Human Resources Blog - Spark Hire

How to Recruit with a Small HR Department

How to Recruit with a Small HR DepartmentEven if your business lacks an HR department filled with skilled recruiters, you can still recruit talented employees who help your company to grow. By utilizing your current staff and getting creative with your online presence, you’re able to attract the attention of prospective team members. Here’s how to get started:

Create an employee referral network

Your employees are your best representatives, as they can paint a clear picture (for better or for worse!) about what it’s really like to work for you. If you want to make recruiting more of a priority, try setting up an employee referral network to incentivize efforts. You can offer bonuses if an employee’s referral stays a certain number of months. Your team will feel more inclined to spread the word about your business, and you get some assistance in finding new members to join you.

Utilize video interviewing technology

Video interviews are a powerful tool that can help you to better connect with candidates. Specifically, the one-way video enables you to get a personal feel for a candidate so you can determine if they’d be a good cultural fit. You simply choose questions you want the candidate to answer and they can record their responses whenever they have some free time. You can then review these recorded interviews at your convenience.

Additionally, some video interviewing platforms allow you to share recorded video interviews so you can collaborate with colleagues to reach the best hiring decision in an efficient manner.

Let your website do some of the heavy lifting

Interviews are highly time-consuming for a hiring manager. To cut down on the amount of hours spent sifting through candidates, utilize your business’s website more effectively. You can have interested applicants fill out a profile on the company’s website, where they enter in basic information and answer some questions about why they’d like to work for your business. Your hiring manager can read this information ahead of time, allowing them to weed out people who are obviously not a good fit for the company, rather than having to bring them in for an interview in order to realize this.

Keep interested applicants’ information on hand

Perhaps an interested applicant wasn’t right for a position you currently had open at that time. It doesn’t mean that they’ll never be right for any job within your organization. Keep applicants’ information on hand in a way that’s easy to sort through. Next time you have an opening, you can start by contacting these individuals. Instead of having to blindly reach out to people and hope that they’d like to come in and interview, you can use leads you already have in place.

Also, realize that interns often become highly productive and valuable full-time employees. Don’t forget to consider them when a position opens up. Chances are that they already know about company protocol, plus you know how they blend in within the office culture.

Image: Jakub Jirsak/BigStock.com

Lauren Levine

Lauren Levine is a copywriter/blogger who contributes to a number of magazines and websites including The Frisky, USA Today, and others. She also authors her own blog called Life with Lauren. She loves cooking, anything on the E! network, and is trying to convince herself that running isn't so bad.