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Hiring employees for your small business checklist

Hiring employees for your small business checklist

Small business owners to medium-sized enterprises or SMEs know fairly well the importance of finding good, ideal candidates. Due to limited budget and resources, small companies generally have smaller teams to run their business operations, hence each employee plays a crucial role in ensuring the smooth sailing of the business compared to a bigger organisation that has the resources to hire more than what is required and even have the leeway of disposing redundant positions.

Here, we take a quick look at nine recruiting checklist that can help you in hiring employees for your small business:

 

Step 1: Set a clear job description

Be sure to set a clear job description that is aligned with your company’s business goals and objectives. List down the necessary information such as the day-to-day tasks, job expectations and necessary skills required for the role. Remember that candidates search for specific keywords for the jobs that they are looking for, therefore your job description needs to be clear and concise.

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Step 2: Work out your budget and do your research to determine your pay rate

Next, you need to be sure that you have the necessary funds to offer compatible market salary rate to the position you are about to create. One common mistake a business owner can make is to create a position and offer a salary that is solely based on the company’s budget but not on par with the market salary rate. To attract the right talent, you obviously need to make the right offer. Always do your homework before determining your pay rate to ensure that the remuneration you offer is fair and attractive.

 

Step 3: Identifying the right channels to hire 

Once you have worked out your budget, you can start identifying the right channels to hire. There are many ways you can start; you can reach out to online employment companies, get in touch with recruitment firms, start recruiting through referral from your mutual connections, or offer incentives to current employees to refer to new talent. You could also utilise social media to target passive candidates or identify your main competitors and reach out to their employees via social media networks.

 

Step 4: Ensure all necessary hiring procedures and documentations are in order

Understand the important state and federal laws on employment. Ensure that all required hiring processes are followed through and systems such as payroll and insurance coverage are in place. Some of the necessary important legal requirements to take note of are employment contract, work visa and tax obligations. As a business organisation, you are also legally required to file and keep proper tax records for a minimum of number of years (usually 7 years), depending on your local tax regulations.

 

Step 5: Understand employees’ rights, protection and compensation

Some of the basic rights for your employees are minimum wages, insurance or compensation claims, paid time-off or annual leave, public holiday entitlements, sick and maternity leaves. In the case of an employee dismissal, note that despite what is written in the employment contract, an employee still has the right to demand the employer to show reasonable “cause and excuse” of dismissal, failing which the employer risks the claim of unfair dismissal.

 

Step 6: Assign a reliable person/party to do recruiting

Another common mistake business owners can make is that they often try to do everything on their own, including recruiting. No matter how much you think you can run things on your own, there’s just so much a person can do within 24 hours in a day. Learn to outsource your tasks especially if these are tasks that are time-consuming. Consider reaching out to reliable online employment companies that generally have effective recruitment channels and selection methods, which would help to reduce the time and costs of recruitment.

 

Step 7: Prepare for the interview

Time and again we have read on how the job market is tilting in favour of the candidates, especially good talents. As such, you can be certain that you are not the only organisation that the candidate is eying on. Recruitment is not just about how the candidates impress you, it’s a two-way street. Always prepare for your interview; impress your candidate with your business brand, company culture and values, the perks that you offer, how important the position is to the company and why you think that the candidate will be making a valuable contribution to the role.

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Step 8: Do proper onboarding

As a business owner, you know that it is expensive to hire someone especially talent with good cultural fit and skills, but most importantly, it is more expensive to replace someone. Recruitment does not end once you signed the contract with your new hires. Conduct a proper onboarding session to ensure that your new hires stay engaged and experience a smooth integration into the company. Without such engagement, new hires may conclude that the organisation does not appreciate its employees and may decide that it was a mistake to accept the job.

 

Step 9: Continue storing suitable resumes

After successfully recruiting their new hires, most employers make the mistake of ignoring other incoming applications and resumes. You have to know that this will not be your first or last hire, therefore you should continue to save up on resumes that may deemed fit for future hires. Allocate some time to store them or place an instruction to your recruitment company to continue monitoring suitable candidates even if you are no longer actively hiring.

 

As the saying goes, good fit employees are the most valuable asset in a company, more so if the fate of your business depends largely on your pool of workers. By following these simple checklist, business owners are not only able to understand the general steps in hiring staff, but also able to mitigate risks and have a better chance of attracting and retaining the right talent for their businesses.

 

This article is either written or edited by JobsDB HK. If you would like to publish it on other website or publication, please contact us by email: [email protected]. JobsDB reserves the right to take legal action against any person that infringes the copyright.

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