Five Strategies for Recruitment in a Small Business

As a small business owner, recruiting new employees can be a daunting and challenging task, especially if you’ve never done it before. No doubt whoever you hire to join your team will be an important part of your business growth so understandably you want to find the right fit early on. 

Attracting top talent is becoming increasingly more difficult but there are several effective recruitment strategies you can use. In this blog post, we'll explore five ways small businesses can recruit their future employees. 

Social media platforms

Utilising social media platforms is an excellent way of recruiting new team members as well as raising awareness among potential customers. 

To effectively find potential hires on social media, you must first identify the right channel for your business. Every platform offers benefits and a specific audience; it is up to you to determine which platforms have the most potential for finding suitable candidates. 

Then you must share content and engage with others in a way that communicates your values and culture. By doing this potential candidates will get an idea of what it might be like to work for your business. Someone who does this extremely well is Accountant She who has previously hired her team through Instagram and has a great TikTok account that shows what it is like to be part of her accountancy practice. 

Social media is all about being efficient and straight to the point, which also applies to job ads. With that in mind, when posting about a new role, avoid superficial posts with only general info about the position. Instead, provide clear and concise info about the requirements, the benefits and which steps candidates need to take to apply.

Employee referrals

Research suggests that a staggering 88% of employers claim that referrals are the best source of highly skilled workers. If you already have employees it is common for them to know other professionals who might be excellent additions to the business. 

If you would like support from People’s Management Partners to set up a finders fee for current employees, book a call with one of our advisors using our Pay As You Go service. 

Post an advert on a job board

You can post your own job advert on a job board. To do this effectively you will need to write an engaging advert. For some tips, read our blog post all about the do’s and don’t of writing a job advert.

Depending on the role you should also be prepared to potentially sift through a lot of job applications. If this is not something you will have the capacity for, don’t worry there are other options. 

Contact recruiters

If you are short on time and need a helping hand with finding suitable candidates for filling a position, recruiters might be exactly what you are looking for.

They connect companies with potential hires, filter through their resumes, experience, and skills, and evaluate how well they fit your criteria. As they charge for their services, you can expect an expense of 15% to 20% of a hire's first annual salary. 

Use our Fixed Fee Recruitment service 

You can use People Management Partners to recruit your new hire. 

Our Fixed Fee Recruitment service is  £2,000 + VAT per vacancy (£500 + VAT per vacancy which will be charged on engagement with the balance to be paid on placement). Think of it as a halfway between doing your own job board adverts and hiring a recruitment agency. Does that sound like what you need? For more information get in touch with us. 

To Wrap Up

Finding highly skilled employees can be exhausting, but when you have the right strategies, it becomes a whole lot easier. If this is your first hire, you might want to take a step back before you dive head first into these strategies and look at your options when it comes to making your first hire, you can do this with our Build A Successful Team workbook. 

We hope this blog can help you build a strong team for your business.