Ask Your Staff

One of the best places to start looking for new employees is with your existing ones. They are already familiar with your business’s needs and working environment and can often suggest potential candidates who they believe would be a good fit at your firm. “People usually make friends with people similar to themselves,” writes Ohio State University business researchers James Linder and Chris Zoller, in a white paper on small business recruitment strategies. “Applicants referred [by existing employees] will tend to have a more realistic picture of the organization. Moreover, qualified people may be reached at practically no cost.” However, there are also disadvantages. Linder and Zoller note that your existing employees might assume that someone they recommend will be an “automatic hire” and will become irritated if candidates they propose are rejected.

Using the Media
Most employers start where businesses large and small have started for decades—the local newspaper. Newspaper job advertisements were once the primary vehicle for attracting the attention of potential job seekers. But over the past decade, changes in the national media landscape have greatly diminished the newspaper ad’s effectiveness. Advertising in the local newspaper still has its place, though—and depending on the publication, location, and skill set required for the position, it can still bring in a healthy number of candidates. “Most people, especially people over 35, start their job search by looking at the employment ads in their local newspaper,” says Martin Lehman, president of the New York chapter of the Service Corp of Retired Executives (SCORE), which helps small businesses with counseling and support. “This applies to both big cities with well-established newspapers and even small towns where the local paper is still, even today, the most common place people look to see what’s going on in town.” Lehman says that a well-crafted newspaper ad can still result in a good stream of job applicants. “It’s not as flashy as other means, but it still works pretty well.”

Recruiting Online
Given how much time many people—and particularly younger people—spend on the Internet, it will come as no surprise that many younger job applicants begin their job search on the Internet. Or that many recent college graduates may never even consider looking in the classified section of a newspaper, relying instead on many popular job-search websites like Monster.com. “If you are involved in a high technology field or need someone who is particularly good at computer-related work, then the Internet is really the best place to start,” Lehman concedes.

For employers, job-search websites offer decided advantages over traditional newspaper advertisements. Online job advertisements often cost a lot less than newspaper ads, and in some cases, cost nothing at all. Craigslist.com, for example, charges for job listings only for employers in New York and San Francisco. In fact, Craigslist has become so popular—among both employers and job-seekers, not to mention buyers of goods of every kind—that major newspaper chains in California have accused the website of slashing their classified ad revenue by up to fifty percent.

Small businesses can benefit greatly from Internet recruiting. The low cost and wide audience means that an Internet job advertisement enables a small business to easily and inexpensively access the same pool of potential job applicants that would have been formerly restricted to larger businesses. Many recruiting websites cater to particular professions, or permit postings based on geography or technical skills. While anyone with Internet access can view these sites, many are frequently scrutinized by highly skilled professionals actively looking for new positions in their respective fields.
Some of the largest job recruitment websites include Monster.com, CareerMosaic, and CareerBuilder.com. On these sites, job seekers can post resumes that potential employers can peruse, as well as a database of open positions for job seekers to examine. Available positions and resumes can be searched by industry, geographic location, educational or skill requirements, keyword, or salary level. Employers can gain additional insight into the employment situation in their industry or locality by searching for comparable job advertisements from competitors to assess the relative demand for qualified people and the salaries offered. This information can in turn be used to refine the terms of your offer to possible job applicants, hopefully increasing the chances of attracting the best person.

Crafting the Right Ad
Regardless of whether you choose to run your advertisement in the newspaper or on the Internet, its success will largely depend on how much effort you put into creating it. “It doesn’t do any good to use the Internet or print media to connect with populations of great workers if your message has all the appeal of a dry biscuit,” says Anna Swigart, president of Small Business Recruiting Solutions. “Unfortunately, however, that’s the nature of most job postings today.” Swigart says that job advertisements should adequately describe the position in terms of its daily activities, qualifications (such as education degrees or professional certifications), and information regarding the company’s culture. “In a tight job market, firms should be more open to marketing the position as if it were something they were selling. Unfortunately many employers do not know how to do this properly and end up writing ads that look like job descriptions instead of enticing opportunities,” Swigart says.
When composing an advertisement for internet posting, be certain to take advantage of the Internet’s unique strengths. Make use of keyword and geographical search options to increase the number of candidates who will view your listing. Include a profile of your company, detailing, briefly, its history, goals, accomplishments, and corporate culture.

Recruitment Agencies
Many small business owners view recruitment firms as tools used only by large companies, far too expensive for their needs. According to Swigart, this view is largely correct. “Most recruitment firms won’t do much more than a small business owner could do on their own,” he says, “but they will charge a lot more.” Swigart notes that some recruiters charge as much as a third of the position’s yearly salary for their efforts, making recruitment agencies practical only for high-skilled, high-paying positions, and generally beyond the means of most small businesses. Swigart strongly recommends handling recruitment in house.

Higher Education
Your local college or university can often offer a rich talent pool for your business. Most colleges host career days and job fairs that give local employers a chance to recruit recent graduates. These can also be a source of interns—college students who work at your firm for a period for low or no pay as a means of gaining experience—who may later turn into permanent employees upon graduation. “Most colleges place a huge premium on being able to boast about how many of their students get jobs on graduation,” says SCORE’s Lehman. “And to make certain those numbers are good they offer all sorts of recruitment programs. These are a great way for a small business to put itself directly in front of a large number of well-educated young people who are highly motivated to find a good job.”
If recent graduates are not a good fit for your firm, your local university can still connect you with potential candidates through their alumni associations. Many people like to maintain the contacts they made during their college days and remain active in their school’s alumni activities, which often contain mailing lists with contacts. Advertisements in these publications and recruitment through contacts made within the alumni groups—which often hold networking functions for former students—can prove effective in creating a pool of highly qualified candidates. This can be particularly effective for companies operating in less populated or rural areas.

Pursuing Multiple Paths to Success
“My past experience has shown that employers who enjoy the highest success rates for attracting employees utilize a variety of methods to obtain candidates,” says Swigart. “Specifically, they write a great ad. They post to the best advertising resources (which are a moving target). And they network though associations and business organizations to spread the word of open positions.”
Swigart also recommends combining resources. For instance, she suggests adding a URL to your company’s newspaper ad that links to a more detailed description of the job posted on your company’s website. “Newspaper ads are so expensive that people try to jam as much information into as few lines as possible and often it leaves readers confused,” she explains. “If you put a few words—job title and salary, for instance—and a link to your website, you can effectively triple the information you have put out there at no additional cost.”

Competing with Compensation
Small business owners generally perceive themselves to be at a disadvantage when competing for employees with larger firms able to make more lucrative salary offers to job candidates. A 2006 survey conducted by Salary.com of more than 470 U.S.-based employees working for small, mid-sized, and large firms indicated that while larger firms often did offer a higher base salary, the benefits associated with small businesses were frequently enough to lure highly qualified employees away from larger firms. Among the “perks” cited by employees of working for a small business were shorter commutes, more flexible hours, better relations with their boss, and an overall better feeling of working at a smaller firm. “While smaller companies may not have the financial resources of their larger counterparts, our research indicates that there are a number of non-compensatory factors through which small companies can compete for talent,” said Chris Fusco, vice president of compensation and data operations with Salary.com. “Work/life balance, simpler hierarchies leading to fewer political battles, and strong bonds between employer and employee are all important factors in attracting and retaining qualified employees.” When recruiting new employees be certain to promote the benefits of working for your small firm. Even if you can’t match the high salary of a bigger company, the individual benefits your business offers may be exactly what skilled employees are looking for.

Narrowing the Field
If your strategy has been successful, you may find yourself with a more than adequate number of candidates from which to make your selection. How to determine the best candidate from the pool of applicants now becomes the question. “Sorting through a large list of candidates can be daunting for a small business owner,” says Swigart. Internet advertisements can produce a deluge of resumes. “What often happens is that shortly after an ad is posted online, the business’s email account and fax machine are quickly flooded with people responding to the ad.” Some small business owners find themselves spending an unwarranted amount of time—far more than they had anticipated—sorting through the sundry responses.

The best way to handle an abundance of responses is to look quickly through them, separating those that have the appropriate credentials from those that do not. “It’s important to remember that you do not have to respond to every applicant,” Swigart advises. “Some business owners—particularly those who run very small offices—feel that since they put the ad out there they must respond to everyone.” Once you have compiled a list of those responses that meet the minimum qualifications, you can either move directly toward personal interviews (if the pool is small enough) or, in the case of a larger number of qualified applicants, devise a pre-screening process in which the applicants respond to a series of questions regarding their availability, salary expectations, and interest either by phone or email. This pre-screening process will help whittle down the number of people that should be invited to the next step in the process: the personal interview.

“There is no more important step in selecting an employee than the interview,” says Swigart. “Sitting down, face to face, with an applicant and holding a conversation gives you a real feel for the person and offers you a chance to evaluate their personality and ability to interact with you and your other staff.” Swigart suggests inviting other managing staff to speak with the job candidates to compare their impressions against your own. Preparing for the interview is important. Make sure you have reviewed the resume prior to the interview and formulated a list of questions for the applicant. Swigart says that once the interview has begun, the applicant should do most of the talking.
Before the applicant is granted an interview, Swigart suggests having him or her sign a job application which specifically grants the business the permission to contact former employers and educational institutions to check references, as well as conduct drug screening (if appropriate to your business). “Far too many people simply accept what other people put on their resumes,” Swigart says. “Most people are telling the truth, but many have exaggerated their titles, responsibilities, or accomplishments. Some exaggeration is to be expected, but some people simply lie.” You can save your company a lot of badly invested time and effort, and possibly litigation and public embarrassment, by making sure that your applicant’s sterling resume not only sounds good, but is true. In most cases, resume references can be checked with a few phone calls—though many educational institutions and large companies require signed releases before they will disclose information regarding former students or employees.

The Bottom Line
For most businesses, the approach is pretty basic: Place an ad on an industry-specific job-search website if there is one, or a generic site if not; consider a newspaper ad if appropriate to your situation; aggressively pursue recommendations from colleagues, friends,  employees, college alumni and placement offices, etc. Then carefully analyze your results, interview your best candidates, make your selection, and voilá, you’ll find yourself blessed with a well-qualified, capable employee ready to contribute to your business’s success. If all that sounds like a lot of work, take a moment to think about one of your truly valued employees. How much time and effort would you expend to find someone similar?