The best potential hires will need to be blown away before they apply for any job that you offer.
Concerns of an increasingly widening skills shortage began to air as early as 2016 from the BBC, with employers regularly worried that they would be unable to fill their posts with the skilled professionals required. This is particularly crippling for an SME, who can be left dead in the water if the right talent doesn’t come along at the opportune moment.
Therefore, a skilled worker is like a diamond in the rough, and you need to pull out all the stops to get them onside. Below you’ll find some tips to better your chances in this endeavour…
Utilise Appealing Employee Benefits
Putting your employees first is always a good look to have.
Half-price cinema tickets, cycle to work schemes, and gym passes are just some of the well-known benefits floating around today. Still, much of this isn’t enough to secure an incredible hire alone. Workers and HR staff often have trouble managing it all, supposed benefits ironically a cause of headaches and stress themselves.
These problems go away when using employee benefits software for HR professionals from Zest, which provides easier access to sensitive data, cuts costs, and removes the burden of taxing administration. Speed is key in an SME, and fortunately, these systems can be implemented in just 2 short months. This is what will lend your smaller business some real polish.
Top tier talent may measure potential employers by the ‘extra mile factor’, ironing out as many wrinkles as possible. An SME can’t be expected to do that across the board given their typically vulnerable nature, but if you can work on the sweet spots of employment, you’ll stand a better chance at scoring quality hires.
Sell the Role Properly
Employers can use phrases and buzzwords that swiftly turn off the better potential hires from a role. You may want to avoid using any of the following:
- “We want the best of the best” – While all businesses should want the best workers, many of the ‘best’ employees may not consider themselves to be, while those that do could be more style than substance. Saying this may usher more posers into the fold, rather than humble but effective workers who put results before rhetoric.
- “We’re a family here” – Your family is your family. Top tier workers aren’t looking for substitute mums and dads, but colleagues who will further their skillsets and develop their careers. It’s a nice sentiment, but in most cases, a dishonest one that won’t draw in fully independent professionals.
- “You’ll be wearing many hats” – Delivered without further explanation, this phrase typically tells savvy employees that they’ll be overworked, and that your SME has a poor history of managing workloads.
It might be a requirement for workers to fulfil multiple roles in an up-and-coming SME but being honest about daily responsibilities in the recruitment ad will be far more effective. After all, you’ll be letting potential hires know more about what they’re getting into, and that transparency breeds trust.
Clarity and conviction are key. Your intentions almost don’t matter at all here; if you rely on vague phrases and eyerolling terminology where smart people are left to connect dots themselves, most people will resent your firm before (and if) they even arrive for an interview. Show off your technological knowledge, because top tier workers get many job offers, and you will need to compete to recruit them. You can only do that by providing more information.
In the end, it has been proven numerous times that talking rubbish is bad for business, so avoid it all like the plague. The candidates you want to hire aren’t stupid, and to recruit them will require negotiation, a back-and-forth dialogue that simply can’t thrive on meaningless phrases.
