The hiring crisis persists, with too many job openings and too few qualified candidates, particularly for small and mid-sized businesses. Despite reports of massive layoffs at large corporations, the labor shortage is widespread, with none of our 300 clients in the western United States being fully staffed. As a result, they are all heavily focused on recruiting and retention, but many HR teams and managers are already at capacity with their current responsibilities, leaving little time or resources for proper recruitment, interviews, and hiring.
When faced with open positions, it is crucial to decide whether to use an in-house recruiting team, a professional recruiter, or a "hybrid" solution. Here are some guidelines to help you make the right decision:
For companies with over ten open positions and an annual turnover rate of 20% or more, hiring a full-time recruiter (also known as a talent acquisition specialist) is necessary. This position may be permanent or temporary, but someone at your small or mid-sized business should be dedicating 100% of their time to recruiting.
For difficult-to-fill roles that require specialized skills or executive-level expertise, partnering with a professional recruiter may be necessary.
A "hybrid" option is passive recruiting, which involves posting job openings on various job search websites and waiting for resumes to come in. While this approach may work for companies with a few job openings or in a more open labor market, it is not an effective strategy when recruiting for more than 30% of your workforce.
Active recruiting involves actively seeking out candidates instead of relying solely on incoming resumes. This typically requires hiring an in-house professional recruiter with experience in pursuing candidates via LinkedIn, contacting universities and trade schools, and developing relationships with career center officials at these institutions.
In addition, many SMBs struggle with recruiting because they don't take advantage of technology to streamline the process, fail to provide adequate training to their managers, and waste time on inefficient recruiting practices.
In summary, there are several factors to consider when hiring, and it can be a daunting task for many small and mid-sized businesses. To help you improve your hiring practices, our sister company - Tanzanite Leadership Development - has developed a special report called Tips to Hire Better Right Now, which offers practical tips for enhancing recruitment, selection, and onboarding processes. This report is free and available to download here.