Leveling the Playing Field for Small Business Hiring

Did you hear about Small Business Saturday? If you did – great! If you didn’t, that’s exactly the point I’ll try to make in this post: it’s not easy for small business to compete on the same playing field as the big box companies. Big boxes often have huge marketing teams to help create a brand that people want to work for. They have enviable HR budgets to spend on finding the talent they’re seeking. But when will the little guys ever get a chance to stand up to the big ones? Right now.

With 1stGig, the playing field is exactly the same for companies of all sizes. What that means is that companies large and small have access to great talent – the talent that’s exactly on target for the career opportunities that companies need. When a company creates a Career Profile in our system, it’s open to matching with any talent profile in the system. No bias. When matches are made based on core criteria that matter to each party – the career seeker and the company looking to hire – each side of the equation removes the judgments or reservations they may otherwise feel about someone “from a small town” or “with company size less than 50.” If it matters to you, you can indicate that in your profile, and you’ll never be matched with someone who DOESN’T care about that item. Vice versa, if you don’t care about a given item, why should that be weeding out quality talent? The bottom line is that it shouldn’t.

Career seekers are drawn to companies like Google, Amazon, LinkedIn, etc. because they are great at marketing their work-life balance, their unique cultures, the possibility for making a grand impact, or [insert basically anything “on-trend” here]. But the sad story is that there are thousands of small, lesser known businesses thriving and offering similar cultures, but lacking the budget or time resources to spread the word on the same scale. These companies may not reach the talent they deserve as a result. So how else are they going to find you? Are you hoping they’re searching in local newspapers for the “Best Places to Work in Middleton, WI?” Still banking on your LinkedIn connections to deliver that ideal candidate? It might happen, but can you afford to wait for that to happen? I personally don’t think you need to set yourself back like that. You need to arm yourself with the tools that make matches with talent based on core criteria and expose talent to your company’s opportunities.

And then once you’ve made a match, the talent is able to view your brand assets from the profile you’ve created for your company. It’s brief, but emphasizes what is important to you. If you have content or spaces elsewhere on the web that portray your company in the best way, then send the matched talent there! If they like what they see and a match is already made, you’ve now made a connection with someone based on common core desired criteria and a mutual interest based on your company specifics.

You get additional insights into the individual as well. Once they confirm there is interest by accepting the match, you’re able to view their profile, which also includes information about the attributes they feel they possess, backed up with real-life examples of those traits. Depending on the level of detail they complete this step at, you’ve basically already done a behavioral interview without even picking up the phone or flying the candidate out to meet you. That’s quite a bit of time and money you saved! Your recruiters (whether you have recruiters or that’s simply a task all of your employees share) can be more effective and make great hires with ease. It’s free till the end of the year, so what do you have to lose?

Join 1stgig now (FREE through the end of 2014), or contact us for more information!