Is This Your Situation: You’re Struggling To Rise Above Competing Recruiters!

As the economy reopens, employees are quitting their jobs in historic numbers to seek new opportunities. Small businesses are bearing the brunt of this reshuffling. In order to attract and keep top talent, they have to prove that they can provide something better or more valuable than what bigger companies are offering.

There also are more job openings than ever, which are disproportionately at bigger businesses, with more than 250 employees. This job market works in the job hunters’ favor. Smaller businesses can sit back boo-hooing that they have fewer resources to advertise vacant jobs and that larger businesses can pay higher wages — or they can win.

Let’s face it: employers large and small are in vicious competition for applicants. Your role as hiring manager is to get your job ad in front of as many candidates as you can and to convince them to fill out the application and start the hiring process.

In this environment, small businesses can rise and be noticed even when pitted against big corporations that have a larger reach, fancier tools and much bigger budgets. They can do this by beginning with a basic understanding that the job market has changed and now gives the candidate more leverage. That means that a job hunter presented with a complicated application process can afford to simply walk away. Offer candidates an easy, mobile-friendly way to apply.

Adapting to a new world

Realize too that much of the workforce has experienced working from home and found that it was better for them than the traditional office. That’s why job seekers are looking for companies that promote flexible hours and such options as child care that’s on-site or subsidized. Even if candidates aren’t serious about reentering the workforce, don’t let them go without grabbing their particulars. Build a talent pipeline. Tell them why your company is a great place to work. Think long term, and build a talent repository to go back to whenever you’ve got positions to fill.

Respond to candidates quickly so that the entire process is easy and intuitive. Tell them what your compensation is and show that it’s competitive, not only in the local economy but nationally — and maybe even globally. Explain how much your employees love working for you. Build your brand by adding a careers page to your website. Then job board scrapers can cull job openings from your firm, too.

Focusing on the candidate-facing aspects of the hiring process is paramount, but that’s no reason to neglect the back end. If you use the same tools as the big companies do, you may find that you get the same results. For one thing, operate at their scale. Stop wasting time and money posting on one job board at a time. You’ve got to blanket the internet with your open positions, posting not just on job boards but also on social media and websites of trade associations and other professional sites using keywords, alternative titles, and many city and state combinations so that you’re not missing candidates. And don’t try to work with platforms that don’t fit your clients. Take advantage of technology that ensures your jobs are displayed to the right candidates.

Guide those candidates through the entire process, prescreening them using qualifying questions. Gather insights, discovering instead of guessing where you found the best candidates. Track cost per hire and time to hire. Find out which channel produced the best candidates at the lowest cost.

The methods you used in the past won’t work anymore. It’s a whole new ballgame. You can get more qualified candidates faster and more easily. Instead of hearing back from 15 applicants, you can garner double or even quadruple that number, and they’ll be who you’re looking for. And be sure to track outcomes and monitor recruiting channels to identify the sources that produced the best results.

Do you want a partner who can help you? Get in touch with us today!