FROM SEPTEMBER 2014’s RECRUITER MAGAZINE

Smaller businesses are playing a vital role in the UK’s economic recovery. To help them continue to grow, they need to attract the top talent and sometimes the recruitment processes used can hinder their goal. Sue Weekes investigates

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have contributed to bringing the UK unemployment rate down to its lowest levels in five years. And according to the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB), five times as many small firms (10.5%) planned to increase headcount over the summer months compared to the second quarter of the year. 

For many of these smaller companies, recruitment is still largely a manual process. They may use job boards and/or have vacancies posted on their website but the process of collecting, tracking and sifting through applications and CVs generally lacks automation. 

Jay Cholewinski, managing director of the recruitment service and software provider Webrecruit, says that within its client base, there is one overarching theme for small businesses: how to compete with larger organisations to attract the best talent, whether it is because of a lack of budget to use the right channels, having a lesser known brand or lacking the expertise and manpower to manage the candidate experience. 

Clearly, it also comes down to not being able to offer comparable and competitive reward packages but while technology can’t address this, it can help to level the playing field in other ways and help to make SMEs far more efficient and effective recruiters. “It’s those businesses without access to the most suitable recruitment technology who face the biggest challenges, making the concept of direct hiring even more distant,” says Cholewinski, who adds that while SME recruiters can often be “resourceful and savvy” when it comes to recruitment and rely on methods such as word-of-mouth to save costs, this can mean that only “known entities” are hired. “SMEs could open up their options more,” he adds.

Software providers report that many small businesses see recruitment technology as the preserve of the bigger organisations. But the advent of the cloud and software-as-a-service, as well as a range of flexible web-based recruitment services, has made it far more accessible than five or even three years ago. Scaleable solutions mean that SME owners can even access the same technology as far bigger organisations. Chris Bogh, technical director of recruitment software developer Eploy, explains that its large and small clients use the same platform with the only difference being in how they are configured. “Small businesses want something they can roll out quickly so we have a pre-configured package with some features used by bigger companies turned off,” he explains. “But it allows them to do everything from job requisition to attraction and candidate tracking, as well as some onboarding.”

Similarly, Vacancy Filler recruitment software operates in both the SME and LME (large and medium-sized enterprises) market. Tony Brookes, sales director, explains that its smallest customer recruits only 10-20 times a year while the largest recruit 6,000 times or more. He believes most SMEs are less effective at recruiting than they could be, with many managing their campaigns by email and spreadsheets. “Clearly this works, but is costly in the administrative burden especially if they wish to really stay on top of the candidates,” he says. “For an SME, this money could be better spent elsewhere. The return on investment from a manual system to one like Vacancy Filler’s is typically between four to six months.”

Cholewinski agrees that software can be used to eradicate much of the “dry admin” associated with recruitment, allowing employers to spend more time on their candidate attraction and management initiatives. Its clients also report that it speeds up their hiring process especially when vacancies attract a large volume of responses. Bruce Thomson, managing director of mailing house Baker Goodchild, says that when appointing a finance manager recently, Webrecruit’s Shortlist manager facility enabled it to have the new candidate in position a week before the outgoing employee had left which would have been difficult to achieve using manual processes. “This gave us time to conduct a full handover,” he says. 

Providers report that smaller companies also fail to see the importance of having a good careers page and/or portal and the ability to talent pool candidates. “Even those recruiting just 10 people a year will have had potential candidates contact them before so having a database to go to first is a really valuable tool,” says Bogh, who adds that as an SME itself, which is regularly recruiting developers and support staff, it stays in touch with candidates in its talent pool via a newsletter. Brookes similarly urges SMEs to make talent pooling a “by-product” of the recruitment process. “These strategies are important for SMEs to make use of in order to search out the best talent when there are perhaps not high volumes of applicants applying for roles,” he says, adding: “Then once candidates come through the process, having a simple and timely recruitment process that collaborates with the hiring manager is vital.”

One of Vacancy Filler’s clients runs a number of talent pools, which has enabled it to reduce its external advertising. Judith Sadler, group HR manager of the Sinclair Group, a motor group based in Wales, explains that previously it would also receive a number of CVs and covering letters with no mention of the role for which they were applying. “Now it’s very clear and having all the applications in one place doesn’t just make the receipt of CVs easier, but by being able to add in hiring managers to the process without losing sight of the CVs we can still monitor the process,” she says. 

SME recruiters should also look at how they can combine recruitment systems with other specific tools to aid the process, such as video-interviewing which, as Brookes points out, projects a professional image to the candidate as well as saves time. The accessibility of video technology has made this far more practical for SMEs to build it into their recruitment practices. 

Psychometric testing has also become more affordable to the SME employer. John Hackston, head of research and development at OPP, which distributes many of the world’s leading psychometric instruments, says that the interview is typically the only selection method that SMEs use after sifting through applications and they perceive psychometric testing to be cost-prohibitive for them. “This is a real shame, as all the research shows that psychometric tests are one of the best ways to select the right person for the job,” he says. “And it’s worth remembering that one bad recruitment decision can have a relatively much bigger effect in a small company than in a larger one.”

OPP has therefore launched Sirius to make objective assessment available to SMEs at a reasonable cost and without the need for training. It uses a unique combination of personality assessment and ability testing and it compares and rank-orders candidates based on the competencies required for a specific role. Hackston reports that SMEs value Sirius for a number of reasons: being able to use tried-and-trusted psychometrics in their recruitment process, reducing risk by getting the correct hire and having far more information to assist them in interviewing than they had previously. 

Among its early adopters are Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford. “It has enabled me and my team to support our managers in adopting a competency-based selection process, where previously interviews tended to focus on the technical aspects of a role,” says Mel Francis, head of HR. “The ‘compare candidates’ screen is particularly helpful, and the Interviewer’s Guide gives me the reassurance that our interviews are thorough and fair, by presenting relevant competency-based interview questions.”

If SMEs are to continue to play a vital part in the UK’s economic recovery and attract top talent to help them grow, many need to re-examine their recruiting processes. Where appropriate, they should introduce technology that enables them to recruit more efficiently and more effectively. And this includes using tools that help them to extend their reach and presence in the mobile space as this is increasingly where candidates begin their job search. 

Eploy alone has seen a 190% increase in mobile applications this year and 196% increase in mobile log-ins on its candidate portals. “Just because a company is a small business, it doesn’t mean the mobile space isn’t relevant for them,” says Bogh. “A candidate will want to search on mobile and apply on mobile. A big brand will have a presence there so it’s essential that those with a lesser known brand promote themselves in this space too.”

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