MightyRecruiterWhile no small business can compete with the recruitment budget of a Fortune 500, every small business can play to its strengths and compete with the Fortune 500 for top talent. I’ve been studying and publishing about recruitment marketing for five years, and today, I’d like to share three tangible tips that can help you, as an SMB business leader, recruiter or hiring manager, improve the positioning of your recruitment marketing efforts.
Emphasize How Integral the Role is to the Success of the Company
What I mean by this is simple: the next hire for a small business shapes the company more than the next hire for a big business. When someone feels integral to an organization, there is a sense of pride and purpose that comes with it capable of trumping even a high-paying corporate role or a position that’s attractive largely because of the company name behind it.
Your job description and candidate communication should reflect how important each candidate is to your company’s future success.
Steve Jobs offered some great advice on how to communicate this to your candidates. There’s no crime in using some of this language when selling candidates on their importance to your business world:
“I think (recruiting)’s the most important job. Assume you’re by yourself in a start-up and you want a partner. You’d take a lot of time finding the partner, right? He would be half of your company. Why should you take any less time finding a third of your company or a fourth of your company or a fifth of your company? When you’re in a start-up, the first 10 people will determine whether the company succeeds or not. Each is 10 percent of the company. So why wouldn’t you take as much time as necessary to find all the A players? If three were not so great, why would you want a company where 30 percent of your people are not so great? A small company depends on great people much more than a big company does.”
What does it all mean? Here’s a tangible technique to emphasize how integral the role is to the success of the company. In the job posting, consider teasing how this role could grow with the company, and what it could become. Ex: “As our first sales person you’ll have the opportunity to create a foundational sales structure and grow into role of sales leader as our organization reaches new markets.”
Sell Candidates on Their Manager/Colleagues as Much as You Sell Them on the Opportunity
The old adage goes, “people don’t quit jobs, they quit managers.” When a new hire joins a big company, their boss, their boss’s boss, and their boss’s boss’s boss, are all subject to change. With little to do with an individual’s work performance, a corporate re-organization can happen at any time. Not to mention, with so many players in the big business game, it’s nearly impossible for an applicant to get a good idea of all the people they’ll be working alongside during the hiring process.
As a recruiter, hiring manager or business owner for a small business, while you do not have the brand equity of a Fortune 500 company, you do have the certainty that, in the hiring process, a candidate will get an accurate taste of whom they will actually be working with.
What does it all mean? Here’s a tangible technique to sell candidates on their colleagues as much as you sell them on the opportunity: toward the end of your interview rounds, set up a lunch with the candidate and the team. This kind of approach can help highlight the who and make it a driving force in the ‘where to work’ decision.
Leverage the Now Readily Available Advanced Technologies
When the best technologies are more readily available, the advantage of a fat Fortune 500-style recruitment budget is diminished. For instance, thanks to all-in-one hiring solutions like MightyRecruiter, you can post your employment opportunity to 20 free job boards in the click of a button, saving both time and money. Similarly, posting new jobs to your social media account is also free, and followers and advocates of your company can express interest directly.
When the cost is zero and the playing field is made level, it’s the quality of the message and the job opportunity itself that take center stage, and that’s an encouraging equalizer for your small business.
What does it all mean? Now that job posting technology is more widespread and accessible, the information that these solutions gather is also more readily available for businesses of all sizes. So when you as a small business do start spending advertising dollars to find more candidates for your open positions, you can leverage this kind of existing information on which job sites have provided the best volume and quality of candidates. MightyRecruiter, for one, has a team of experts that can help you maximize your job board spend. Start a free trial today to learn more.
When you create your recruitment marketing strategy, don’t waste energy competing where and on what you cannot win. Allocate your energy and resources to driving home your inherent advantages, letting your hiring content and key technologies do the work for you. From writing your job descriptions to sharing your job ad to promoting your employment opportunities, stay true to the value you can create, and top talent will align.