosted” candidates now have a voice they can use to discourage people from joining your team. 

It’s best practice to contact each and every unsuccessful candidate to grant them the closure of knowing which of their opportunities are still on the table. A simple, empathetic email can show immense respect and create a more positive experience for the candidate, which reflects well on your business. It could also leave the door open for future hires – ask talented candidates who happen to be unsuccessful if you can add them to a mailing list for future opportunities with your team! 

In: Speeding up your time to hire

Imagine that you are a highly-skilled candidate who is in high demand in the current market. You find a job that appeals to you and you apply. More than a week passes before you are invited for your first interview. More than a week passes before the second interview. You are offered the job, and told that you’ll start a few weeks later. By now, you’ve waited more than a month to see if you even have a chance at this one job. 

What would that make you think about this organisation?

You might think they are disorganized, or that the position is not a priority. 

And what might happen in that time?

You’ll be scheduling other interviews, and fielding other job offers. You’ll become less passionate about working for the first organisation. You may even decide to stay at your current job because things aren’t taking off. 

Speeding up the time to hire is critical for businesses that want to stay ahead of their competition. At Recruit Shop, we ensure a fast and efficient process that gets results. We have the resources to spend time keeping your candidates engaged and well-informed as you make your decision. If you want to discuss how we can help you improve your recruitment process without breaking the bank, you can request a callback here. 

Out: Trying to do it all yourself, if you’re struggling 

Recruit Shop works closely with small businesses like yours to achieve real results. If you want to capitalise on these recruitment trends but you’re not sure where to start, we can work with you to create a robust recruitment campaign that meets your needs. 

You can reach out to our team today on +61 1300 901 721 or send an email to info@recruitshop.com.au with information about your vacancy and the kind of candidate you’re seeking. Alternatively, you can request a callback from one of our recruitment specialists to chat about your goals in detail. 

If you operate a small business, you’ve probably noticed that the labour market is smaller than it used to be. Not only are there fewer people available for open jobs (with “Help Wanted” signs put up all over the country), but the people applying for those jobs tend to not be as qualified as their predecessors.

If you have an open position, and you’re having trouble finding someone you need, now is a great time to rethink the parameters that you use to hire. It is time to think about hiring for *potential* and not only based on experience.

What do businesses usually look for when hiring?

Businesses typically look at three distinct things when trying to figure out who to hire. They look at experience, including how long someone has worked in the field. They look for skills, including whether or not someone knows how to do the tasks the job requires. Then they look at potential – the likelihood the person is going to thrive in the role.

Potential is typically last because of the long-held belief that an applicant’s potential is implied by experience and skills. But, even before the labour market tightened, many savvy organizations realised that the way they viewed applicants may have been wrong. That “potential” may be as important, if not more important, than other hiring factors.

What do we mean by “hiring for potential?”

When we talk about potential, we’re talking about a person’s intangibles, such as:

• How hard-working a person is.
• How well they’re going to fit into the business’s values and culture.
• How personable they are, and how they interact with others.
• How intelligent they seem, and how well they learn.

These are all factors that affect whether or not someone will do well in the position.

Why is ‘potential’ better than experience or skills?

An applicant’s experience and skills still matter and should remain a part of the conversation when determining who to hire. But many employers have found that those factors are not necessarily more important than potential. That is because:

• Not all skills are transferable between companies.
• Not all roles require a specific number of years to be valuable.
• Not all personalities fit a particular employer.
• Not all experience is due to a person’s abilities.
• Not all “skills” are completed with proficiency.

There are many people that only have experience because of luck or privilege. For example, consider a person that gains 5 years of experience because they were hired by a family friend.

On the other hand, there are many people that work with technology that is constantly changing or has countless features, and how they work with programs or tasks at one company may not be the same at another.

There is even an argument to be made that someone with experience may be more rigid in their beliefs, or less able to work with others.

Everyone has to learn, and everyone has to grow

Imagine a person that came from nothing as part of a marginalised group. They had to work as hard as possible to get to where they are today and have succeeded. Because of their background, they may not have as many years of experience because they have not been given as many opportunities. They may not even have all the skills that are needed for the role for the same reason.

But:

• They are a good cultural fit;
• Skills can be learned;
• The person has shown a readiness to work hard; and,
• They come from different backgrounds, allowing for more diverse viewpoints.

The person may not have as much experience, and may not even have all the skills, but their potential is off the charts. Similarly, you might consider recent graduates, or people seeking to completely change their career after a lifetime in another industry, as candidates with loads of untapped potential.

The onboarding process might be a bit longer, but the payoff would be remarkable.

Is hiring for potential worth the risk?

Choosing to hire for potential can completely transform your existing recruitment process. It opens the door to traditionally overlooked people that may offer even more for your business than the traditional model of skills- or experienced-based recruiting. It’s something many businesses have been forced to do as a result of the tight labour market, but its advantages have always been there for those that take the chance.

But how does a company hire for potential?

• Consider whether “years of experience” is critical to your job opening – there is little functional difference between 1 year of experience and 10 years of experience for many jobs. Consider accepting applications from anyone with any level of experience.
• Learn about the person – give the applicant an opportunity to share something about themselves, through a cover letter or by answering questions. Don’t limit your candidates to merely a CV.
• Focus on cultural fit and intangibles at the interview – the job interview is your chance to learn as much as you can about the candidate. Make sure that you’re asking questions that indicate their potential to grow.

There are many advantages to taking a chance on an applicant based on their potential, not just their CV. It is in the best interests of businesses throughout Australia to consider opening the door for adjusting how they hire new people, in order to spot these potentially better candidates.

For more information on how we find candidates suited for your job, contact Recruit Shop, today.

Major platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and TikTok are available for free and used by millions and millions of people, young and old, every day.

We’re not just talking about stalking potential hires and sussing out their profiles, either. We’re talking about reaching out to passive candidates and building a talent pool with your posts.

Not only are we going to share tips to use social media for better recruitment; but we’re also going to teach you how to promote your business’s brand as a great employer and create a community of candidates who actually want to work with you.

How to use social media for better recruitment

Don’t panic. We’re also a small business. We’re not going to tell you that the only way to recruit socially is to pour days and days into your Facebook profile. We understand that small business owners and operators are time-poor and need to get great results in good time. So rest assured that these tips are going to be easy, accessible, and light on your budget.

1. Celebrate your employer brand

Employer branding is easier to understand – and build – than you might expect. Essentially, your employer brand is the reputation your business has from the perspective of potential employees. It’s also understood as the values you give to your employees. Considering this, you can imagine how important it is to have a good, strong employer brand! You want people to want to work with you.

There are several ways you can use social media to build your brand as an employer:

• Dedicate a couple of posts a month, at least, to showcasing your culture, benefits, values, and team.
• We all love stories about people, so you could get your current team members to tell success stories in text or on video and share these with your audience.
• Introduce your team members and their roles to your audience, and share behind-the-scenes pictures of your team hard at work, having fun, or celebrating milestones together.
• Post some of this content to your business page’s story, if available, as this generates more engagement and pushes you up in the algorithm, too!

2. Create a recruitment community

You may already post your vacancies on your business’s social media accounts, but you could take it a step further. Rather than clog your main page with job posts, consider creating a branded Facebook or LinkedIn group to share your vacancies with a dedicated group of interested candidates. Alternatively, you could join existing jobseeker groups to tap into an existing group of eager potential employees.

There are a couple of ways to funnel candidates into your recruitment community, such as:

• Directing anyone who expresses interest in working with you to your branded group;
• Making an occasional social post that directs jobseekers to your talent community (with lots of #nowhiring hashtags);
• Asking for expressions of interest in your branded community; and,
• Promoting your recruitment community in relevant networks and social media groups (if allowed).

With a steady stream of candidates filing into your community, you end up with an engaged group of potential team members that you can tap into whenever a vacancy comes up. Bonus: it costs nothing.

3. Generate recruitment leads

In recent years, we’ve all gotten used to the highly visual, dopamine-delivering online world and the instant gratification that comes with it. It’s time to shake up your recruitment methods to take advantage of those short attention spans.

Long, drawn-out application processes push candidates away. If you’re struggling to get any applications for your SEEK ads, try using social media to generate recruitment leads.

Put out a post (paid or organic) with an eye-catching, relevant image and a call to action like:

• Tag someone who’d be interested in this role;
• DM us with your name, number, and relevant qualification; or,
• DM us your resume and we’ll do the rest.

Ultimately, you are removing as many barriers between yourself and interested candidates as possible.

Note: This approach works particularly well when you’re hiring in bulk, or for a role that, at its core, only requires a couple of key qualifications.

We’re hopeful that these tips to use social media for better recruitment will help you cut through the noise and get better results when you’re hiring. If you have any questions about how to get more applications or attract more candidates to your small business, reach out to us and we can help you achieve your goals.

Here are some key digital recruitment strategies to boost your current plan and help you get the results you need to drive your business forward. 

Small business digital recruitment strategies 

There are a number of things, big and small, that you can change or introduce into your recruitment plan to get better results for your business, namely: 

Engaging candidates for future hires 

If you’ve recently run a recruitment campaign and had to make a tough decision between two great candidates, it’s well worth engaging the unsuccessful candidate for future hires. For bigger businesses, this is the process of talent pooling. But, for those with fewer resources at hand, it starts with simply asking the candidate if you can contact them for future vacancies that may come up. If they were willing to work with you once, they’ll likely want to work with you again. And, taking interest in their skills and experience is a good move for your business reputation. 

Consider setting a calendar reminder to send a short, friendly email to the candidate again in a few months time to let them know that you haven’t forgotten them and still have their resume on your radar for future opportunities. 

Providing a good candidate experience 

Make the recruitment process as painless as possible for your candidates. Start with simple things like enabling the “instant apply” button on job boards. Think of the jobs you’ve applied for where you could apply with just your SEEK or LinkedIn profile. It’s a breeze, and thus encourages more applications for your role. 

Another key consideration is optimising your job ad for mobile. It sounds technical, but it just means testing how your job ad looks and functions on a mobile phone. Walls of text without line breaks or any bold print are annoying to read on mobile and turn candidates away from your role. Plus, mobile devices comprise more than 50% of all internet traffic globally. You can’t afford to forget about it. 

(Click here for tips to optimise your job listing for better results). 

Finally, always communicate consistently with candidates. It takes some time, granted, but making the effort to let candidates know that you’ve received their application, whether they are unsuccessful, or next steps after an interview, goes a long way for your business. 

Using different platforms for active candidates 

Not all job boards are created equal. Rather, not all job boards attract the same candidates. If you only post your vacancies to big boards like SEEK and Indeed, you’ll miss out on great candidates who prioritise specialised job boards, like Ethical Jobs, or OurMob. If your business fits into a more niche category, you can use that fact to increase the chance of hiring someone who’s highly engaged with your mission. 

Don’t forget to leverage social media, either. LinkedIn is an obvious choice for attracting people to your vacancy. But, Facebook and Instagram can be useful too on account of their targeting capabilities. They allow you to put your job ad in front of specific demographics, people with certain interests, locations, job titles, and so on. People give social platforms incredible amounts of personal data, and that enables you to use it to your benefit. 

Considering flexibility and what it can do for you 

By now you’ve undoubtedly heard that candidates demand flexibility in the workplace. For a small business, this might sound like a barrier to hiring. But we challenge you to not only consider offering flexible arrangements to new hires but to consider what flexibility can do for you. 

Perhaps your business runs slightly outside of normal hours, or your team can work asynchronously without causing chaos in the business. These can be drawcards to candidates looking for roles that support their version of work-life balance. 

Remote work is a major drawcard at the moment, and huge companies like Atlassian have enjoyed much success with their newly-launched “work from anywhere” policy. Could this approach work for you? 

Similarly, consider working with part-time or freelance team members, perhaps even from other countries. Having ad hoc support could close critical skills gaps without breaking your budget or introducing traditional recruitment challenges. 

Targeting passive candidates online 

Not all eligible candidates are scouring job boards for their next career move. Some of them already have jobs and, whilst they’re performing well, they’re thinking about making a change to suit their life, their passion, or their location. 

Key amongst these digital recruitment strategies is headhunting online. The process sees you or an affordable recruitment service provider reaching out to suitable candidates online and sending them personalised invitations to apply for your vacancy. If you’re not doing it, be assured that your competitors are. It can be time-consuming, so this is one strategy that’s worth outsourcing to a professional for support. 

Leveraging online skills testing 

Take a leap of faith and go all-in with your new strategic recruitment plan. It’s an incredibly competitive market right now. So, try casting your net wider and considering candidates from all walks of life. 

Some will be overqualified but are looking to downsize to prioritise their family, hobbies, or mental health, for example. Some will be from a totally different industry, but they’ll have a load of transferable skills that suit your role. Some might have no formal qualification but a few years of experience and a dedication to developing their skills in their personal time.  

Leverage online skills testing to get an idea of each candidate’s hands-on skills. What they have on paper is often less relevant than what they can achieve in the real world, after all. And, you’re more likely to find a new superstar for your small business with this open-minded approach. 

Using your status to your advantage 

In the past, candidates had to articulate their value to their prospective employers. But the tables have turned and the onus is now on you to articulate your value to prospective applicants. That is to say, it’s not just about a competitive salary and benefits. Obviously, those things are incredibly important, but job security, a sense of trust, achievement, empowerment, and purpose are high priorities for candidates post-2020. 

As a small business, you’re uniquely positioned to demonstrate a clear path of value from employee to client. They can more easily see the real-world impact they’re having on your valued customers. You can use this, as well things like a close-knit team, social responsibility, and ethical practices, for example, as a ticket to attract highly engaged candidates. Make these emotional benefits clear in your job ads, interviews, and even your marketing materials. 

As a small business, you’re uniquely positioned to illustrate a clear transference of value from employee to client. Use this to your advantage and make it clear in your job ads, interviews, and even your marketing assets. 

A strategic recruitment plan for your small business 

If you need support achieving your recruitment goals, consider working with an affordable recruitment service. Your time is precious and so is your money, so spend both wisely with a low-cost flat-fee recruitment service that helps you drive your business’s growth. Our team of consultants draws on decades of combined experience hiring for small to medium-sized businesses across Australia and New Zealand. Reach out to us for more information about our budget-friendly recruitment service and how we implement digital recruitment strategies to get better results for your business. 

What are the emerging trends in recruitment? 

There are three major areas where recruitment experts around the world are looking to evolve. Each of these areas is deeply concerned with people, both in and outside of your organisation. Improving your processes to take better care of your team members as well as your applicants is key to productivity and sustainable success in 2022. 

In summary, these global recruitment trends are: 

• Automate your process for success 
• Candidate connection is key 
• Leadership overhaul for longevity 

To help you get a head start in the new year with a new and improved approach to recruitment, let’s unpack what each of these emerging trends in recruitment entails. 

#1: Automate your process for success 

This trend can apply to a wide range of roles across your organisation. Automation used to be a big scary buzzword that made the average person worry about job security. However, automation is primarily a tool to support you in your role. In fact, leveraging the power of automation to streamline mundane tasks and free up time for your teams is the most impactful change you can make in 2022. 

For example, you can use email automation tools to send out automatic emails to select clients (think birthday offer emails, abandoned cart emails, and the like). You might use a social media scheduling tool to automate your social media activity, setting it up so that your posts go out on set days and times for the next few weeks, engaging new audiences as they go out. Another business area that’s frequently automated is payroll and timesheet management.

In recruitment, automation is key to minimise manual tasks and has the added benefit of reducing human error and double handling. The precious time you save for your recruiters (or yourself) allows your organisation to put more time and effort into the recruitment process. That means building unique, personalised connections with candidates. And that’s exactly what candidates want to see from their employers. A human touch. Ironically, you can use automation to get there. 

#2: Candidate connection is key 

That brings us rather neatly to the next trend: candidate connection and candidate experience. What kind of impression of your organisation does the average candidate get when they hit the “apply” button? Do they not hear back from you unless they’re progressing to the interview phase? Do they receive a notification that their application is unsuccessful? What kind of experience do they have with your brand? 

All of these questions are incredibly important when you consider that we’re deep in a worker economy. The bulk of the power is in the candidate’s hands, and it’s you that needs to convince them that your role is worth applying for. Similarly, how the candidate feels you treat them will impact whether they accept or decline your offer. Freeing up time with automation means you’re empowered to create genuine connections with candidates and afford them the respect they deserve. 

#3: Leadership overhaul for longevity 

Classical management styles were already outdated in 2019 and this is doubly true in the current climate. Your leaders must adopt a leadership style that is trusting, flexible, and supportive to keep employees engaged and maintain productivity. More than ever, team members want to feel connected to a purpose in their work lives. What does that look like? Managers aren’t just for driving execution and results anymore – they are teachers, coaches, mentors. Your leaders may have to manage different team dynamics, like a hybrid team, or learn to manage an overlap of personal and professional boundaries. To connect their team to a deeper purpose, managers must be able to weave your organisation’s values and culture into just about any project. 

From a recruitment perspective, this implies hiring team members and leaders with a strong set of people skills and demonstrable resilience, empathy, and adaptability. You might have to change the way you define your selection criteria and widen your scope to find leading candidates with these skills. For example, be open to candidates with adjacent experience or capabilities and a complement of impeccable soft skills. 

In Conclusion: Recruitment trends for 2022

Overall, these trends ask organisation’s like yours an important question: are you ready to put people at the heart of what you do? If you look to automation tools to streamline key processes, you’re saving your people time and empowering them to build better relationships with clients. If you use this time to build better relationships with candidates, too, you make higher quality hires for your organisation. And with highly capable and adaptable people on your team, you have the peace of mind to transform your leadership style and maintain cohesive teams that see the bigger picture. 

If you want to discuss your recruitment goals in-depth and how our team helps you implement strategies like this to get the best results, reach out to us today.