It’s safe to say that to a large extent the success of a business depends on the talents involved in running its operations. In order for your small organization to expand, you’ll need both strong, responsible workers and individual talents that will help you push your business offer into the next level. Here are 5 smart tips on how to attract talented employees to a small business.
- Offer a wider responsibility scope
In smaller companies, employees wear many hats and have much more influence over company policies. And that’s something that should serve as your main selling point – talented employees are ambitious and when choosing between two opportunities, they’ll pick the one that offers a wider scope of responsibility.
When talking to prospective employees, make your expectations clear and delineate their daily tasks and long-term goals. If you spot a real talent, try to get to know this person to learn what their background and career goals are – only then you’ll know how to make an offer that is too good to be true.
- Market yourself as employer
Every time you decide to recruit, you’re launching a powerful marketing process that defines you as an employer. Build your employer brand by developing clear and thorough job descriptions, providing information on company culture, listing all perks of the positions and making sure you have a professionally-looking careers section on your website.
Treat talents as if they were your customers and deliver a great candidate experience to them. All this will give an impression of a well-organized and genuine small organization offering a set of specific values in employment.
- Look for talents inside your company
Before you go looking for talents outside the company, turn your attention to your internal structures. As an employer, you should make it clear to your current employees that they have a realistic chance of stepping up the ranks at the company.
When you hire an external resource for a position one of your most talented employees had their eyes on, prepare for trouble. It’s very likely that the employee will let out their frustration, possibly quitting your company to join a similar position with your competition.
Losing an employee isn’t worth it – you’ll need to invest time and money to find and train a replacement, putting a level of unnecessary stress on your existing team.
- Hire experts
There will come a moment when you’d like to hire a real talent, but simply won’t have the time to conduct the search yourself. That’s when you should consider hiring a recruiting agency to do this job for you.
Before you pick one, check their references and have a look at their LinkedIn profiles and company pages. Make your expectations clear and collaborate with an agency to find your next talent.
- Promote work/life balance
Encouraging employees to be just as engaged in their work as in their private lives is probably the best way to retain them – and attract new talents who hear the popular opinions about you as employer.
The size of small companies is their advantage – with no unnecessary bureaucratization, they can easily promote the professional and personal growth of their employees and in this way gain competitive advantage – both as businesses and as employers.
Being flexible and allowing workers to do some of their work from home, bring their children or pets into the office, or organizing an out-of-hours event in the middle of the week are all ways to build your employer profile as one that genuinely cares.
All things considered, attracting talents to you company is based on several factors – clear communication with current and prospective employees, a launch of a recruitment drive and a developed strategy for retaining talent.
Tess Pajaron is a Community Manager at Open Colleges, an online learning provider based in Sydney, Australia. She has a background in Business Administration and Management.