Long gone are the days when recruitment meant browsing Resumes and Letters of Intent. With the rising appeal of video enabled by the growing popularity of YouTube (with more than 1 billion active users) it’s not unusual to ask for a video letter of intent instead of a good old neatly worded and typed letter. As it’s not uncommon to conduct a Skype call interview – instead of the traditional face-to-face interview. Moreover, innovative freelancing platforms such as Fiverr redefine traditional work relations and encourage more and more small businesses to think outside the box, and about how to bring in much-needed expertise.

Read this comprehensive piece from Blogtrepreneur and choose the best strategy for your small business on how to bring new talent into your team.

5 Recruitment Strategies For Small Businesses

by Blogtrepreneur, originally posted here.

Finding the most suitable candidate for a job role is one of the most challenging aspects of being a small business owner. Recruitment can be an arduous and frustrating task at the best of times. As well as advertising the role in the right places, you’ll need to filter through numerous applications, make a judgement about every candidate’s experience, skill set, character and personality. And that’s before you even get to the interview stage.

If your business is small, there’s a good chance you don’t have an HR specialist who you can rely on to handle the recruitment process. Even if you do, you’ll need to decide on an effective recruitment strategy to help you find the right candidate for the right investment of time and money. The best recruitment method for your business will depend on a range of factors, including your available budget and the nature of the vacancy.

There are a lot of options open to small businesses and entrepreneurs trying to find the best talent. The following are 5 of the most effective recruitment strategies for small businesses.

1. Recruitment Agencies

Using a recruitment agency might first appear like and expensive option, but agencies take away a lot of the administrative work associated with recruiting great employees. They massively reduce the amount of time it takes to recruit, which can actually end up saving a lot of money in the long run. A high quality recruitment agency has a lot of things going for it:

1. Over time, a good recruitment agency will build an in-depth understanding of your organisation and the industry you operate in. They’ll be able to offer a personal service and find the best candidates for your specific vacancies. Good recruiters almost become a part of the team, on hand whenever you need them.
2. Recruiters are experts in finding the best candidates. It’s their job to sifting through CVs and scrutinize professional profiles. They know what they’re looking for and will stand a much better chance than most of spotting an inflated or exaggerated resume.
3. Recruiters have an easy-to-access talent pool. They have their own lists of contacts and can unearth talent that you’ll struggle to find on your own.
4. They will do the hard yards for you. Although the final decision of who to hire is always down to you, candidate screening, resume scrutinizing, reference and qualification background checks will all be done for you. Agencies pre-filter the list of candidates you see, so you’ll only have to review the very best.

2. Social Media Recruiting Strategy

Social media is commonly used by businesses of all sizes to recruit talent. LinkedIn is the first choice platform for many businesses. It’s easy to see why. How many business professionals do you know who are not on LinkedIn? Their paid-for advertising service allows you to target the relevant market segment, which can give a very cost-effective way of generating interest and applications for your role. Meanwhile, you can easily head-hunt suitable candidates for free.

However, LinkedIn does have competition from Twitter and Facebook. It might be that a combination of the three is the most effective social media recruitment strategy. Twitter is a quick and effective resource for getting a job vacancy publicized. Just remember to be smart in how you utilize hashtags: they need to specify the role and location in order to be most effective. Asking your employees to tweet job vacancies will help maximize reach.

Facebook, like LinkedIn, offers paid job advertising to a carefully targeted audience. Pinpointed advertising means a higher likelihood of getting suitable candidates applying for the role.

3. Online Recruiting Tools

There are a wide range of online recruitment tools which could make the job of finding the right candidate easier.

Here are a few to consider…

• Psychometric testing – this is probably the most commonly used technique for testing the aptitude and suitability of a candidate. Services available offer varying levels of depth. Some are very cheap – even free – but the more detail you want, the more you have to pay. While the results of such tests should never be the decisive factor in the selection process, they can be very effective in establishing who’s suitable and who’s not.
• Skills testing – For highly technical roles, you need to know if the candidate has the required expertise. There are numerous online skill tests available to recruiters across a wide range of technical areas. It’s a surefire way of discovering what they know and what they don’t.
• Gamification – the newest form of aptitude testing comes in the form of ‘gamified’ testing. As with psychometric testing, they vary in complexity and depth. At the more complex end of the spectrum, there are full-blown simulated work environments. Imagine if you could replicate your own working environment and test – in a virtual simulation – how a candidate performs and responds to the challenges they are guaranteed to encounter in your workplace. That’s exactly what gamification can do.
• Video interviews – for roles where you require a two-stage interview process, you can save time by carrying out short video interviews. Personality and character count for a lot, and this method is an efficient way of finding out whether an individual has the right traits for your company.

4. Your Own Networks

Everyone has their own network of contacts, so why not get the word out that you are recruiting?

Imagine the hassle you’ll avoid if a trusty acquaintance knows just the right person for the job. Sure, you still need to interview them, but if it turns out that they’re just what you’re looking for then you’ve just made a huge shortcut in the recruitment process.

5. Head Hunting

The advantage of head-hunting is that it increases your ability to target successful professionals. This is useful strategy in it’s own right and worth highlighting separately, but the implementation of head hunting could easily overlap with recruiting from you own networks and/or a social media strategy.

Instead of casting the net far and wide, head hunting is all about a laser focus on the specific people you’d like to work with. Do you know people with a good reputation in your industry? Do you know that employees of a particular company are exactly the type of people you want to hire?

Approaching specific individuals directly to see whether your vacancy is of interest can be an efficient and effective way to recruit. There’s something appealing about working for a small business and it’s always an ego-boost to be approached directly about a role. Both factors might just tip the balance in your favor.

Which Recruitment Strategy Is Right For You?

Above are five different recruitment strategies available to small businesses that have been proven to work time and time again. If you’re looking to make a new hire, it’s time to get planning. The nature of your job vacancy and the resources you have available, in terms of both money and time, will be important factors in deciding which approach to take. Whatever your route, take the time to find the right person. A great employee is nearly always worth the investment.

Article by Blogtrepreneur, originally posted here.

The post “5 Recruitment Strategies For Small Businesses” by Blogtrepreneur appeared first on Tooliers Blog.

Advice: Use financial incentives to increase motivation and productivity of the people in your company.

Despite the predominant opinion that most employees respond positively only to financial enticements, you can greatly improve employee performance in your company when you diversify the types of incentives you use.

A payment that reflects the talents, experiences and expectations of employees is a necessary condition to attract quality resources in your team. I said necessary condition. I haven’t said sufficient! Good salaries and an attractive benefits package will help you hire quality people for your company and, to a certain extent, to keep them. But these incentives are not enough to retain valuable employees!

Entrepreneurs and managers assume too often, that what motivates themselves also motivates their employees. In reality, each person has his own idea of what a good bonus from the company means. And usually, the view from the top of the company is different from the one perceived by employees. That’s one of the reasons why some people are entrepreneurs, and others are employees.

But what expectations do employees have of their employers in the 21st century? Taking the example of innovative companies such as Google, that has built a five star employer reputation by offering their workforce excellent benefits, people have rising expectations. Some employees want more freedom and flexible working hours. Many appreciate when the company makes their life easier as parents. Others will prefer a certain management style based on teamwork and merit recognition.

Use financial incentives to increase motivation and productivity of the people in your company.
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Non-Financial Incentives for Increasing the Productivity of Your Team

Here is a list of 12 things you can do to raise the level of motivation for the people in your team. The list is inspired by the methods I apply in my business; many of the ideas I started testing after I visited Google headquarters in Mountain View, California.

1. Give your employees maximum freedom, let them plan their week how they think it is effective, let them explore their ideas about new products or simply try new ways of doing things

2. Allow for flexible working hours.

3. When delegating, take into account what type of tasks and activities each member of your team prefers, what are they best at?

4. If you have resources in your company, provide certain services to your employees in order to create more productive time. Allowing people to take time out some personal business like collecting their dry cleaning, picking up a package, or taking the children to school; all these will help them to be more focused on professional issues.

5. Recognize in public employees and the team’s performance(you and other managers). Make it a habit to praise an employee every day.

6. Make simple constant discussions with employees to show a natural interest in people.

7. Say “thank you” and praise people.

8. Treat every one fairly and impartially.

9. Honor your promises.

10. Assign responsibilities and always be prepared to assist employees.

11. Support, provide training and guide your team to success.

12. Challenge your employees.

Once you have implemented these measures, you can establish a way of working that will help you to keep your employees and transform your company into a more attractive place for other quality employees.

What is essential for you as an entrepreneur and manager is to understand that your trick of offering a bonus or increasing the payment will not work for an employee who believes it is essential to enjoy a flexible work schedule. To determine what people really want I recommend you establish an open system of communication with the people in your team. You have to listen, to observe, to remember individual differences and take care to give people the benefits that really drives them.

But what happens if you don’t have resources to make a competitive financial offer for the employees you want? A non-financial incentives lesson is especially valuable in this case. For businesses that are just starting out, small companies in the startup stage, the impossibility of offering generous pay may be offset by a good mix of non-financial incentives such those included on our list. In addition, offering a percentage of the business for key employees may be an excellent way of motivating employees in the running of your company.

Did you know it costs three times the salary of an existing employee to replace the employee? Think of the time required to find and recruit a new employee and the training costs at the same level of productivity. This is why it’s so important to establish what really motivates our employees!

Have a great idea that worked for you ? Write it in the comments section below.

The post How to Motivate People to Give Their Best for Your Company appeared first on Tooliers Blog.

Big-hearted Amy Porterfield and Rick Mulready share some important lessons in this podcast that could help you jumpstart your first Facebook and YouTube Ad campaigns.

I loved the part about Facebook ads and especially the idea of driving the paid traffic to blog articles instead of bringing the visitors to an opt-in page. Sharing quality content instead of selling a registration is not only more valuable for the visitor, but also more cost effective for the advertiser.

That’s because how people react to the ad is one important factor that determines the cost of your ads. 

If you ask me which is the single most important idea that should be remembered from their podcast I would say it’s the idea to start small, using a daily budget of no higher than $5-10 (USD). I promote the same idea in my Masterclasses; the all-in campaigns are such a bad idea, especially when you are just getting started.

You might also find interesting the second part of the podcast, where Amy and Rick cover YouTube Ads. Rick talks about the anatomy of a perfect instream YouTube ad. I highly recommend it to business owners who want to get started with video ads.

Enjoy the article or listen to the podcast if you are on the go. Don’t forget to check the cool resources Amy shared here.

3 Webinar Tweaks That Made a $62K Difference

by Amy Porterfield, originally posted  here.

What a difference a tweak makes!

If you’ve spent any time on this blog (or podcast) in recent weeks, you know how firmly I stake my belief in webinars. Webinars offer a platform that lets you connect with people on an entirely new, personal level you just don’t get with most marketing strategies.

And what other marketing strategy can offer the opportunity for consistent on-the-spot revenue?

The post “3 Webinar Tweaks That Made a $62K Difference” by Amy Porterfield appeared first on Tooliers Blog.

Advice: Consider the 3 distinct stages in your buyers’ journey (awareness, consideration and decision) and adapt your communication to your client’s specific needs in each stage.

People buy when they want, not when we want to sell to them. Discover how to correlate your promoting messages to the buying stage where clients find themselves.

Everybody talks about a communication centered on client needs. Very few companies manage however, to put theory into practice. Why is this happening? Because it is not enough to adapt our messages to the general needs of our customers but we have to build our messages according to the buying journey they are on. In each stage, potential customers have some specific needs.

Unfortunately, most companies are trying to convince their clients that red wine is better than white wine, although the client has not yet decided whether he wants wine or beer with dinner. I will present a simple example to help you avoid such mistakes.

People buy when they want, not when we want to sell to them.
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Buying Is Like a Journey

Think of the persuasion process as a journey through which clients get closer to your product. Stops on the route of purchase are “Awareness”, “Consideration” and “Decision”. Our mission: to create relevant messages to specific needs in each “station”. Of course not all clients travel the line all the time, some already know what they want to buy. Most of your potential customers are just beginning the journey and if you ignore them you will narrow the base of potential clients enormously.

Let’s take an example. Biofresco Ltd sells juices made from premium ingredients in its own location and deliveries to companies. How can Biofresco reach more people and convince them to consume its natural juices? The first “station” on Biofresco’s journey is “Awareness”.

The First Station: Awareness

Never talk about the product, talk about the benefits.
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The worst thing you can do, in the awareness stage, is to sell red wine to the beer drinkers. The objective at this stage is to qualify a relevant audience. Biofresco can post on their own blog healthy lifestyle articles to make this work. An article about the benefits of taking vitamins and other antioxidant nutrients from unprocessed fruits and vegetables will attract good potential customers for Biofresco and will eliminate people who consume Coca-Cola. The presentation of a natural antioxidant juice recipe that can be prepared at home on the Biofresco Facebook page is another excellent idea. Those who wish to follow a healthy lifestyle will be naturally attracted to this information.

What we aim for at this stage is for the potential customer to want our product benefits and to associate our brand with this type of benefit. The first rule of “Awareness”: we never talk about the product, we talk about the benefits.

The Second Station: Consideration

In “Consideration”, the audience is already prepared to hear about our product but the focus is still on the benefits rather than the product itself.

Potentials drinkers of Biofresco juice can be helped to choose the drinks through a comparison table between juices and drinks that are sweetened with sugar or artificial sweeteners.

The comparison between benefits and risks may be presented as a blog article, a Facebook infographic, a poster in the store location, and / or leaflets promoting a table and include a discount coupon.

The Final Station: Decision

 Finally Biofresco is free to talk about their greatest passion: their own product. At this stage they talk with customers who have been qualified through the Awareness and Consideration stages, so they will react positively to the information that will confirm their buying decision. Nutritional information and information about the quality of ingredients used can strengthen purchasing decisions. During this station we will also present special offers and discounts.

A Compass for the Purchasing Journey Followed by Clients

You can use the following questions as a compass for relevant customers to purchase your product or service:

1. How can I help my potential customers to better realize their needs and to relatet hose needs with my brand(Awareness Step).

2. How can I help my potential customer to evaluate more easily and accurately the alternatives which satisfy their need, by informing him of the advantages and type of product / service offered by my company (Consideration Step)

3. How canI help the client to decide which solution is better and give them more reasons to choose my offer(Decision Stage)

Discover more about how to build your online sales funnel. Watch this 1-min video so you make the most of the new opportunities the Internet-driven economy has created.

The post How to Communicate with Your Potential Clients in Each Stage of Their Buying Journey appeared first on Tooliers Blog.