By Brian McKay

Source: Wikimedia

After your customers, your employees are probably the most integral people to your business. Considering this, when you’re looking to run a big recruitment drive, it’s important to make sure that you’re getting the best talent you can. Like many small business owners, you might be planning to go through established staffing agencies to hire your next load of employees (and you may even talk to a consultant like Alex Gotch to come up with the best plan of action when it comes to your recruitment). If this is the case, here are some quick pointers to ensure you’re getting the most out of it.

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The first tip I can offer is to talk about your company culture throughout the process. It’s the staffing agency’s main function to find the best match between a candidate and a prospective employer. As I’m sure you know, just because a worker is qualified for a position doesn’t mean that they’re going to be a good fit for that particular role in that particular company. When you hire a staffing agency, they’re likely to ask you something about your company culture. It may seem like a hassle, but make sure that you’re not brushing over it. Go out of your way to give the agency a clear and detailed portrait of your company culture. This will mean that the people they send you will not only have the right background, but will mesh more easily with your business as it is.

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Next, make sure you’re not trying to recruit for one position through multiple agencies. Sure, it’s pretty common for businesses to work with more than one staffing agency. However, it’s important to make sure you’re not overlapping a position and confusing things. For starters, if an agency finds you a candidate for something which you’ve already filled through one of their competitors, it can be an unnecessary strain on your professional relationship with them. It can also be confusing and off-putting to applicants who see the same position advertised by different recruiters. Don’t overlap positions, and try to choose specialized agencies according to what you’re recruiting. For example, if you need to fill an IT department, look for IT staffing companies before any others.

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Finally, make sure you’re being realistic about the pool of talent you can actually recruit from. You’d be surprised at how many modern business owners fall at this hurdle. When you’re liaising with recruitment agencies, make sure you’re discussing the current employment market with them. This will help you to determine what kind of talent you can expect to find with your recruitment budget. If your recruitment drive isn’t going to be quite as smooth as you would have hoped, then discuss ways you can adjust your expectations without falling too short of your overarching goals. Let’s say that you wanted a certain length of experience, but you weren’t finding it within the available recruitment pool. You may be able to get around this by making plans for some on-the-job training. Recruitment rarely goes precisely according to plan, so be prepared to make compromises.

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As you go ahead with your recruitment drive, be sure to keep these points in mind!

Brian McKay is a co-founder of zenruption. He has a B.A. in Political Science from Gonzaga University and an M.B.A. from Boise State University (yes that blue field). His goal in life is to look out for the regular guy and bring as much knowledge and change to this world as he can. His purpose in founding Zenruption was to do just that and help craft the world he wants his daughter to inherit. Please feel free to email him any feedback or article ideas at brian@zenruption.com.  On twitter: @brianmckay71

On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/briguy71