It is well known that Small to Medium businesses have a more difficult time attracting the right talents, as compared to Multinational Corporations (MNCs). MNCs are able to attract talents much more easily than smaller businesses such as SMEs and start-ups.
This is not surprising considering that most employees would place greater emphasis on pay packages, work-life balance and high job security in their careers. These demands are easily catered to by MNCs through having strong resources and a well established company culture.
Whilst it will not be easy to change the mindset and preferences of employees, there are still ways for SMEs to attract the right talents in this digital age.
Here are 7 ways for you to attract your ideal talents to join your Small Business.
- Be Creative in Talents Outreach
- Have a forward looking website
- Be transparent
- Ensure Career Advancements and Recognition
- Provide good benefits
- Have good reviews on Glassdoor
- Show that your company is a thought leader in your industry
1. Be Creative in Talents Outreach
Gone are the days where companies can solely rely on advertising job positions in newspapers, word of mouth, employing recruitment agencies or job portals to hire potential employees. With the influx of social media in recent years, SMEs can and should try to leverage off these platforms in their competition for talents, particularly that of LinkedIn or even Facebook, to reach out to prospective candidates.
SMEs can actively search out groups or hiring events as organized by schools, independent learning institutes and even involve employees in the recruitment hunt by offering referral bonus to those who successfully refer a new hire.
2. Have a clean, forward-looking company website
It is a well known fact that first impressions are very important. This applies to your company’s website as well. In this day and age, the high majority of us, especially if you are below 40 years old, are sure to have a smartphone and/or a computer. It is also so easy to search for companies via search platforms like Google or Bing.
With so many professional websites out there, it is simply mandatory for your company to also have a clean and forward looking website. Not doing so will leave the impression that your company is old school and not up with the times.
If you are solely in the HR department, consider working with the marketing team to ensure that your company’s website looks attractive to job prospects. If there is currently no marketing personnel in your company, consider tasking this out to an agency, a freelancer or even hire an in-house marketing person. If you have the time, you can even set up your company’s website by yourself.
3. Be Transparent
Business transparency is the process of being open, honest, and straightforward about various company operations. Millennials and Gen Zs value transparency and purpose, more so than any other previous generations. If you are not transparent with the job prospects about their job scope, the reasons behind what they need to do, there is a high chance that they will leave your company asap once they find a better place.
4. Ensure Career Advancements and Recognition
As fun as the workplace may be, most prospective employees ultimately seek out jobs that offer growth and stable pay increments. It is necessary that SMEs have in place structural career advancements that new employees can strive towards.
Millennials and Gen Zs also value ownership and not constantly being dictated what they should do. Giving them ownership of their tasks and giving them recognition when they do well will make them feel highly valued and want to stay on in your company.
Such recognition does not necessarily have to be expensive or even monetary, it can be a simple ‘thank you’ or a sign of appreciation to ensure employees are given the credit they deserve.
With a healthy workplace culture, it will not only enable SMEs to attract more talent but also retain the best people it gets. Here are 11 steps you can take to ensure that your employees feel valued throughout their employee journey.
5. Provide Good Benefits
Employees are constantly comparing their workplace benefits when they meet up with their friends or relatives. Benefits are also one of the key factors that will impact whether your employees want to stay in your company for a long term period.
The standard benefits include dental benefits, medical benefits, flexibenefits, birthday leave, wedding leave and so on.
Benefits can also come in the form of quarterly bonuses, Best Employee Awards, team activities budget, time-offs, free snacks, dinner allowances etc.
By offering employees rewards like time-offs to make up for working overtime or occasional breaks from work with team building activities, it will help stimulate a more rewarding work experience. Team bonding activities like an annual company vacation or a company sponsored team lunch will provide your business with the additional benefit of fostering closer relationships amongst your employees.
6. Have good reviews on Glassdoor
Whether we like it or not, potential job prospects do go to platforms like Glassdoor to access reviews given to your company. They will also access how the existing employees are like on platforms like Linkedin. Therefore, it is important to pay attention to your company’s Glassdoor account and also how your employees present themselves on Linkedin.
On a side note, If there is a lack of presence of your company on Glassdoor or of employees on Linkedin, there is a chance that your company may seem old fashioned and outdated.
7. Show that your company is a thought leader in your industry
In addition to a well designed website, another way to show that your company is up with the times and a leader in your field is to share thought pieces about your industry trends. When you look around at many SME websites out there in both the B2B and B2B spaces, you will see that many of them have a blog section. Your company’s blog is where you can share more about your company’s viewpoint on industry trends, step-by-step guides, industry tips, and so on.
The best part about having a blog is that it is basically free to set up if you already have a website. The worst part is that you need to be consistent when it comes to updating your blog with quality articles so that your blog is active and a helpful resource that visitors will always head back to.
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