Streamlining the recruitment process for your small business

Small business recruitment

Many small-business owners will have similar story as this one to share. Scott at Adzuna looks after customer service for our post-a-job platform for SMEs. He received an email from a customer who received 53 job applications to his advertisement for a receptionist position. The email said something along the lines of:

“Great response, but now I’ve got to sift through the CV’s of 53 people. Any tips?”

Large recruitment companies receive hundreds of applications for many of the jobs they advertise. How do they streamline the process? They use something called an ATS – Applicant Tracking System. It screens CVs automatically and ranks them based on keywords. The benefit for the recruiter is the most relevant CVs are located immediately, which saves time.

For SMEs, however, using an ATS is an additional cost to the business. It is a cost that is difficult to justify when the budget is allocated to top-of-the-line activities such as marketing and sales.

Here are our tips on how to screen job applicants quickly, while maintaining a positive reputation for your business.

Email templates

“Thank you for your interest in the position of XXXXXX with our business. We will be in touch within the next seven days to let you know if you made the short-list for the role. Thank you for the time and effort you put into the application. Best regards.”

Have a similar email template ready to send to any person who applies for a position with your business. Why?

  • You have given yourself more time to get through the applications.
  • The applicant will be grateful for the speedy response and their first impression of your business is positive.

Online CV portals

There are free services, such as ValueMyCV, that offer many similar functions to the applicant tracking systems I mentioned earlier. They allow applicants for your position to drag their CV into a portal and the relevant keywords will instantly be extracted from the document. This enables you to create a shortlist quickly based on the job applications that include the most relevant keywords in your job description.

Interview times

I recommend allocating interview slots for each applicant that makes the shortlist. Work out these slots ahead of time and write a template to send to shortlisted applicants:

“Thank you for your application. We would like you to come into an interview. Our office is located at 742 Evergreen Terrace, Springfield. Out of these times, please let me know when you can make it in:

  • 11:00am Tuesday
  • 12:30pm Thursday
  • 09:30am Friday.”

Once again, you will cut down the amount of time the process takes by allocating interview slots. Furthermore, the applicants will start to get a sense of how professionally you run your SME.

Happy Hiring!

Raife Watson, CEO, Adzuna Australia