Be creative when looking for the right small business staff

HIRING staff doesn’t have to mean expensive advertising and intensive interview campaigns.

Yoshi Takahashi, Ruchir Punjabi and Prashant Rajkhowa.

HIRING staff doesn’t have to mean expensive advertising and intensive interview campaigns.

Like most areas of business, social media and new technologies offer some cheaper and more effective options to the well-trodden traditional path.

But while finding the best staff can be a difficult process, it is essential for your company’s success.

Deloitte Private partner Mark Allsop says the best employees are those a small-business owner can trust to act appropriately on their behalf and support their business goals.

“Any small business needs to think through what their aspirations and strategies are for the business and understand what they would like to achieve in the future,” he says.

“The best employees then, are the ones that are able to support both the current business operations and also the future business aspirations.

‘Broadly, employees that are comfortable multi-tasking and working across many different roles can be of great value to a small business, as flexibility and a ‘can-do attitude’ can really drive a business forward.”

Allsop says the internet and rise of social media have changed the ways that organisations are able to find new employees.

“For little, or even sometimes no cost, employers can place an advertisement that can be accessed by a large number of potential employees,” he says.

“While this can be a benefit, a potential downside can also be that a lot of applications can be received from people who really don’t have the skills and experience required. It can take a lot of time working through the volume of applications to find the right short list of potential candidates.”

Online communities such as LinkedIn, or a close look at industry and employee contacts can be other options.

“A small business which is well networked into its industry, perhaps through membership of an industry association, can often find the right person with the appropriate industry expertise just through being involved and active in industry events,” Allsop says.

Alternatively, recruitment firms can be costly but can outsource the process of finding staff.

“Recruitment firms can have extensive databases and networks of potential candidates and can often provide a targeted short list of candidates pretty quickly,” Allsop says.

“Small businesses should invest the time upfront, if they do engage a recruiter, so they can be sure that the recruiter genuinely understands what skills the business needs, and the type of person who will fit in.”

Andrea Culligan, chief executive of integrated branding agency Harteffect, says getting the right staff is “essential to any sized business”.

She says it can be tough for small business operator to attract high quality people so they need to focus on their unique positioning when recruiting.

“It’s hard to attract high quality talent to a small organisation, but there’s also a lot of benefits to working for a small organisation.”

Culligan says some of the things that could be used to attract staff to a small organisation are “the opportunity to have involvement with a project from start to finish versus one sector, ability to influence outcomes, and access to leadership”.