Top 6 Recruiting Tools for Small Businesses

Are you starting off the New Year with a clearly designed marketing plan and have realized that your business might need an extra team member? During the budget and goal planning stages, a business owner usually will star to re-evaluate their staffing needs. However, most of us get discouraged by the amount of time it takes to screen the candidates and find the perfect match for your team. Let us help you decide which of the six recruiting methods would work best for your company.

Local Newspaper:
You can post a help wanted ad in your local newspaper, which will appear in the classified section. For example, The Morning Call allows businesses to advertise their job hirings daily, and these ads start at $418. There are multiple ad sizes and design options available, but the price for the ad will increase with the add-ons and enlargements. You have the option to decide which day you want your ad printed and also if you wish to have it printed in other sections of the newspaper.

Pros:
• Many advertising options, both small and large
• Ad can be published on any day you would like, even the very next day
• Newspapers can reach large numbers of people throughout the area
Cons:
• Newspapers tend to charge relatively high costs
• They are not conducive to last minute changes because of tight printing schedules
• Large space ads are very expensive and their longevity is fleeting
• Ads in newspaper tend to compete heavily with other ads on the page.
• They tend to deliver only to an adult audience. If you have products targeted at teens or even college students, a newspaper probably won’t reach these people.

College Career Fairs:
Many colleges and universities offer job fairs throughout the year. These career fairs target new graduates and other current college students for internship opportunities, volunteer opportunities, part-time employment and/or full-time employment. The costs to attend college career fairs vary, depending on your company and also on what aspects you would like included, such as booths to advertise, food to eat throughout the day, and company profiles on their websites and in the expo directory. For example, Lehigh Carbon Community College occasionally has job fairs that may cost as low as $25 a person, but they may not include all of the items mentioned above. The annual Lehigh Valley Collegiate Career expo, which targets students from the 14 Greater Lehigh Valley and Berks County colleges and universities, may cost as much as $500-$775 for a few hours at the expo, and entitles employers to a 6-foot wide skirted table, 2 chairs, afternoon snack and hot lunch for two representatives, and a company profile on the LVCCE website and in the Expo directory.

Pros:
• Employers and applicants can meet each other in person
• You can offer on-the-spot interviews and speed up the hiring process
• Employers can screen many candidates on the same day
Cons:
• Jobs fairs feature an extremely limited time frame. An applicant might not be able to visit every employer whose openings interest him or her.
• Employers must make quick judgments about applicants based on short exchanges and interviews
• Applicants with strong resumes but weak interpersonal skills might not stand out at job fairs as well as they would when applying through a more traditional process
• Job fairs can be costly for companies to attend and may not always be worth the money for the short amount of time being there

Social Media Recruiting:
Social Media recruiting has become a big platform for reaching and engaging with potential candidates. Most companies choose to pay for an advertisement to reach those who might be interested in their opportunity. Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter are the main platforms that companies will utilize. When you decide to recruit on the Internet, make sure you spend time researching each social media platform to decide where your perfect candidate is spending most of the time. Ex: Facebook no longer attracts the younger generation – you will find them mostly on Instagram and Twitter. If you are looking for a candidate with previous experience, LinkedIn would be a great platform to utilize. Regardless of which site you choose, make sure you change your message based on the platform and the audience.

Pros:
• You can target very specific audiences, even more so than you can with your regular posts
• You can even target your current clients and leads by uploading your email list
• Social Media’s reach is enormous, connecting people from across the globe all in one place
• Ads can help you grow your online fan base or bring traffic to your website

Cons:
• Social media’s main goal is networking, not selling; people are not on Facebook because they are looking for an immediate job, they are there to get inspired.
• Advertising overload causes people to stop paying attention to ads. It’s hard to make your ad stand out from the crowd.
• It is difficult to tell exactly how many hits your ad is getting, as some users will see the ad and not click on it
• Creating a page and maintaining your ads on social media is extremely time consuming

Monster.com:
Monster.com is a premier global online employment solution for people seeking jobs and the employers who need great people. Monster has over a million job postings, over 1 million resumes in the database, and over 63 million job seekers per month. You can choose 30 or 60 day job postings, and can purchase a job posting first and then publish it instantly, or buy up to 249 ads in bulk and save money on all of them. The cost to purchase one job posting to be published for 30 days is $375, and the cost to purchase one job posting to be advertised for 60 days is $395.

Pros:
• Most job postings and resumes of any job site
• Multiple search options
• Monster offers advice about resumes, interviewing and salary negotiation
• With their standard job posting, your job listing can also be put on various websites including Facebook, Twitter, Military.com and Jobs.com.
Cons:
• Numerous “junk” postings; no way to filter
• Online searches offer employers visual cues only, i.e. the absence of other pre-screening elements
• Posting just one job or only a few jobs can be costly and may not necessarily lead you to the appropriate employees

Snagajob.com:
Snagajob.com is the largest job site for part-time and hourly job openings with over 250,000 job listings. It has been in the online job portal market for over 10 years, and offers the unique feature of searching for the job depending upon the number of hours you want to work. On snagajob.com, you can find hourly jobs ranging from managerial position to a simple clerical job. To post one job, it costs $79 a month, to post three jobs it costs $149 a month, which includes behavioral assessments, and to post 5 jobs, with behavioral assessments included, it is $249 a month.

Pros:
• Offers comprehensive talent sourcing with multi-dimensional assessments and employment marketing solutions, as well as hiring management to handle the background check, tax screening and onboarding process
• Has a separate search option dedicated to teens
• People can search by zip code, location, part time, company, full time, position, and summer/seasonal teen jobs
• Provides job tips and email alerts
Cons:
• Only caters hourly jobs and does not offer other features
• The search filter tends to get botched often
• Targets mainly those interested in food service or retail positions
• It is up to the employer to delete an old post after an applicant has been hired. This means that a job search on this site could be just as likely to turn up non-existent or as an outdated position as it will be to find a current listing

Craigslist:
Craigslist is a classified advertisements website with sections devoted to jobs, for sale, services, resumes, housing, personals, discussion forums, and more. It is updated daily by everyday people trying to sell, advertise their service, find employees, get volunteers, etc. The website is built around communities, and Craigslist now offers sites in hundreds of cities and many countries throughout the world. For the most part, all Craigslist postings are free, except for some things, such as posting for busy areas like Philadelphia.

Pros:
• Unlimited services – you can post about anything you want and as much as you want
• Can target people from certain locations
• No fees to Craigslist
• It’s completely anonymous. Searching for things doesn’t require a user ID and your e-mail is never used, unless one contacts a seller about a specific item. As the seller, your e-mail is never given unless you respond back to an inquiry.
Cons:
• If you put your phone number in your original post, expect a few solicitors to call.
• If you put your email address in your original post expect your spam box to get active.
• Although many people use Craigslist to find an apartment or used furniture, some job seekers prefer to look for work through other channels, so there is a shallow talent pool on the site
• You may get many responses from unqualified applicants