8 Tips for Hiring When the Unemployment Rate Is Low

Small businesses often struggle to find the perfect job candidate, even in times of plenty. But when the national unemployment rate is at record lows, hiring becomes even more difficult.

At the beginning of the decade, the unemployment rate climbed to 10%. Now that it’s below 4%, business owners are scrambling to hire whoever isn’t being picked up by the major players and massive corporations.

Whether you’re a sole proprietor looking to make your first hire, an established small business owner who needs to meet rising demand, or an HR professional and/or hiring manager looking to fill an unexpected opening, your mission is the same: Appeal to a narrow field of applicants amid a clamor of competition.

How do you become the signal among the noise and make a good hire, despite low odds? Here are eight tips for hiring in a worker’s market:

1. Improve your compensation and benefits package

Let’s start with the obvious: In order to be more attractive to potential candidates, you need to offer them a competitive salary and benefits.

According to Hired’s 2018 Global Brand Health Report, compensation and benefits is the number one factor job seekers consider when looking for a job. Does that mean it’s the only thing workers care about? Of course not. But you put yourself at a massive disadvantage when your pay is low and you don’t offer healthcare or other fringe benefits.

If you’re a small business owner unsure of how you can afford to offer healthcare, look into the Small Business Health Options Program (SHOP) and explore your options.

2. Recruit with personality, personally

In so many aspects of business, personalization is key. It’s become one of the core tenets of email marketing, sales—and now, recruiting.

According to the Hired report, 50% of respondents said they’d engage with a company that sends a personalized recruitment note. Women in particular felt strongly about the power of personalization, with 12% more female respondents citing it as important.

When you reach out to prospective employees—via LinkedIn, other social media channels, or email—take the time first to learn about their background, and make your message relatable to them. Forget generic templates and generalizations: The time you lose in writing out a personal message, you’ll regain when you hire much quicker than you would otherwise.  

3. Reexamine your job description

Writing a job description isn’t easy. How do you boil down the responsibilities of a job into a couple of paragraphs, while including an explanation of the company’s history, culture, and benefits?

If you aren’t getting many responses to what you have now, it’s time to go back to the drawing board. Keep the following tips in mind while writing:

• Keep job titles simple: You may think it’s cute and shows personality to call someone an “SEO Superstar,” but most people aren’t searching for that on job boards. Use real-life job descriptions that get straight to the point.

• Don’t overwrite requirements: You don’t want to set the bar too low for applicants, but don’t dissuade people from applying because they don’t meet a laundry list of criteria.

• Customize the role to fit your company: A social media marketer can mean different things at different companies. What does it mean to you?

• Utilize a clear structure: Make use of bullet points, short paragraphs, and clean, clear fonts. You want your ads to be as readable as possible.

• Stay positive: Leave your self-deprecation, sarcasm, and negativity for the stand-up set.

4. Streamline your application process

You may think that a complicated application is the first test for anyone who wants to work for your company. But the more variables you throw into the process, the more likely you are to disqualify a quality worker.

Keep it simple: Use a platform like Typeform to create a quick application that is easy to navigate on both desktop and mobile, and integrates easily with other apps. Capture the information you need to determine whether this applicant meets basic requirements, then go from there.

Other Articles From AllBusiness.com:

• The Complete 35-Step Guide for Entrepreneurs Starting a Business
• 25 Frequently Asked Questions on Starting a Business
• 50 Questions Angel Investors Will Ask Entrepreneurs
• 17 Key Lessons for Entrepreneurs Starting a Business

5. Create an employee referral program

Your recruitment process becomes exponentially easier when the burden of finding applicants is spread out among all of your team members. You can do this by creating, or beefing up, your employee referral program.

Offer a reward—a cash bonus or paid days off—to employees who refer successful candidates to the company. You can create reasonable guidelines that ensure you don’t bleed money as a result of this program (the new addition needs to be with the company for at least 90 days, or they can’t work on the same team as the person who referred them). Increase the bonus for urgent positions.

6. Get flexible about flexibility

Remote work, at least part of the time, is the future. According to a report from IWG, 70% of workers globally work outside the office at least once a week. In another survey, 60% of workers said they’d leave their job for a similar job with similar pay if they could work from home.

While there are some unsung benefits to coming into the office every day, it’s clear that teleworking is not only easier than ever, thanks to technological advances, but an increasingly sought-after benefit. If all things are equal (pay, role, perks) and you can sweeten the deal for an applicant by allowing them to work from home at least part of the time, you need to consider it. Remote work can actually pay dividends from a productivity standpoint as well—so why not give it a shot?  

RELATED: 10 Lessons I Learned From Building and Managing a Remote Team

7. Invest in your company culture

According to the Hired report, the second-most important factor job seekers consider after pay is company culture. Company culture is much more than a recruitment tool, however. Employees’ overall ratings of their work environment, ability to collaborate, and mission are 20% higher at companies with strong cultures.

How do you invest in something as nebulous and hard-to-define as culture? It’s not necessarily about committing money, but making culture a priority. You can do that in the following ways:

• Emphasize wellness: Giving employees generous paid time off, providing healthy snacks, encouraging people to take their full lunch hour, planning fun in-office activities to relieve stress.

• Create and champion values: What are the values of your company? Do you prize transparency and openness? Flexibility and fun? Hard work and collaboration? Codify these values (in your employee handbook, in signs around the office) and ensure that everyone from the leadership down embodies them every day.

• Seek feedback: Create forums for discussing company-wide goals and obstacles, such as a monthly town hall, and use tools such as TINYpulse to gather anonymous feedback about what’s working and not working. When people feel heard, they feel respected.

8. Look to the gig economy

Ever since the Great Recession, the gig economy has been on a tear. There are now more freelancers, part-time workers, contractors, and side hustlers than ever before. The pool of workers is diverse (in terms of background, age, and skill set), and for many people the loss of benefits and the added tax burden is offset by the flexibility and variety of work.

If you’re looking to expand your workforce but can’t find (or afford) someone to fill a role, consider perusing the talent available on sites like Upwork and Fiverr. You may be pleasantly surprised by the quality of work done by workers on a contract or permalance basis, and you’ll create relationships that may one day turn into a full-time arrangement, if both sides are interested.  

Hiring when the unemployment rate is low is a challenge, but in many ways it’s a good problem to have. Being able to afford to hire excellent new workers is a sign that business is booming, and if you’re willing to make investments and tweaks to your model to secure the best talent available, that’s the first step in becoming a business that many people—even in this competitive market—will want to work for.

RELATED: 7 Smart Reasons Why Your Company Should Be Hiring Veterans

The post 8 Tips for Hiring When the Unemployment Rate Is Low appeared first on AllBusiness.com

The post 8 Tips for Hiring When the Unemployment Rate Is Low appeared first on AllBusiness.com. Click for more information about Meredith Wood.

from neb biz feed 1 http://bit.ly/2EnPpd7
via Nebula Biz Local Loans