By James Chittenden
Every business owner wants to know how to find employees. But when looking for employees, you get to know candidates as best you can. After all, you have to spend some 40 hours a week together, so spend time with them and get to know them. But how do you find them?
You need connections, intuition, and technology to recruit the team of your dreams.
Connections will help you recruit the team of your dreams.
Startups and small businesses can be chaotic and disorganized as they form. You need people who can figure out what needs to be done and direct themselves. In fact, as a founder, you need them to direct you from time to time. So the best place to start is with the recommendations of people close to you that you know and trust.
A bad management hire can be especially disastrous. If your startup or small business has an informal culture, a leader recruited from a Fortune 100 company, government agency, or the military could be a bad fit.
Your employees will be able to spot a bad leader fast. According to a recent Gallup poll, approximately 75 percent of people leave jobs because of bad bosses, not compensation. If employees do stay and suffer through a bad manager, that manager will attempt to get rid of good employees because they feel threatened by them. Other employees can see this, and your human resources problems will begin to compound.
Employees and partners your startup or small business may already have are the connections you need to help you find employees. Consider letting them participate in the process, especially if you are trying to hire a manager.
You could hire a headhunter, who may or may not do as well as your own team. However, if looking for highly specialized talent, it may be necessary. If you do, the standard fee is 25 percent of the salary. If you hire for a $50,000 per year job, the fee will be $12,500.
Intuition can help you recruit the team of your dreams.
If you are the owner, it can be hard to be objective when looking for employees. You may have cashed in your retirement savings or mortgaged your home in order to start the business.
Let that be a litmus test. Can you trust this person in a business financed by your life savings?
You can rely on your experience, intelligence and instincts when looking for employees. But that’s not always good enough. You might be the decision maker, but get some other eyes on these decisions. Wrap the team around you when looking for employees, especially managers and leaders.
Technology can help you recruit the team of your dreams.
In our day and age, almost all candidates have social media or online footprints. Go ahead and search. You may find negatives about them online or in public records aggregation sites, which may or may not be accurate. Allow the candidate an opportunity to explain.
Job boards can help you find good employees. Indeed is the largest job board in the United States. Some 3 million businesses post open jobs on Indeed, and it contains more than 200 million resumes from job seekers. You can post unlimited jobs on Indeed for free. Use Indeed when actively seeking applicants. Indeed is also suitable for businesses that need to recruit on a tight budget. It is like the Google of job boards.
If you are trying to find good employees for a small business and need something precise, you may need a more specialized job recruiter online. So if Indeed is like the Google of job boards, ZipRecruiter is like the Cadillac of job sites.
ZipRecruiter is known for its candidate matching service. When you post a job on ZipRecruiter, it scans resumes to find candidates who match the qualifications. These candidates then receive a pre-written message inviting them to apply for your job. Additionally, you can add screening questions which weed out applicants who cannot meet non-negotiable requirements. ZipRecruiter’s candidate matching service lends greater precision to your candidate search, saving untold hours. Their library of pre-written job descriptions are another major time-saver.
ZipRecruiter also has AI-powered technology that matches your job with candidates that are currently in the ZipRecruiter network. This way, you can view candidates before they even apply and reach out to them. ZipRecruiter’s Candidate Calibration is instant, and enables you to connect with prospective employees within minutes of posting your job.
The best recruitment software requires investment. ZipRecruiter does offer a four-day free trial. They do not publish pricing, but the Standard plan starts at $249 per month with one job. ZipRecruiter is suitable for businesses that are looking to hire quickly and have large pools of applicants.
A common strategy is to simply try them all. Finding good employees for a small business requires a variety of means, both online and offline.
And finally…
Welcome to One Click Advisor! We would be remiss if we didn’t give you a brief tour of the site and what it can do for you. The free Business Builder is a consulting session, solving your business plan questions in minutes. Your challenges and opportunities can be sorted into one of three areas.
Marketing, because it brings in the customers. Start or continue that plan here.
Operations, because it keeps your customers. Start or continue that plan here.
Finance, because it is the scoreboard. Change the “score” and explore financing here.