Adding just one extra person to a team of five or six has far greater repercussions than recruiting an extra person into the workforce of a much larger company. Getting the right balance of expertise and personalities is essential to maximising business growth, and the key to that is knowing when to hire that talent and where to find it.
Huddersfield-based marketing and social media consultancy KC Communications is in its second year in business. The company employs three people, and finding them has not been easy for managing director Katrina Cliffe.
She says: “We recently had a situation where we were at capacity and couldn’t grow the business without recruiting. We couldn’t find the right person ourselves, so we used a recruitment agency, which incurred fees. In the months leading up to their start date I worked like crazy to ensure they were fee earners from day one. Having joined us in May, they are already at capacity, so we are now in the same situation regarding business growth.”
Plan for the future
Offering work experience placements and internships can be a solution, serving a dual purpose of filling skills gaps, and priming potential candidates ahead of permanent roles becoming available.
Cliffe says; “The nature of the next role to be filled means this will be the best route for us to take, providing those undertaking work experience will still be looking for a role in the industry and haven’t found one elsewhere as a result of the skills gained while in placement with us.”
Small firms can also be their own worst enemy. Under pressure to rush their products to market, they often realise too late that they need to hire, and hire quickly. This creates a panic-buying approach to hiring that can be detrimental to the business, as Manchester-based tech start-up DueCourse, a provider of invoice finance, discovered soon after its launch in 2014.
CEO and co-founder Paul Haydock says: “In the early days, we did suffer from panic buy recruitment syndrome; we were a growing company, short on resources and needing people on board to stop the pain, fast. There are unscrupulous recruitment agencies out there that are happy to oblige, and we made the mistake of using one, a firm that we’d never met and didn’t know us as a business, to simply put bums on seats.”
While the additional human resources provided an immediate uplift for the fledgling business, it was short lived.
“It quickly became apparent that the person we’d hired in haste wasn’t right for us, and we weren’t right for them,” says Haydock. “The time and cost of agreeing to part ways and then find a replacement dwarfed the initial time and cost spent during the hiring process.”
Today, the company, with its team of 12, takes a more considered and diligent approach to recruitment, and has even appointed a dedicated head of talent within the business. “Spending the time upfront to ensure your new recruit is right for your business is absolutely crucial for your success,” adds Haydock.
Rethink recruitment
Blue Array a marketing and advertising firm based in Reading, Berkshire, is even more strategic in its approach to hiring, typically layering very senior staff with quite junior staff in order to scale as a startup.
Founder Simon Schnieders says: ”We currently have a small team of six and the next hires will be two junior and one senior, enabling experienced, highly trained individuals to delegate tightly framed tasks to manage multiple clients. New business growth is throttled so we can scale at a manageable pace; we’ve deliberately limited our clients to only retaining us for a maximum of six days per month, so we aren’t reliant on just one or two customers and can hire at a pace that doesn’t dilute the quality of service.”
When they do hire, it is with a clear idea of who’s in the marketplace with notice periods and package expectations already well understood. “As a founder who doesn’t wish to afford recruitment agency fees, having a whole of market view of the candidate pool is critical,” says Schnieders.
In terms of finding new recruits, there are more channels than ever before, from traditional recruitment agencies and local press advertising, to tech-based online job boards and recruitment apps, such as Coople and Job Today, which claims to connect businesses with people looking to find work within hours.
Having found the right channel, small business owners face the onerous task of vetting applicants and shortlisting the most promising; no mean feat for a small business owner, especially given the fact that so many job applications are incorrect. According to due diligence company HireRight nearly two thirds (63%) of applications in the first six months of this year were found to contain errors around work history, exam grades and qualifications.
Stuart Packham, talent solutions director at recruitment business Hudson works with a lot of SMEs and offers them all the same advice; to rethink their approach to CVs.
He says: “If you get 50 shortlisted candidates for the same role, it’s likely they’ll all pretty much look the same, with similar lists of skills and similar achievements. How much of that is really important or useful to you? And how about in 12 months’ time, when the role could have changed?
“In order to assess the right talent in the new world of work, you need to look beyond the CV. Skills are important, but they can be learned and trained. As a fast growing, ambitious small business, you should be considering the mindset of the potential hire – looking at how they approach new challenges and how they react and respond to change. Being able to measure mindset will not only help you assess their cultural suitability here and now, but also how that person might develop with you in the future.”
Content on this page is paid for and produced to a brief agreed with Hiscox, sponsor of the Adventures in Business hub on the Guardian Small Business Network.
