How to Attract Talent to a Small Business.

It can be easy to think that large employers like General Electric who attract 50 applicants per postor super brand employers like Google – who reportedly received 75,000 job applications in a week have it easy when it comes to attracting talent. Disregarding the speculative applications, these applicants can simply place an ad, and, thanks to the power of their expertly developed super brand, the applicants come rolling in.
Of course, we know its not that easy, the employer super brands are looking for the upper decile of talent and have to compete fiercely with each other to get what they want. Even so, although I accept its not a walk in the park for employer superbrands, in terms of attracting talent, the job of attracting talent (in a numerical sense), is a lot easier than it is for small businesses with lesser known brands. This assertion is franked by a Career Builder survey which found that firms with ‘strong employer brands attract at least 3.5 times more applicants per job post than firms in the same industry’. As well as this research from the Corporate Leadership Council showed that firms with strong employer brands could source from up to 60 percent of the labor market, compared to just 40% for those with weaker brands.
As well as being able to attract more candidates, super brand employers tend to have more firepower in terms of lucrative benefits and great perks than small businesses which give them enhanced deal closing capacities. So small businesses are at a real disadvantage to the big players when finding top talent; therefore, how can small business develop effective hiring strategies that enable them to fight above their weight and snare the top talent out of the clutches of the super brands? To do this, small businesses need to focus on the advantages that they have over larger business in terms of their culture and environment and ensure this is clearly presented in the employee branding proposition – and I have provided 6 tips on how to