Smart Recruitment Strategies for Your Organization

• One of the best recruitment strategies is to ask current employees for recommendations
• Recruiting employees on a trial basis allows you to test potential future employees
• Each company's recruitment process is different, and finding the best recruitment strategy for your company requires some trial and error

Recruitment is a challenge for small companies. It is not easy to find the right talent and a good recruitment strategy is needed to find and hire high quality candidates.

We spoke with recruiters to learn smart recruitment strategies that small companies can use to attract the best talent during the recruitment process.

Use recommendations

One of the best ways to recruit quality candidates is to have your current employees or people in your network recommend others. Ask your employees if they know someone who might be a good fit for the job. Recommendations are a good way to screen potential candidates before an interview. If your trusted employee recommends a former colleague or friend whose work experience he or she knows well, this will give you some assurance that this new candidate can do a good job. If you hire a stranger, there is less certainty that a candidate's work ethic and potential will fit into the team.

"The absolute best recruitment [strategy] would be to ask for recommendations from your network," said Jonaed Iqbal, founder and CEO of NoDegree.com. "Ask other business owners if they know anyone who is looking for a job. Ask friends and family. Go to local business networking events (the Chamber of Commerce) and ask other participants if they know anyone in the market who is looking for a job. Recommendations are the No. 1 source for candidates. Usually good people are recommended because the person they recommend is a reflection of them".

While you should not give preference to recommendations, being recommended by someone who is already on staff or in your network is an additional benefit for that candidate. Make sure that the applicant's qualifications make them ideal for the job and use the recommendation as an assurance that you are making the right hiring decision.

One way to get recommendations from current employees is to implement a referral bonus program. If an employee recommends an applicant and that applicant is eventually hired, the employee who recommended the newly hired employee can receive some form of financial compensation. Even if the bonus is only a few hundred dollars, this increases the employee's willingness to recommend people they know are good candidates. The cost usually pays off because the data suggests that by hiring referrers, companies can save $3,000 in fees that would otherwise be spent on things like recruitment agencies and job postings.

"Create a very generous employee referral program (make it so big that you almost feel uncomfortable) and tie a portion of the payout to the performance of the newly hired employees," said Bryan Zawikowski, vice president and general manager of the Lucas Group interim military division.

If you're a small company that's having trouble finding candidates for a job, look for recommendations for help. Recommendations can make the hiring process much smoother, and they should be an integral part of your hiring strategy plan. An employee referral is a great way to increase the talent pool in your collection of applications, and it often leads to the hiring of a qualified candidate. More importantly, it is fast and cost-effective to benefit from employee referrals.

Posts on niche job markets

It's easy to post vacancies on LinkedIn, Monster or Indeed, but your small business listing could be lost in the sea of vacancies. As a small business, it's not easy to stand out on popular job sites, so posting jobs on niche job sites can be worthwhile.

"Niche job boards offer an ideal medium for small businesses to connect with ideal candidates for three reasons," said Lee McMillan, founder and CEO of PeakSeason. "First, these candidates have shown an embedded interest in the niche by visiting the niche job board in the first place. Second, niche job boards generally allow employers to better customize and highlight their strengths because they are designed for a specific sector or job type. Thirdly, niche job boards tend to have fewer listings and fewer employers of large size. This gives small companies a better chance to stand out without being buried under thousands of offers from larger competitors".

There are hundreds of niche job boards on the Internet, and finding the right one for your small business depends largely on your industry and hiring strategy. These are a few niche job boards:

• Snagajob - This site posts jobs for hourly positions. If you're looking to hire by the hour, Snagajob might be the right site for you
• College Recruiter - A board designed for college graduates. This is a great place to look when you're looking for entry-level talent
• College Job Boards - Some colleges offer job boards specifically for their students and graduates. Finding job boards for colleges in your area is a great way to find local talent looking for entry-level positions
• FlexJobs - The candidates in this job board are looking for flexible jobs. Offers on this site include distance working and part-time jobs, among other flexible options. If you want to stand out from your competitors by offering distance work, this is a good site to visit

Additional research can help you find online niche job boards that are best suited to your business. Other ways to narrow down the talent pool include posting job offers in a local newspaper or on the local newspaper's website.

Although the newspaper industry is far from thriving, local newspapers can still reach thousands of people in your region. Local newspapers' online content also attracts thousands of readers, who may look for jobs in the region on the newspaper's job board. Attracting local talent through a local news source can be easier than using a global platform like LinkedIn. Be creative with your talent acquisition plan.

But using a niche job board doesn't mean you have to abandon traditional measures. There's nothing wrong with publishing a job posting in a local newspaper and, for example, LinkedIn. The channels you use will change depending on the hiring strategy of your company.

In addition to niche job boards, using social media can attract applicants, especially if you have a loyal following. By posting jobs on social media, you can reach your followers who have already made the decision to follow your company. This means that they are interested in what you do, which increases the likelihood that they will be interested in your cause. Niche job boards can help attract applicants, but don't forget to post job offers on your own website and share these job offers regularly in social media.

Read More... New Recruitment Methods You can Follow

Hire on a trial basis

Companies that have difficulty finding the right candidates should consider hiring them as freelancers or on a trial basis. For example, you could hire a candidate to work with your team on some projects to get a better feel for their talent and skills. If you think he'll get along well with the team, you can offer him a full-time position. If they have difficulties, you can decide to take a different direction.

"Hiring freelancers to complete small and specific assignments with a view to a long-term contract is a virtually risk-free way to test talent," said Will Ellis, security analyst at Privacy Australia. "When a freelancer completes a project and does a fantastic job, hiring more than one can ensure that you see first hand how they are doing as an employee.

This approach requires proper business etiquette and clear rules and boundaries. If you hire someone for one or two projects, make sure you compensate them for their work, even if you don't hire them. If you ask someone to do a smaller project that takes an hour or two just to test their skills, and you don't want to use that work to benefit your company, it's okay not to pay. However, be careful how long work-related tests take, as anything that takes longer than an hour or two will be cumbersome and may have to be paid. The time limit of one hour varies depending on the field, but it's a good guideline to make sure you don't waste a candidate's time.

Similar to job referrals, hiring on a trial basis is a way to feel confident that the person you hire is a good fit for your company. Trial hiring is also a way for employees to see if they enjoy working for your company. After a project or two, an applicant may find that he or she is not as interested in the work as he or she thought, and may turn down an offer because he or she understands better what the work entails. The probationary period acts almost like an onboarding process, as the candidate learns the basics of the company's workflow during the projects.

Write better job descriptions

Writing better job descriptions is not necessarily a recruiting strategy, but it is a quick way to improve your recruiting success. Hiring elite candidates means that you need to attract elite candidates. Job boards are filled with thousands of job offers, and it's not easy to stand out from the crowd. One way to stand out is to have high quality job descriptions.

The best job descriptions are specific and clear. They describe what the job involves and what they expect from a candidate. Try to keep your job description short and concise so that candidates feel comfortable reading the entire description. It can be an advantage to ask your team for help in writing the job description so that it is as accurate as possible.

Emphasis should be placed on writing reasonable job descriptions. Some companies ask far too much or too little in their job descriptions. A company looking for a new entrant may ask for three to five years of work experience, which is probably not a reasonable requirement given the large number of graduates applying for entry-level jobs. Other companies may use broad phrases like "looking for someone with entrepreneurial spirit", which is vague and subjective. Write specific and reasonable job descriptions. Be fair in what you ask for and make sure that the qualifications you want are specifically addressed.

"It's important to be detailed but sensible in your job description," Iqbal said. "Sometimes job postings simply ask too much. Make sure that you write down the actual things that are required for the job. Don't make 10 years of experience a requirement if someone can do it with only two years of experience. Business owners often ask too much, and many qualified people skip the job posting because they feel they can't do the job.

Avoid getting too excited in your job description. It's okay to get excited about the job and present your fun corporate culture, but the use of phrases like "ROCKSTAR salesman!" or overly aggressive use of capital and exclamation marks can put off qualified candidates. Keep your job descriptions professional.

Offer relevant discounts

Discounts can often be a great way to attract a diverse and talented pool of applicants. In addition to a good corporate culture, companies that offer work-life balance and comprehensive health insurance packages attract a wide range of applicants.

There are many opportunities for traditional work benefits to attract top talent, and there is no shortage of unusual and creative options. If you want to attract top talent to your small business, it is helpful to offer appropriate benefits.

Flexible work options, such as teleworking, can make your company particularly attractive to millennial and younger employees. According to FlexJobs, 70% of millennials have given up or considered giving up a job due to a lack of flexible work options, while only about half of older workers report the same. Flexible schedules and distance working are attractive to today's workforce.

Toptal, a company that links freelancers with businesses, is completely remote. The company believes that by offering distance working it will have better access to talented workers around the world.

"Their network has just gotten a lot bigger," said Bryce York, Toptal's SMB Inbound Sales Manager, "There are many highly skilled professionals who prefer to work or live remotely, not necessarily where there is a high concentration of office and business headquarters jobs.

For companies, York says, using remote workers can help reduce the infrastructure costs associated with working in an office building. For employees, the ability to live wherever they want and help interesting brands without having to uproot their lives is a tempting advantage, he says. However, he pointed out that working from a distance is not for everyone and that companies need to find employees who remain engaged and productive even when they work from a distance.

Not all companies can offer distance working, but it's an advantage to consider if you're having trouble attracting top talent to your small business.

The bottom line

There is no perfect recruitment strategy and the recruitment process varies from company to company, but using recommendations, improving job descriptions and offering relevant benefits helps to attract the best potential candidates in the labor market. Being a small company does not mean that you cannot hire great talent, but it does mean that you need to develop a good recruitment strategy.