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Blog posts tagged recruitment
How social media can help you recruit top quality employees
March 18, 2013
As a business owner, you will know that to remain competitive within your market your business needs to grow. If you are not increasing your turnover and profits, you risk soon being overtaken by businesses that are.
Whether you prefer to remain a relatively small business or if you have the success of Richard Branson’s Virgin in mind, business growth will inevitably lead to hiring more staff. The importance of hiring top quality staff cannot be overestimated, because it can prove to be the difference between success, survival or failure.
Although many small businesses have never had or can no longer afford to have in-house HR departments, using external HR companies or HR software can provide a solution. However, if you decide to manage your HR matters, recruiting employees will be down to you, of course.
Along with more traditional recruitment strategies, today’s business owners are now turning to social media to hire top quality employees. If you are unsure how to do this, here are some tips.
LinkedIn was established specifically with recruitment in mind. It not only enables job seekers and employees to promote their skills, education and experience online, but also acts as a business network and provides a way for like-minded professionals to contact and connect with one another.
If you or your business does not already have a presence on LinkedIn it is a good idea to set one up. Along with enabling you to network with fellow business owners, potential and existing customers, it will enable you to search for potential employees. Think of it as online dating for the corporate world, where you and job candidates can connect online before making the commitment to meet in person.
Twitter and Facebook
Don’t make the mistake of thinking Twitter and Facebook are just for teenagers or bored housewives. They are both very useful tools for promoting businesses and recruiting employees. Top quality employees want to work somewhere that offers more than just a great salary, they also want to work in supportive and enjoyable environments, too.
Facebook and Twitter provide a great chance to show your company’s personality to potential job candidates, who will likely be searching through your Facebook page and Tweets to find out more about your business. If your company has taken part in a charity event, held a team-building day or any other social events, promote it on your Facebook page, because it will show potential employees that your company can offer more than just a nine-to-five job.
On a practical level, Facebook and Twitter are ideal places to advertise jobs. If a vacancy becomes available, post it on Facebook with a link to how applicants can apply. Also Tweet about it and encourage staff to Retweet it on Twitter.
Growing trend
Use of Social media isn’t a fad – it continues to grow. Google+ has become the latest social media tool that combines LinkedIn with Facebook and enables users to create separate professional and personal networks in one place.
There are many business benefits to using social media and businesses have realised it is a perfect tool to enhance their recruitment efforts. The fact is, failing to use social media could put your business at a distinct disadvantage when seeking to hire top quality employees.
By editor and blogger Derin Clark writing on behalf of Octopus HR.
Important lessons I've learned about recruitment
January 09, 2013
Recruiting is fraught with problems, not least the sleepless nights that come when you know you’re responsible for someone else’s mortgage.
What should you do when your workload means you have to take on staff? I’m no expert, but here are a few tips I’ve picked from our own experience over the years.
Temp to perm
Forecasting at the start-up stage is hard. Yes, you’ve won a contract that requires extra staff for five months – but can you guarantee the work after that?
Plus, there’s nothing worse than employing the wrong person and having to spend time and money correcting the decision through training, HR or expensive calls to lawyers.
Temp-to-perm is a great solution and one we adopt in our warehouse. Firstly, it provides a means for both parties to test each other out. Secondly, employees prefer the transparency of this contract above the much-abused probationary period. Thirdly, for those eager for a job, it’s a chance to prove their worth, driven by the end goal of a full-time position.
Start them young, train them up
You can create loyalty by investing in someone with potential, filling them with the encouragement, skills and confidence to act as your right arm. By dedicating time to teach an employee from scratch, before they’re influenced by bad habits from other companies, they have – in turn – benefited from quick promotion, yearly pay increases as a reflection of their capability and knowledge of exactly how you like something done. Be careful, though, that you don't fall foul of age discrimination laws in your enthusiasm to give an inexperienced employee the benefit of the doubt.
Use agencies
Recruitment takes time; time you don’t have if you’re in the fortunate position to recruit. We use agencies now for 80 per cent of our workforce positions. A good agency with a clear brief will know what you want and it will manage the preliminary selection so that you can concentrate on seeing a strong shortlist. The commission agencies take is usually more cost-efficient than your time spent searching.
Ian Cowley is managing director of cartridgesave.co.uk, the UK’s largest dedicated printer cartridge company.
Employees and business responsibilities
June 14, 2010
In the latest installment of Marcela from Rico Mexican Kitchen's startup story, she employs her first member of staff and decides how best to distribute the everyday responsibilities.
Marcela was advised that her new employee would be extremely important to her business so she wanted to find someone she could trust and who could take on some of the responsibilities to allow her to concentrate on making Rico Mexican Kitchen a success. Having found that employee, can they find the right balance between friendship and work relationship?
With her new employee in place, they created a mind map to help them list all of the jobs that need to be done, who will be responsible for what and how they can support each other.
Do you have any advice for Marcela on her new employee and how having him around may affect her and the business? How can she ensure she is aware of what needs to be done at all times? How much input should she have in the work done by her employee now that they have split their responsibilities?
You can find out more about Marcela on the interactive business website www.inafishbowl.com
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