Entrepreneurship is gaining popularity and many people are fulfilling their dreams by converting them into reality. However, the growth of a business is never easy and there are often many hurdles in the way to achieve business goals for small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs). When it comes to recruitment, it is no different story. There are many hiring challenges faced by SMBs. Let us have a look at these challenges, their cause and possible solutions. –
Hiring Challenges in SMBs
1. Cut-throat Competition from other Recruiters
Post Covid, the unemployment rate started to drop and eventually came down to 5.2% in the US. As the pool of unemployed candidates is comparatively limited, chances are that the well-suited candidates are already working at another organisation. This makes you want to pursue active as well as passive job seekers.
When good talent is not actively seeking employment, SMBs face hiring challenges and feel the need to identify and lure the talent towards their company. This doubles the small business hiring struggles and the work of recruiters and delays basic functioning of the company with an already understaffed scenario.
· The solution lies in working towards a really strong company culture to attract people to work with you.
· You would be surprised to know that 52% people are willing to change their job in favour of a better one, according to a survey conducted by Harris Poll exclusively for Fast Company.
· As per reports, people change their job mostly for a better salary. You need people to know about your job opening and make them believe that your job is a better option than the place they have already opted for. Offering competitive benefits and perks is essential. The ability to do remote work and have flexible work timings are really important factors for job seekers especially after Covid. By incorporating a good ATS software in your business, such as HireME, you can be many steps ahead than other SMBs and your competitors.
2. Hiring is a costly procedure
Hiring takes a toll on the time and resources of any organisation, let alone SMBs. When business already has limited resources, it is especially difficult for SMBs to find good talent while also not overspending.
The recruiter has to fight small business hiring struggles and be especially careful with the funds and this might also result in hasty or subpar decisions. That might be due to unnecessary task duplication or countless hours spent sorting through resumes.
Understaffing and delays, on the other hand negatively impact the business by affecting the staff’s health, satisfaction and productivity. This leads to a bad company image, which will discourage people from applying. Thus, a vicious cycle is created where SMBs bounce from point A to point B and vice versa.
So, what’s the solution? First, it is important to carefully plan your budget and plan every step of recruitment in advance. You should invest in an ATS like HireME to get process automation which will save you loads of time and money. It will also unburden the recruiters and lead to increased efficiency.
3. Recruitment process is haphazard
To overcome hiring challenges many SMBs forego crucial steps like planning, thinking ahead and being prepared with backup plans in case of failure. While some businesses do attempt to plan and implement, they fail in either of the steps or both. This prevents them from truly and effectively engaging in the process of hiring. As a result, you might defer from your original plan of action, forget the responsibilities or the role you are hiring for, forget to consider your teams’ requirements and settle for a bad hire.
This might also cause excessive use of resources or overspending time that is critical. All this reflects a very poor image of the businesses and suitable candidates might exit due to inconvenience or due to your inability to make them believe in you.
To make your recruitment process streamlined and hassle-free, you can use an ATS like HireME. 63% of recruiters agree that AI has enhanced the way their organisation handles recruiting.
Besides, your hiring process should be as candidate friendly as possible. Scheduling an interview with a candidate at a time that is convenient for them is important. It is not advisable to have an interviewer that is rude or does not address the concern of the candidates. Positive and organised interaction with the candidate is important because the lack of it will lead to a negative attitude regarding your firm. You have to try to keep track of the ongoing conversations with candidates in an organised manner.
An ATS would let you improve your flow, from resume screening to the onboarding new hire. Be it any step in the hiring cycle, most of it will be pre-planned and automated. You can manage everything in a dashboard and through several other integrations. This will prevent any chaos. You have to make an effort to keep track of the ongoing conversations with candidates in an organised manner. From timely communication to updating social media sites, you need not worry about anything!
4. Employee turnover is high
This happens because of many reasons in SMBs. One of these is settling for a bad hire because it might seem to be cost-effetive on a superficial level. This also causes what is popularly known as the warm body syndrome. Often people who seem like the correct fit are hired in a haste but a deeper evaluation and interaction with a higher number of candidates would have revealed the reality and capabilities of the employee. As Adrian Thomas puts it, “Warm bodies are the by-product of taking a short-cut to speed up recruitment, rather than an investment opportunity with a compelling ROI.” He additionally
mentions that, “Many start-ups finding their feet fall victim to warm body syndrome as quick fix solutions quickly transpire to be more damaging than beneficial to the business. Instead of hiring talented executives who are perfectly matched to the position they’ll be taking on, people are brought in out of convenience and cost-efficiency.”
The Harvard Business Review has published some data which indicates that employee turnover can result in an additional financial burden of 100% to 300% of the employee’s salary.
You can also lose out on good employees if you fail to create a nurturing environment or if the employees feel dissatisfied. This will bring you back to square one and it is hectic to start over.
The solution is simple, and you would have probably guessed by now! Yes, ATS is definitely helpful in preventing bad hires. The thorough scrutiny of applications and the well-structured process of hiring leave little room for loopholes. Why would you settle for a bad-fit candidate when you have access to a huge database to attract and choose from?
Like mentioned before, you should focus on developing and cultivating good company culture and ethics to prevent your workers from leaving. This can also be supported by ATS in many ways. You can get a more efficient onboarding system in place and collect feedback and other data from candidates at the end of the hiring cycle. Moreover, the data-analytics feature of ATS like HireME, would help you better analyse where you have been going wrong and how can you improve the hiring process.
5. The matter of a strong employer-brand
It is naturally difficult for start-ups to rapidly grow as a big name in the recruitment business among candidates. Candidates usually prefer multinational companies with years of experience as they are more aware of their ethics and therefore attracted to them. It is difficult to be the first choice of candidates over such firms.
A good employer brand is more than essential for the recruitment process. As per a report, 72% of hirers agree that corporate branding has a substantial impact on recruitment.
This can be achieved with sticking to you ethics and beliefs. It is important to know what you stand for and define your ethics. You should not defer from any of the things that you preach.
Another good way and probably the best one is to keep your current employees happy and fulfilled. You should express your gratitude towards them. Word of mouth is definitely the most powerful ways of promotions and happy employees would promote you in every way they can. You can even have a community on social media so that their words of praise may spread rapidly!
Conclusion
There are many hiring challenges faced by small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs), in the field of recruitment. However, with the advancement of technology, SMBs can tackle these problems and have a smooth recruitment process with great outcomes. It is important to plan ahead and aim towards new heights. To achieve growth, any business needs good talent. Hence, solving the problem of having a streamlined recruitment process would eventually solve many problems. So, don’t wait, experience the better and faster recruitment and make the right hire, everytime with HireME.
Entrepreneurship is gaining popularity and many people are fulfilling their dreams by converting them into reality. However, the growth of a business is never easy and there are often many hurdles in the way to achieve business goals for small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs). When it comes to recruitment, it is no different story. There are many hiring challenges faced by SMBs. Let us have a look at these challenges, their cause and possible solutions. –
Hiring Challenges in SMBs
1. Cut-throat Competition from other Recruiters
Post Covid, the unemployment rate started to drop and eventually came down to 5.2% in the US. As the pool of unemployed candidates is comparatively limited, chances are that the well-suited candidates are already working at another organisation. This makes you want to pursue active as well as passive job seekers.
When good talent is not actively seeking employment, SMBs face hiring challenges and feel the need to identify and lure the talent towards their company. This doubles the small business hiring struggles and the work of recruiters and delays basic functioning of the company with an already understaffed scenario.
· The solution lies in working towards a really strong company culture to attract people to work with you.
· You would be surprised to know that 52% people are willing to change their job in favour of a better one, according to a survey conducted by Harris Poll exclusively for Fast Company.
· As per reports, people change their job mostly for a better salary. You need people to know about your job opening and make them believe that your job is a better option than the place they have already opted for. Offering competitive benefits and perks is essential. The ability to do remote work and have flexible work timings are really important factors for job seekers especially after Covid. By incorporating a good ATS software in your business, such as HireME, you can be many steps ahead than other SMBs and your competitors.
2. Hiring is a costly procedure
Hiring takes a toll on the time and resources of any organisation, let alone SMBs. When business already has limited resources, it is especially difficult for SMBs to find good talent while also not overspending.
The recruiter has to fight small business hiring struggles and be especially careful with the funds and this might also result in hasty or subpar decisions. That might be due to unnecessary task duplication or countless hours spent sorting through resumes.
Understaffing and delays, on the other hand negatively impact the business by affecting the staff’s health, satisfaction and productivity. This leads to a bad company image, which will discourage people from applying. Thus, a vicious cycle is created where SMBs bounce from point A to point B and vice versa.
So, what’s the solution? First, it is important to carefully plan your budget and plan every step of recruitment in advance. You should invest in an ATS like HireME to get process automation which will save you loads of time and money. It will also unburden the recruiters and lead to increased efficiency.
3. Recruitment process is haphazard
To overcome hiring challenges many SMBs forego crucial steps like planning, thinking ahead and being prepared with backup plans in case of failure. While some businesses do attempt to plan and implement, they fail in either of the steps or both. This prevents them from truly and effectively engaging in the process of hiring. As a result, you might defer from your original plan of action, forget the responsibilities or the role you are hiring for, forget to consider your teams’ requirements and settle for a bad hire.
This might also cause excessive use of resources or overspending time that is critical. All this reflects a very poor image of the businesses and suitable candidates might exit due to inconvenience or due to your inability to make them believe in you.
To make your recruitment process streamlined and hassle-free, you can use an ATS like HireME. 63% of recruiters agree that AI has enhanced the way their organisation handles recruiting.
Besides, your hiring process should be as candidate friendly as possible. Scheduling an interview with a candidate at a time that is convenient for them is important. It is not advisable to have an interviewer that is rude or does not address the concern of the candidates. Positive and organised interaction with the candidate is important because the lack of it will lead to a negative attitude regarding your firm. You have to try to keep track of the ongoing conversations with candidates in an organised manner.
An ATS would let you improve your flow, from resume screening to the onboarding new hire. Be it any step in the hiring cycle, most of it will be pre-planned and automated. You can manage everything in a dashboard and through several other integrations. This will prevent any chaos. You have to make an effort to keep track of the ongoing conversations with candidates in an organised manner. From timely communication to updating social media sites, you need not worry about anything!
4. Employee turnover is high
This happens because of many reasons in SMBs. One of these is settling for a bad hire because it might seem to be cost-effetive on a superficial level. This also causes what is popularly known as the warm body syndrome. Often people who seem like the correct fit are hired in a haste but a deeper evaluation and interaction with a higher number of candidates would have revealed the reality and capabilities of the employee. As Adrian Thomas puts it, “Warm bodies are the by-product of taking a short-cut to speed up recruitment, rather than an investment opportunity with a compelling ROI.” He additionally
mentions that, “Many start-ups finding their feet fall victim to warm body syndrome as quick fix solutions quickly transpire to be more damaging than beneficial to the business. Instead of hiring talented executives who are perfectly matched to the position they’ll be taking on, people are brought in out of convenience and cost-efficiency.”
The Harvard Business Review has published some data which indicates that employee turnover can result in an additional financial burden of 100% to 300% of the employee’s salary.
You can also lose out on good employees if you fail to create a nurturing environment or if the employees feel dissatisfied. This will bring you back to square one and it is hectic to start over.
The solution is simple, and you would have probably guessed by now! Yes, ATS is definitely helpful in preventing bad hires. The thorough scrutiny of applications and the well-structured process of hiring leave little room for loopholes. Why would you settle for a bad-fit candidate when you have access to a huge database to attract and choose from?
Like mentioned before, you should focus on developing and cultivating good company culture and ethics to prevent your workers from leaving. This can also be supported by ATS in many ways. You can get a more efficient onboarding system in place and collect feedback and other data from candidates at the end of the hiring cycle. Moreover, the data-analytics feature of ATS like HireME, would help you better analyse where you have been going wrong and how can you improve the hiring process.
5. The matter of a strong employer-brand
It is naturally difficult for start-ups to rapidly grow as a big name in the recruitment business among candidates. Candidates usually prefer multinational companies with years of experience as they are more aware of their ethics and therefore attracted to them. It is difficult to be the first choice of candidates over such firms.
A good employer brand is more than essential for the recruitment process. As per a report, 72% of hirers agree that corporate branding has a substantial impact on recruitment.
This can be achieved with sticking to you ethics and beliefs. It is important to know what you stand for and define your ethics. You should not defer from any of the things that you preach.
Another good way and probably the best one is to keep your current employees happy and fulfilled. You should express your gratitude towards them. Word of mouth is definitely the most powerful ways of promotions and happy employees would promote you in every way they can. You can even have a community on social media so that their words of praise may spread rapidly!
Conclusion
There are many hiring challenges faced by small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs), in the field of recruitment. However, with the advancement of technology, SMBs can tackle these problems and have a smooth recruitment process with great outcomes. It is important to plan ahead and aim towards new heights. To achieve growth, any business needs good talent. Hence, solving the problem of having a streamlined recruitment process would eventually solve many problems. So, don’t wait, experience the better and faster recruitment and make the right hire, everytime with HireME.