Drawing on 16 years in recruitment and experience of leading his own business, David Clark, Associate Partner at Inc. Consulting, shares practical advice that can help attract and hire better people.
For small business owners, understanding how to recruit effectively, with minimal hassle and at a reasonable cost, has never felt so confusing.
Recruitment has always been about finding the right people with the right skills to help businesses get things done. But somewhere down the line, we convinced ourselves recruitment needed to be far more complicated, with employer value propositions, candidate journeys and applicant tracking systems.
After 16 years in recruitment and having previously ran my own business, I've learned that most hiring challenges aren't nearly as complicated as people make out. So here are five practical lessons I've picked up that can dramatically improve your chances of landing great people, whether you use a recruitment agency or not.
#1: ATTRACTION IS 99% OF THE BATTLE
I've never had a client call me to complain that they had too many brilliant candidates to choose from. The problem is almost always the opposite.
It's easy to spend far more time discussing interview questions or building an ever-growing list of 'must haves' than thinking about what actually makes the role attractive in the first place.
If you're struggling to recruit, it's worth asking who's responsible for attracting people into your business and whether they have the time and skillset to do it well. Being professional and presentable isn't enough. Neither is the ability to write a perfectly respectable job description.
Do they instinctively understand what different groups of people care about? Can they communicate it in a persuasive way? Can they create excitement around an opportunity? Because a fundamental part of recruitment is sales and marketing – and it doesn't matter how efficient or compliant your process is if it hasn't got anyone you want in it.
#2: CREATE BASIC MARKETING MATERIALS
One of the easiest wins available to most businesses is creating a simple piece of recruitment marketing. Nothing fancy. Just something that proves you've actually thought about why someone would want to work for you.
Include real photographs and quotes from current employees. Explain how people can progress. Talk about the benefits that matter to your target audience rather than generic statements about being a "great place to work".
Many businesses expect candidates to commit years of their career based on a two-page job description explaining a job they already know how to do and a website that hasn't been updated since Boris Johnson was Prime Minister.
Canva has plenty of free templates, and even something simple can make a big difference.
A little effort here immediately separates you from a large chunk of the market.
#3: PUT THE RIGHT PEOPLE IN CHARGE
This might be controversial, but some of the people best placed to help your recruitment process are often nowhere near it.
If you needed to attract new customers, you'd involve your best salespeople and marketers. Yet when attracting employees, they're often left on the sidelines, while job adverts end up reading more like legal documents than something designed to sell an opportunity.
Recruitment is about creating a feeling. Selling an idea. Influencing a decision.
That's exactly what good marketers do every day.
That doesn't mean you need to hire a marketing person to conduct your interviews, but someone with that skillset should absolutely have input into how the opportunity is positioned and promoted.
#4: DON'T RELY ON GUT FEEL ALONE
Having been there myself running a business, I understand the temptation to trust your instincts. Good instincts are often what helped build the company in the first place.
The problem is that many owners end up interviewing people they can't properly assess from a technical perspective.
If you're recruiting a finance person, HR professional or specialist engineer, you may not have done that job yourself. So naturally, you fall back on gut feel.
If this is your go-to technique, there's a risk that comes with it: you simply end up hiring the best interviewer or the person most similar to you.
Gut feel still matters, of course. I certainly trust mine, but I never use it in isolation.
Bring in someone who understands the role. Speak to trusted contacts. Ask your accountant, suppliers, close customers, or external advisers for input if they can help.
The more important the hire, the less sensible it is to make the decision based purely on whether someone seemed nice over a cup of coffee.
#5: DO THE RESEARCH YOUR APPLICANTS WILL
It's no secret that before applying, candidates will Google you. They'll check LinkedIn, read reviews, ask around and what they find matters.
Every business picks up the occasional unfair review. That's just a fact of life.
But if negative comments are dominating the conversation about your company, it's worth taking the time to address them.
If you have bad reviews, always respond professionally and take ownership where appropriate. Challenge genuinely false reviews with the platform they're on – and remember you can always dilute them by encouraging happy employees, customers, and clients to share their experiences.
Your reputation is often influencing candidates long before you ever get sight of them.
Every one of these points comes back to the same principle: good recruitment isn't complicated, but it does require you to cut through the noise and focus your efforts on the areas that actually matter.
The businesses that recruit well aren't necessarily the biggest, the most famous or the highest paying. They’re the ones that understand what people want, communicate it properly, and make a genuine effort to stand out.
Get that right and you'll be ahead of most of your competition.
Find out more at incconsulting.co.uk, or email hello@incconsulting.co.uk.
