Attracting top quality talent is every hiring manager’s wish. Logically, the more applicants that apply for a job, the higher the amount the chance finding a good candidate match. However, casting a wide enough net to source as many potential applicants as possible amongst all the competition can be a daunting and frustrating duty, especially if you’re a small business owner.
While larger businesses may have professional recruiters to seek out applicants for job vacancies, you might not have the money or resources. Here are 3 efficient, cost effective, and easily implementable ways of sourcing candidates.
Social Media
Using a variety of social media tools is a great way of broadcasting your company’s name and purpose out to the world, while creating an intimate community of followers. Best of all, most social media platforms allow you to create professional profiles at no cost. On your company’s Facebook wall, or Twitter feed you can begin a conversation about your industry or company in particular, sporadically mentioning open positions needing employment. What’s great is that anyone can view or follow your feeds, considering they have an account of their own, or share it with friends and colleagues.
Additionally social media networks such as LinkedIn are designated specifically for professional relationship building. When a professional individual creates a LinkedIn profile, for example, they populate information about their skills, expertise, and interests. LinkedIn later recommends jobs to these individuals who might match up to your position according to shared skills and interest in industry.
The only downside to using social media for sourcing candidates is that it takes time and attention in order to establish your company’s presence within these networks, and begin growing a shared community online. With some nurturing, and clever appropriate humor, social media can be an energetic and light hearted approach to #sourcingcandidates.
Job Boards
Becoming increasingly significant to the manner of sourcing candidates is the variety of online job boards. Whether they are ‘free to post’ or ‘pay to post,’ investing the resources into posting your company’s open jobs to a job board is the second most efficient way to attract talent. Job seekers will definitely turn to these job boards quickly; make sure they see your job!
Indeed.com and SimplyHired.com are two good places to start. Any company can post to these highly trafficked job boards, and manage the exposure of their job posts. Posting a job to Indeed.com functions on a pay per click methodology, meaning that you individually set the amount of views you job can receive and pay according to the amount you set per click. This flexibility is good for different types of jobs, and different job markets. SimplyHired, on the other hand starts their job posts at a $99 premium.
More populated job board websites such as CareerBuilder offer a company a wide field of exposure to post on. However, for a small business this may not be the best initial option to seek out, as paying to post can be a bit more expensive than other job boards. Nonetheless, it is a great board to source candidates from. LinkedIn job postings, although you pay to post, are good because a posted job automatically matches professional members on LinkedIn with your job, suggesting it to certain individuals.
Other options include posting to sites like Craigslist which range in price depending on location, e.g. Mobile, AL $0, San Francisco, CA $75, to post a job to their classified sections. Looking into smaller niche job boards or posting to a university’s/college’s job boards are free alternatives to consider as well.
Employee Referrals
According to recent studies published in a whitepaper, the number one source of hires is, though often unrecognized, employee referrals.
Your company’s current employees are a wonderful resource of potential applicants waiting to be tapped into. Usually employees will know of a friend or old colleague looking for new and exciting career opportunities. Make it known to your current staff that referrals and not only openly welcomed, but possibly rewarded. Creating incentives such as an employment referral program will increase the leads you get for qualified candidates for your open job.
Ultimately, the variety of sources for talent acquisition is extensive. An ideal combination of social media, job boards, and employee referrals will help your small business source talented candidates in a simple, efficient, and affordable fashion.
