Recruiting and Hiring Employees for a Small Business

No matter what size your business, sooner or later, you'll inevitably have to go through the process of recruiting and hiring new employees. However, this can be a daunting task. How can you be certain that you're looking in all the right places? Is it possible to know if a person is right for your company after only a few meetings? How do you know a candidate is being up-front and honest about their experience and achievements?

Successful employee recruiting requires business owners to understand where to advertise a job opening, how to screen resumes and what to ask in an interview.

The first task for a business manager is to define exactly what skills the business requires from its new employees.

Next, create an accurate job description and use it to inform potential employees of your hiring needs. Include any employee skills and competencies that are essential to your business. Don't forget to include a summary of what your business does and what role you expect the new employees to play. Be specific, and reflect your company's attitude in your listing. The more information, the better.

Recruiting the best employees available is vital to your business. Advertising your hiring needs in an appropriate location is important if your recruiting process is to attract the most suitable employees to your business.

Tell your business contacts that you are recruiting employees. The small business grapevine is a cheap and effective way of recruiting and hiring employees.

Decide on the caliber of employees that your recruiting process aims to attract. If your small business requires graduate employees, advertise in the university press and on university notice boards.

Recruiting agencies can be an expensive way of hiring employees, with charges often approaching 30 percent of the employee's first year's salary. However, these recruiting agencies can really take the hassle out of hiring employees, leaving you free to concentrate on the running of your small business. They're a great option if you don't have the time to screen hundreds of resumes and conduct dozens of interviews.

The Internet can also be an excellent way of recruiting new employees who are technically adept, and through internet job postings, it's possible to reach prospective candidates around the world.

Newspapers are also a reliable way of recruiting new employees. Decide whether you need to source employees from a small local area or whether your business would benefit from recruiting nationally. While advertising within a small local area is often cheaper, it may not attract the quantity or quality of employees that you require.

Interviewing employees can be a daunting aspect of the hiring process for any business manager new to the experience of recruitment.

After the recruiting process, hiring the new employees for your business should be the easy part. If the new employees negotiate on wages, it is worth investigating wages in similar businesses within the area. If new recruits are being unreasonable, tell them so. However, do be prepared to negotiate with new employees if you feel that they are ideally suited to your business.

If you have the time, explain to unsuccessful candidates why they were not successful in your particular recruiting process; constructive feedback will allow them to handle future hiring situations with greater confidence.

Organize adequate training for your new employees in areas that are specific to their position. Ensure that your employees are happy and confident in their positions, as this is key to employee retention. Offer new employees an attractive benefits package. Neglect your employees' welfare, and you could find yourself starting the recruiting process all over again.

For a small business, employing an independent contractor usually makes sound business sense. Using an independent contractor offers the opportunity to "buy in" expertise without having to take on a person as an employee under a permanent agreement. The type of role undertaken by the independent contractor will depend on the needs of the business, but examples might include accountants, skills trainers and people to provide information technology (IT) support.

The ability to make an agreement to employ independent contractors gives a business options that it would otherwise lack. To carry out jobs requiring specific skills and for individual one-time projects, an independent contractor with appropriate experience can offer great benefits to a business.

In addition, being able to take on (and lay off) an independent contractor at short notice means a business can avoid the pitfalls associated with the hiring and firing of permanent employees when the workload fluctuates. The independent contractor on a short-term agreement, is also responsible for paying his own income tax and will not be entitled to vacation pay or sick leave.

An agreement usually involves the independent contractor being paid by the hour, the day, or on a fixed fee agreement for a specific project. The independent contractor's wage is likely to be significantly higher than that of a permanent employee.

However, the small business will not have to provide benefits, so the overall cost to the business of this type of agreement may not be excessive. Even though the small business is not directly responsible for these additional overheads, any legal agreement covering health and safety issues applies to both contractors and permanent employees.

As the independent contractor is not an employee, he/she is unlikely to show the same loyalty as a permanent employee, so the quality of the independent contractor's work will probably need to be monitored regularly.

Independent contractors have certain legal rights in common with the permanent staff. They include the national minimum wage and all anti-discrimination legislation. Any business agreement with an independent contractor should take into account these issues.