Business is closely related to people. It is important for companies to have their customers, reliable partners and professional employees. And today we will tell you how to achieve the latter. From the article, you will learn how to find, attract and retain valuable personnel in your team for a long time.

The main step: realize the power of small business

Large corporations have a lot to offer candidates. In particular, a prestigious place of work, guarantees in the form of a long history of the company, etc. However, people are looking for more than that. By understanding your benefits as a small business, you can offer more:

1. Less bureaucracy. In small businesses, close relationships are formed between people. And this applies to both employees of the department and management.
2. A team is a family. This point is a continuation of the previous one. Close relationships lead to more sincerity in communication. Small business leaders perceive employees not just as a “work force”, but as members of a corporate family.
3. Wide range of responsibilities. This is important for proactive people. Large companies tend to specialize in each position. The person has limited competence. As a result, the ideas of proactive and motivated individuals will go nowhere. Small businesses can provide broader competencies and increase the range of responsibilities of employees.
4. More possibilities. This may seem strange, considering that this is a small business. However, in some areas, you are really able to offer employees more. In particular, in matters of position and schedule. It is small businesses that offer great job flexibility, a variety of vacancies and a pace of career growth.
5. Individual approach. Working in a large company, a person is obliged to arrive at the appointed time and leave at the end of the working day. Changing such a schedule is a complex process. However, in a small business, everything is easier. If a marketer asks to work remotely on Fridays, then you can afford it. The main thing is that the work is done efficiently and on time.

6 steps to help small businesses attract talent

Self Identify

The interaction between employer and employee is also a relationship. Candidates want to know who they are dealing with. Therefore, having described the mission, values and vision of the company’s development, you will reveal a little. Applicants will be able to choose an employer that suits their worldview.

This step is also beneficial for the company. After putting together a team of specialists who share the brand values, you create a reliable backbone of your business. Plus, you get loyal employees.

Determine who you need

It is difficult to find the right person if there is no understanding of what skills and knowledge he should have. Define this for yourself and explain to the applicants.

What to include in the job description?

1. Required skills.
2. Expectations from a specialist when hiring.
3. Algorithm of the process of adaptation and transition to work.
4. Length of position (seasonal, temporary or permanent).

Personalize opportunities

An effective way to attract talented personnel is an offer that is relevant to a specific applicant. For example, you need an entry-level specialist. Applicants are likely to want to know if there will be a career opportunity. If so, which one.

For applicants for a high position, the priorities will be completely different. It is unlikely that a person who is looking for a managerial vacancy will be interested in career growth. It is necessary to offer something more interesting, for example, company shares.

Remember, small businesses are more flexible than corporations. Therefore, you can make the vacancy more interesting. Make sure that the vacancy is written correctly and there are no errors in it. Before publishing it, use a service like Grammarly or submit the text for proofreading to CV writing. This will help to avoid typos and build a positive company image.

Know where to find 

The practice of fast-growing small businesses shows that the way they search for candidates can affect the result. This experience is worth using.

Such organizations managed to hire employees on a long-term basis in 66% of cases. Moreover, these are specialists in different fields. Specifically IT, sales, marketing and project management.

Sources:

• talented college students (53%);
• social networks of employees, including those who no longer work in the company (45%);
• recommendations of investors, partners, and colleagues (41%);
• talented students of vocational schools (30%).

Automate your search

Recruiting for small businesses is a task that takes a lot of time and effort. Moreover, the most resource-intensive stage is the interview stage.

1. Almost 90% of owners agreed that they are personally involved in finding employees.
2. The full hiring process takes 1 month for 50% of small businesses. Another 40% spends twice as much time on it.
3. Searching for an employee costs small businesses 3-5 thousand dollars.

Therefore, it is worth simplifying the process. For example, through automation. The speed with which technology advances allows them to perform many tasks as well as humans. Sometimes it’s even better.

AI is capable of:

1. Write job descriptions. Machine learning technologies extract and analyze huge amounts of data. Based on them, recommendations are made to improve the ad. As a result, you get an effective job description.
2. Resume preview. AIs are capable of filtering out candidates who are not suitable for certain criteria. For example, in terms of education level or experience.
3. Communication with candidates. Technology allows you to customize the automatic delivery of personalized messages.
4. Selection of candidates. Through NLP, artificial intelligence recognizes emotional cues and analyzes recorded interviews. This is especially true if, for example, you are looking for a crisis manager.

Give time to accelerate

This is especially important when you are looking for a salesperson. The activity of each company has its own specifics. As well as the product. A person who comes to a position needs time to study the product and the specifics of the business. By providing this, you will facilitate the adaptation process. And this is already a great start to a relationship.

What can be done?

1. Plan your sales with adaptation in mind. A slight decrease in performance in this period will be cheaper than a repeated search for a specialist.
2. Competitive salary. Track sales reward offers.
3. Create a solid and achievable sales reward plan.
4. Be honest. This applies to the sales plan, reward and reward systems. To retain talent, you must give them an understanding of when, how much, and on what terms they are paid. Clarity and conciseness are the keys to trust.

Summarizing

Finding the right employee isn’t just a skill test. It is important to find someone who is passionate about the same idea as you. Remember, you are not competing with corporations. Small business is a different world. Here, the relationship between employer and employees is built differently. This is what you can offer to specialists.