You desperately need excellent new employees, but small business recruiting isn’t easy. Perhaps it seems like all the best candidates are going straight to the big employers. Or maybe hiring is taking much too long, so you’re missing out on top talent. Or you’re worried about making a bad hire that’ll have major repercussions on your company as a whole.
Hiring doesn’t need to be tedious or time-consuming.
There are several effective strategies that even the smallest company can use to find great candidates and make better hiring decisions.
We’ll take you through the most impactful recruitment strategies for small businesses, below.
Meet with our hiring coaches today to see how AI can slash 90% of the time from your hiring process. Start filling jobs faster right away, with 10x higher quality people.
Small Business Recruitment Strategies
To ensure that your small business hiring fills your positions quickly with best-quality employees, focus on the recruitment strategies that make a real difference in how fast and how well you hire.
We’ll go through seven ways to build your hiring pipeline, including hiring for integrity (vitally important), saving time with AI, getting your job in front of 1000s of candidates, screening applicants efficiently, and boosting your employee brand.
Take a look at these seven ways to hire employees for your small business.
1. Hire for Integrity
Should integrity really be the first small business hiring strategy on your list? Shouldn’t you start with posting job openings on LinkedIn or employee referrals?
Absolutely not.
Warren Buffet famously said to look for three qualities in a new hire: “Integrity, intelligence, and energy. And if you don't have the first, the other two will kill you. If you hire somebody without integrity, you really want them to be dumb and lazy.”
The good news is, integrity testing makes a real difference. Integrity tests have been shown to predict destructive behavior. In one study involving over 5,000 workers’ compensation claims and $40 million in losses, the percentage of losses from new hires fell from 33.1% to 14.5% during a period of integrity testing.
Effective integrity testing lets you quickly weed out candidates who will lie, cheat, steal, or even sabotage your business — leaving you with a pool of qualified candidates who you can confidently choose from, knowing they’ll be loyal, honest workers.
The Integrity First test is part of the Discovered – Performance Hiring Software suite, and is the gold standard in integrity testing, offering:
- 37% reduction in turnover
- 57% drop in workers’ comp costs
2. Hire Efficiently
As a small business owner or HR leader, you have so many demands on your time. You can’t afford to waste hours poring over resumes or interviewing yet another poor-fit candidate.
Instead of reinventing the wheel, make the most of modern recruitment software for small businesses, which can save you an incredible amount of time.
Today’s hiring software goes way beyond ATS (applicant tracking system) features, delivering:
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Tapping into a wide range of job boards (and helping you build career pages optimized for Google search).
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Having a customizable dashboard that you can configure for your company size, industry, and other details.
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Offering industry-leading pre-employment testing, so you can move forward with qualified candidates who you know will be a good fit.
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Speeding up the referencing process with a bank of reference questions and automated reference requests.
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Including candidate scorecards that hiring managers or even executive leadership can use to select the exact qualities and questions that predict success.
Discovered – Performance Hiring Platform is a full-featured recruitment tool that does all the above and more from a single dashboard, starting at just $249/month.
Pro Tip: A CRM can do so much more than a mere ATS. See our article: What Is CRM In Recruiting? (If you’re not sure what a CRM is, see this post: ATS Vs CRM: What’s The Difference, And The Benefits Of Both)
3. Use AI to Write Your Job Ads
Crafting job descriptions and job ads can take hours — especially if, like many small businesses, you’re starting from scratch. But you don’t need to do all the work yourself. You can get a high-quality, engaging job description and job ad using AI tools like ChatGPT. Here’s an example, for a small SaaS business hiring for a digital marketing manager.
Prompt:
Write a job description for a digital marketing manager, who'll be working in a small SaaS company with 10 employees. We're a fun, dynamic company that's growing fast. The digital marketing manager will need proven experience marketing software products on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok.
ChatGPT Response:
Job Title: Digital Marketing Manager - SaaS Company
Are you a creative and results-driven digital marketer with a passion for software products? Do you thrive in a fast-paced and dynamic environment? If so, we have an exciting opportunity for you to join our small but growing SaaS company as a Digital Marketing Manager!
Company Overview: We are a fun and dynamic SaaS company with a team of 10 talented individuals who are passionate about developing innovative software solutions. Our company is experiencing rapid growth, and we need a skilled and experienced Digital Marketing Manager to help us reach new heights in the digital space.
Role Overview: As the Digital Marketing Manager, you will play a crucial role in driving our digital marketing efforts and increasing brand awareness across various platforms. You will be responsible for developing and implementing effective marketing strategies that resonate with our target audience and boost user engagement and conversions. Your expertise in marketing software products on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok will be essential in achieving our marketing goals.
Key Responsibilities:
- Digital Marketing Strategy: Develop, execute, and optimize comprehensive digital marketing strategies to drive user acquisition, engagement, and retention for our SaaS products.
- Social Media Management: Oversee and manage our social media presence on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. Create engaging content, schedule posts, and interact with our audience to build a loyal community of users.
- Paid Advertising: Plan, execute, and monitor paid advertising campaigns on social media platforms and other digital channels to increase brand visibility and drive qualified traffic to our website.
- Content Marketing: Collaborate with the content team to create compelling and valuable content that aligns with our brand messaging and attracts our target audience.
- Analytics and Reporting: Track and analyze key performance metrics to measure the effectiveness of marketing campaigns. Provide regular reports to the management team and recommend improvements based on data insights.
- Influencer Marketing: Identify and collaborate with influencers and partners to amplify our brand message and reach a wider audience.
- Budget Management: Efficiently manage the digital marketing budget to maximize return on investment and achieve marketing objectives.
- Stay Current with Industry Trends: Keep abreast of the latest digital marketing trends, tools, and best practices, and integrate innovative ideas into our marketing strategies.
Requirements:
- Proven experience (X+ years) in digital marketing with a focus on marketing software products on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok.
- Strong understanding of digital marketing concepts, including social media marketing, content marketing, paid advertising, and email marketing.
- Demonstrated ability to create and execute successful marketing campaigns that drive user acquisition and engagement.
- Analytical mindset with the ability to interpret data and draw actionable insights to optimize campaigns.
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
- Creative thinking and problem-solving skills.
- Self-motivated and able to work independently with minimal supervision.
- Previous experience in a SaaS or tech-related industry is a plus.
Join us in this exciting phase of growth and make a significant impact on our success as our Digital Marketing Manager. If you are a proactive, innovative, and results-oriented marketer, we would love to hear from you!
Please submit your resume, along with a cover letter detailing your experience in marketing software products on social media platforms, to [email address].
Coming up with the perfect ChatGPT prompt can be tricky. Discovered handles this all for you with built-in AI integration, letting you generate incredible job descriptions and job ads in seconds.
Start Hiring Smarter Now
Meet with our hiring coaches today to see how AI can slash 90% of the time from your hiring process. Start filling jobs faster right away, with 10x higher quality people.
4. Automatically Post to the Right Job Boards
Small business recruiting can be like shooting in the dark. You know the right candidates are out there, but how do you find them?
You need to get your job ad in front of candidates — which means posting it to the right job boards. So, choose job boards that millions of candidates use. Post on:
- Indeed (which reaches 300 million job seekers per month)
- ZipRecruiter
- Glassdoor
- Monster
Instead of spending precious time laboriously reformatting and uploading all your job ad details to each different site, you can use Discovered to automatically post your jobs to multiple job boards with just a few clicks.
Pro Tip: Consider using a recruiting tracker to get your hiring effort off the ground. See several downloadable templates here: Recruitment Tracker Templates: Download Excel & Google Docs
5. Screen, Screen, Screen
You might be tempted to “save time” by jumping straight into interviews. But pump the brakes. By skipping the screening step, you’ll risk wasting countless hours and making poor hiring decisions that end up costing you a lot more than time.
Getting it right means you’ll interview only those candidates who are a good fit for your business. Pre-employment tests can predict job performance, so you’ll know how an applicant will perform in the open position, before you put resources into onboarding. And with costs per hire potentially running to three to four times the position’s annual salary, your small business can’t afford to get this wrong.
To get this right:
Use One-Way Video Interviews
One-way video interviews are an easy and efficient alternative to phone screening. With Discovered — Performance Hiring Software, you can automatically carry out one-way video interviews. Candidates are shown each interview question, then record their responses as videos. The Discovered system saves the videos for you to watch at your convenience.
Use Pre-Employment Assessments
Pre-employment assessments are the most effective way to judge a candidate’s performance in the role. An Aberdeen Group study found that hiring managers who use pre-employment assessments are 36% more satisfied with their final decision.
Along with integrity testing, we recommend:
Specific skills tests:
Pre-employment assessments are the most effective way to judge a candidate’s performance in the role. An Aberdeen Group study found that hiring managers who use pre-employment assessments are 36% more satisfied with their final decision.
DISC assessments:
DISC is a personality assessment tool developed by psychologist William Marston. It measures candidate preferences and tendencies across four dimensions: Dominance, Influence, Steadiness, and Conscientiousness. Hiring someone with the right personality fit for your team is vital.
Reference checking (automated):
References from past supervisors are strongly correlated with how candidates will perform in the future. Instead of spending hours playing phone tag, you can carry out automatic reference checks from within the Discovered platform.
Discovered handles all these pre-employment assessments for you, with a wealth of built-in assessments to choose from.
6. Boost Your Employer Brand
As a small business, you can’t offer the impressive benefits that a huge company can. But you can give applicants an exceptional candidate experience.
Using automated recruiting tools to offer quick and easy screenings (no hanging around for the phone to finally ring) and a user-friendly candidate flow creates a great first impression. A first-class careers page can showcase your company to candidates who probably haven’t heard of you before. This is your chance to sell your small business as a great place to work.
Discovered can handle all this for you, with a user-friendly ATS that works brilliantly for both candidates and employers, and an exhaustive list of built-in features like interview scheduling and easy Careers Page creation.
7. Work Smarter, Not Harder
If you’ve made some bad hires in the past, you might think you need to spend more time on your hiring process. But good hiring is always about working smarter.
One way to do that is by implementing an employee referral program. Many small businesses skip this step, yet referred applicants are more likely to be hired, more likely to accept, and less likely to quit. You don’t need to spend lots of time setting up and administering a referral program though. Discovered can do it for you.
You can also join networking events and hiring events. Online job fairs can put you in touch with thousands of top candidates at a low cost in both time and money.
Partnering with the right small business recruiting tool lets you get more done with a fraction of the effort. Discovered is designed with small business needs in mind, giving you everything you need at your fingertips.
Pro Tip: Referral hires stay in their roles 70% longer than other hires, yet AI tools can set up your referral program with very little effort. See our article: 10 Recruitment Techniques To Hire Better
Hire Better With Discovered
Make better quality hires — with a lot less effort — by partnering with Discovered – Performance Hiring Software. Our AI integrations will create engaging job ads, post them, collect and parse candidate resumes, and use screening tools to find the best candidates for you.
Best yet, it’ll do it all in one low-cost tool, based on your criteria, and with just a few clicks. Schedule a demo today.
