Attract Big Talent to Your Small Business

As corporations downsize and cut budgets, many former corporate soldiers are looking to break ranks. But attracting big talent to your company is worthless if you are not attracting the right talent. Below are suggestions for not only attracting former corporate employees, but for finding the ones that will fit your company’s needs and culture.

Find Your Compelling Story

What is it about your company that differentiates it from others? Clearly articulating who you are and what you stand for is as essential to marketing to talent as it is to marketing to customers. If you don’t know who you are, how will you know what type of candidates will be a fit with your company? And if by chance you find them, how would you sell them on working for you?

Just like at a large corporation, culture at a small business can make or break an employment experience. But at large, multi-location companies, the working experience can vary from office to office or even from department to department. In the tight knit small business environment, employees who don’t fit into the culture can’t just blend in the background or hide behind a cubicle wall. Therefore, your story should reflect qualities specific to your company’s culture. One of the key attractions of a small company is its ability to offer employees the opportunity to have greater influence on outcomes, strategy and culture, more autonomy and more chances to be creative and help the business grow. Clearly defined job description should be part of your story as well. For information on writing effective job descriptions, read “Decode Your Company’s DNA.”  For example, Dan Hoffman of M5 Networks believes that CEOs should spend as much time on the story they create for employees as on the one you use to market to clients. For M5, that story is about being a learning culture, backed up by a significant investment in the ongoing training of its employees. Dan’s reasoning can be summed up with the adage “the company that learns fastest, grows fastest.” Your story should influence the content of your want ads and where you advertise open positions (websites, trade publications, etc.). It should be repeated in the interview as well.

A Strategic Plan

One of the concerns large-company employees have is that small businesses are not run with the same rigor and attention to detail that large companies are. To attract these employees, you must demonstrate that you have a plan not only for your company’s economic growth and profitability, but also for their growth. This should become part of your story.

Owners should also have a strategic plan for their employee selection process. Large companies regularly review their talent needs and capabilities and lay out development plans. They recognize that in order to find talent, you must be able to describe in detail the candidate you are looking for. Large companies also have rigorous selection processes and retention plans, and so should you. A strategic selection process includes having performance standards for each job, then conducting interviews that are focused on learning what the candidate has actually done using the behaviors that fit your performance standards. For example, if you’re concerned whether or not a large-firm candidate can make do with fewer resources, ask him to tell you about a time when he was successful doing more with less. (For more information on how to formulate interview questions, read “Killer Interview Questions.”)

After the interview, look at your notes and double check against your standards. Be careful to measure the candidate by your established standards and avoid the temptation to hire based on his pedigree (e.g., prestigious school, fancy past job titles) or accomplishments at big companies. Did you learn what you needed to know? Are you confident that the candidate has exhibited the behaviors that will lead to success? If so, make the offer. This process will not only help you attract talent, but will help you make the right selection. Investing time to develop this selection process and staff plan can help you reduce turnover by helping you more accurately find employees that meet your needs.

Note that you do need to be competitive with both compensation and benefits to compete for large-company talent. You can use websites such as salary.com, careerjournal.com or salaryexpert.com to learn what the competition is doing in terms of total compensation.

Market Yourself

Networking is the single biggest source of talent, according to the CEOs interviewed for this article. You want involvement in high-impact, high-value organizations and venues.
Join the organizations where your target market is. Attend, or host, the right events, join boards of nonprofits. Go to professional events with the goal of meeting future employees. As one CEO noted, “You don’t go to trade shows to listen to speakers. You go to meet the right people.” Everywhere you go, everyone you meet, is a source of talent: friends, neighbors, health club, church, synagogue, parents from your child’s school… you get the point. Keep a file of potential candidates. Gregg Fisher, CEO of Gerstein Fisher, has used his “bench file” to fill most of his openings over the last two years.