The Company Merchant Limited

Recruiting Staff

RECRUITING STAFF – HOW TO ATTRACT THE BEST POSSIBLE STAFF 

Finding the best talent for your organisation is a priority for every good business, but, with more and more organisations recognising the need for talent, the market is becoming much more competitive. So how can you set your businesses apart and find the talent that you need to help grow your business?

Owners of small businesses usually have a decent idea of the basics of marketing. This may or may not be formalised or utilise the latest jargon but the basics are there.

Finding the best possible staff for your business is very much a marketing exercise – if you can make both your business and the package appeal to the right market, you’ll attract the right staff. So, you should treat recruitment as you would any marketing campaign and think about the four elements of your marketing mix – Product, Place, Price and Promotion. Let’s take each in turn

Product – what are you offering that will distinguish you from the competitors and attract the talent to your job? Full time, long term employment; career prospects; Flexibility? Freedom? Challenge? Training and development? Better pay and conditions? Opportunity to travel? And so forth. 

Place – what can you do here that gives you ‘an edge’? Is this flexible – times of work, location of work, working from home; is your business located in a low cost or high cost area? Is there high or low unemployment? What are the available skills?

Price – how does your pay/reward compare? Generally the less you wish or can afford to pay the more you need to do on the others.

Promotion – how do you plan to attract people? There is a simple balance here. Cash vs. Time. The more time you can put into it the lower the cost. 

You can then do a simple SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis.

Think about who your competitors are for the people and skills you are looking for. Think also of the different sources of suitable people. You need to think very broadly. The more sources you can identify the larger your candidate pool and the greater you chances of both finding and recruiting the people you need

Strengths

What do you have that will 1. appeal to your target group and 2. will distinguish you from your competitors. If you are a very small company – what can you sell as the benefits? Conversely if you are large, what would you identify here? 

Weaknesses

Think about this from the point of view of the candidates you are trying to attract and your competitors

Opportunities

Have you explored the types of flexibility you are willing to offer? Have you thought about what you can do to make you company an attractive recruiter? Do you know what your target candidates value, see as important, would be attracted to? 

Threats

What might make your competitors or other companies in the same location more attractive than you? What happens if you train people and they leave? And so on.

Having done the SWOT use the thinking to come up with answers and solutions to put together a simple list of the benefits you can offer and answers to the issues that might arise. Once you know what you want to say then you need to define the people you need to say it to (potential candidates) and the best way to say it (ad in the paper? recruitment firm? online job board?).  

Pull those three points together and you now have a recruitment plan. Happy recruiting!

About the author …

Lisette Howlett, Managing Consultant/Director, MLH Global HR Consulting, has an extensive track record of achievement spanning over 20 years in global Human Resources with companies such as Zeneca/AstraZeneca and Syngenta. This includes extensive global HR project and content leadership and internal/external HR consulting covering UK, U.S., Switzerland, Europe, and Asia. Additionally Lisette is founder of www.HireScores.com a website to deliver independent ratings and information about firms throughout the recruitment industry as well as www.hirescoresforum.com  the first forum to bring together employers, agencies and job seekers.

Got a recruitment related business? You can list it FREE on www.HireScores.com