5 Things CEO(s) of Small Companies, Must Know About Recruitment

You’re a busy CEO who needs to run and grow the company.

You’re already wearing multiple hats… and now you need to worry about recruitment! To manage everything effectively, you need to be smart enough to learn how to succeed at in-house recruitment without getting distracted.

The CEO of a growing small company has to succeed at the recruitment game in order to hire top candidates for their business without getting too distracted from running the business. They must keep their finger on the pulse – the need to stay in touch with how competitive their employer of choice brand is in the eyes of the candidates they’re trying to hire.

Tip 1 – You Must Get Intimately Involved in the Recruiting Function

CEO’s must know where their brand stands in the food chain.

They need to know how competitive their brand is in the eyes of the candidates they’re trying to attract. Otherwise, they could be spiraling down very slowly until they hit the ground and crash.

If your brand’s employer of choice is not strong enough, then you are simply recruiting the leftovers. Yes, you heard it right – sorry to tell you but, if this is you then, all of the top candidates are going to your competitors and only the leftovers are applying to your jobs, accepting your offers, etc.

At least, if you knew your brand wasn’t attracting top candidates, then you could do something about it. But if you’re flying blind, then you are in trouble and may end up crashing into the ground.

Tip 2 – Take Full Advantage of Free Job-boards & Social Media

There are many free job boards out there, such as Indeed, Jora, and Adzuna. By posting to these free job boards, you can save lots on advertising costs. Also, it may be helpful to consider posting your jobs to your Facebook page and asking all your followers to share them to see if they know people that might be interested in the job. Better yet, use a free applicant tracking system to post to many of these free job boards in a single click.

Tip 3 – Use a Multi-Posting Tool to Get Your Ad to Many Sites

Use a multi-posting applicant tracking system that allows you to post your ad copy to many free job boards and social sites without having to spend hours copying and pasting.  These tools are essential to get your ad copy out there and be able to keep up and compete against the ads from your competitors – otherwise, you need to spend way too much time, and that is where it gets too hard and you end up giving up.

Tip 4 – Keep the Candidate Data for Future Roles

So now that your ad is out there on so many different job boards and social sites, the chances are you’re going to get many applications.  at least 20% of those applications are strong enough for future roles.  So from 100 applications, at least 15 are strong enough for various future roles in your business but you’re going to hire one of them.  And so you still have 14 good candidates that typically get lost within the outlook folder maze.

So you need a candidate database that allows you to easily tag these candidates for future roles and to also easily find them when those future roles come up.  So you need an online and modern candidate database that acts like a reservoir of all the applications that you get from all the jobs that you advertise, yet it has powerful search tools that allow you to find strong candidates for your current roles within seconds.  This way you have ready-to-go talent pools that you can pick up the phone and reach out to, any time a position comes up. I call this… talent on tap.

Tip 5 – Get The Relevant Manager/Team Involved From The Very Beginning

I can’t emphasise this enough!

I’ve dedicated an entire blog about this topic – please see it here.

Play the Jury here and not the judge, please!!! Unless of course, the new employee will be reporting to you directly – so yes I want you to be involved to keep your finger on your employer-of-choice-brand’s pulse, but if this person is not reporting to you then just be the judge and let the team with whom this person will be reporting to, let them be involved from the beginning – only they know the right cultural fit – otherwise, you won’t retain them!  They will leave or they will quit from being unhappy!