Recruiting Challenges For Smbs And How To Overcome Them

By Author: Oren T Dorell
Total Articles: 17
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Small and medium-sized businesses (SMB) are the principal source of employment in the US. SMBs employ more than 50% of workforce and generate more than half the country's GDP. But when it comes to finding and recruitment skilled employees SMBs face various challenges. In this article, we will discuss some of the challenges, and present tips to overcome them.

Finding a skilled hire: According to a survey conducted by Robert Half, 60% of SMBs are facing difficulty in finding skilled hires. This is because skilled candidates are demanding high pay which is difficult to afford. If small businesses are unable to hire skilled candidates the other alternative is to hire unskilled candidates and train them. However, some of these unskilled candidates get trained properly in your company and after a period of time they switch to a bigger organization.

SMBs should create better career opportunities for employees working in their organization. They should clearly define the benefits to the candidates for working at their organization. This will help them hire skilled ones.

Maintaining employee morale and productivity: ...
... Employee morale is important, as it directly affects the organization's productivity. This is because complex HR policies, not accepting responsibility for mistakes, setting impossible goals, threatening their jobs, improper performance of management systems, poor economic conditions, etc, leads to poor employee morale.

Maintain an open-door policy for the employees. This enables them to share their concerns and questions with the management. Conduct regular staff meetings to ask them questions like how they are finding the workplace, whether they are facing any issues. If you think their concerns are reasonable and valid, take necessary action to fix them as quickly as possible.

One or two people managing everything: In SMBs, one or two people take care of all employee related activities, which is not a good idea. The need of people in HR management is more because they are the ones that search for suitable candidates, they do all the administration related work, manage and maintain employee wage and benefit programs, etc. With all this work load, they fail to manage the gap between the employer and the employees.

As a small business owner, you should identify the job requirements for specific HR position, then describe roles and responsibilities accordingly. If the job description is not adequately conveying the position's requirement or if it is too broad, the candidate will be confused and will not be able to carry out the work properly. You can also contact a recruiting agency to find an ideal candidate for the job opening.

Improper policies for recruitment: HR department is responsible for attracting, retaining and developing high skilled employees in the organization. Without a proper recruitment infrastructure, it would be difficult for the organization to do this. The reasons may be lack of skilled or experienced HR team, not maintaining proper applicant tracking system or the lack of sources to attract targeted candidates.

Maintain a skilled HR team. Have a proper applicant tracking system and proper sources to do the recruitment process efficiently and effectively. This will help in hiring the right candidate.

Top officials not involving in recruiting process: With SMB owners and their top officials responsible for focusing on core business activities, they have little time to spend with the HR team to discuss issues in hiring of candidates. They just inform the concerned HR about the requirement and sometimes the HR team is not able to choose the right candidate.

As an SMB owner, then you need to allocate some time with the HR department to discuss the issues on how to choose a candidate. This will improve the quality of recruitment.

Poor cultural fit: Employers should look into two aspects while recruiting an aspirant. First, make sure whether the candidate is having the capabilities of building the organization. Second, to check the candidate will fit into the organization's culture? Most SMBs do not consider quality of the candidates, which is likely to show negative impact on the organization.

To overcome this situation, you need to hire a candidate on a temporary contract. In the first few weeks of joining your organization, monitor their candidate's performance - how they are behaving, work ethics, attitude, etc. After the completion of contract period, based on the employee's performance, you can reduce the probation period or make him/her a permanent employee.

It is not that there is lack of qualified candidates or shortage of talent. The challenge here is to come up with some new ideas that will attract talent and retain candidates. Small businesses should get rid of old processes, which are ineffective in hiring candidates, and should change the way they search for skilled candidates.

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