How to Build a Recruitment Process for Your Small Businesses
Guest Author: Sarah Stephenson, Owner & Founder of Humane Resources
According to the U.S. Department of Labor, a bad hire can cost your company 30% of the employee's first-year earnings.
This statistic is important because it makes having a consistent, repeatable recruitment process that you’re able to adjust over time extremely important to your business’ bottom line.
In this blog post, Sarah Stephenson, Owner and founder of Humane Resources, explains how she builds recruitment processes for her small business clients. Stephenson has worked alongside many small business owners across various industries to co-design People strategies that remove obstacles and accelerate business prosperity.
The Main Concern for Small Businesses Looking to Hire
I’ve talked to many small business owners, and one concern that comes up often is their ability to attract individuals with the right skills and aptitude for their organization’s current needs.
Most of these small businesses lack a recruitment process, which is why they struggle.
This means that whenever the decision to hire another role in the organization is made, there is a sequence of recruitment activities vs. a consistent and repeatable process.
How to Address This Concern
Regardless of industry, having a recruitment process in place is a must.
Every small business needs a starting point to evaluate and measure the effectiveness of its recruitment efforts so that it can fine-tune it over time.
The starting point is the recruitment process, and the ultimate goal is to develop a successful, repeatable process for attracting talent to your growing business.
8 Questions to Ask When Drafting Your Small Business’ Recruitment Process
When putting together a recruitment process for the first time, it’s important to understand that it is simply a starting point.
One of the beautiful qualities of small businesses is the ability to iterate quickly so it’s important not to get caught up in perfectionism at this stage.
That said, it’s always beneficial to be intentional and thoughtful.
To that end, below are some essential questions to consider when drafting your recruitment process.
1. What are your recruitment activities?
Remember that “sequence of recruitment activities” that I mentioned? What are you already doing that brings value and could be a part of your recruitment process? Conversely, consider what you may be doing that isn’t adding value and eliminate those activities.
2. Who should be involved in the recruitment process?
Think about folks who can evaluate candidates' technical knowledge and those whose buy-in is a valuable part of the process.
3. How do you communicate your recruitment process?
How will you ensure all applicants and candidates receive consistent communication about if they’ll be considered for your opening and if so, what stage their application is within your recruitment process?
4. What software does your recruitment process use?
Do you have software applications that will support you through the recruitment process? If not, how can you streamline the many steps in your process?
5. Why should a candidate choose your company?
Think about what makes your organization stand out. Why should a candidate choose your organization over the company a few blocks away that produces similar goods or services?
6. How do you share your job openings?
The candidate's experience is very important. What kind of experience do you want for the people and communities you’re reaching out to? Think about the experience at all stages of the process, from application to offer and even for the “no, thank you” communications.
7. How can you scale your recruitment process?
At this stage in your business’ lifecycle, is scalability important in your recruitment process?
8. What metrics will you use to evaluate success?
In order to evaluate the efficacy of your recruitment process, you need to have some established metrics that you’re tracking and regularly assessing.
10 Elements a Small Business Recruitment Process Must Have
Now that you’ve thoughtfully examined important considerations for your recruitment process, it’s time to draft that process!
Keep in mind: this recruitment process is meant to save you time and decrease the likelihood of making a bad hire.
If you follow all the steps, you’ll help your small business increase the chances that you’re hiring individuals that not only match your organization’s needs, but will also complement the culture you’ve developed within your small business.
Business Case & Budget: Ensure the business case is clear for why this role is open and that there is a budget to support this decision.
Job Description: A thorough and accurate job description should be drafted. This job description should make clear what knowledge, skills, and abilities qualified candidates need to have. Make sure to emphasize that reasonable accommodations will be provided to enable candidates to fully demonstrate their capabilities.
External Compensation Data: Changes within the market should be considered, at minimum, annually. Market compensation data should also be evaluated whenever a new role opens to ensure you’re making compensation decisions based on the most accurate and up-to-date data you have.
Internal Compensation Data: Make sure you’re conducting an internal compensation analysis to evaluate equity among your employees. Employers with one or more employees in the state of Oregon are required to conduct and maintain an equal pay analysis so ensure updating this requisite analysis is part of your process.
External Advertising: Part of recruitment is ensuring folks know that your business has a job opening. Find sites that are targeted to the people that will qualify for your opening. Post on social media as well and get creative about the way you communicate your job opening to the world!
Internal Opening: Make sure to communicate to your current employees when a new role opens. This step should happen before you communicate an opening externally so that employees at your business can see how their hard work and efforts are paying off with consideration of upward mobility.
Accepting Applications: How will you accept applications? Via email, through an applicant tracking system (ATS), only through LinkedIn? Consider how applications will be captured and remember efficiency. Ideally, you’re not accepting applications from a variety of different tools.
Grassroots Recruitment: Don’t only post a job ad on a big job aggregator or job board. Research unconventional ways to find qualified candidates and work your network.
Interview Process: Within the recruitment process lies the interview process which includes sourcing candidates, reviewing resumes, conducting phone screens, having interviews, debriefing feedback with anyone who met the candidate, and ultimately extending an offer of employment.
Communication Plan: Communicate, communicate, communicate. This is the most imperative part of the recruitment process. You need to communicate with folks inside and outside of the organization at every point in the process to ensure no one feels like the value of their time is lost in a black hole.
Need Help Improving Your Small Business’ Recruitment Process?
Creating a measurable and repeatable recruitment process is essential for small, growing businesses.
But don’t let this be a one and done situation.
Processes are meant to evolve as the needs and goals of your business change.
It’s important to make it a habit to revisit your recruitment process on a schedule that makes sense for your business and with consideration to the ever-evolving external employee market.
If you need help with establishing and improving your recruitment process for your small business, reach out to Sarah Stephenson on LinkedIn to see how she can help.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sarah Stephenson is the owner & founder of Humane Resources. She has worked alongside many small business owners across a variety of industries to co-design People strategies that remove obstacles and accelerate business prosperity.
