Top tips to find employees
Review resumes daily
Every day, thousands of people post their resumes on Indeed, which means each day presents a new opportunity to find talented and capable professionals who would fit well into your organization.
As a matching and hiring platform, Indeed allows you to easily find the right people for your business. When sponsoring a job, you get immediate access to view candidates who match your job requirements. You can invite your top candidates to apply, or let us send personalized invites for you. Over time Indeed will continue to learn your preferences to deliver high-quality candidates tailored to your unique job requirements.
Consider setting up a Resume Alert so you’re notified about job seekers who match your criteria. Then, set aside time in your schedule to review these new resumes. The sooner you find out about qualified job seekers, the faster you can schedule an interview and kick off the hiring process.
The ability to quickly and thoroughly review resumes is an essential component for finding employees best suited to your job listing. To increase efficiency, consider scanning and reviewing each resume in these key five steps:
- Review the cover letter. Get an idea of an applicant’s personality and whether their previous experience is a good fit for your company.
- Perform the first resume scan. Look out for spelling and grammar, as well as keywords and specific skills most relevant to the position you’re hiring for.
- Second resume scan for skills and qualifications. During your second pass of a resume, compare the applicant’s list of skills to the job description and locate any gaps.
- Thoroughly review previous employment. Your final pass of an applicant’s resume should include a detailed review of previous employment, including any gaps or short work experiences.
- Determine if the applicant qualifies for the next stage. In this final decision stage, make sure to keep all strong resumes. Even if they’re not a good fit for one job, they could be a good candidate for a future position.
Look internally
In addition to seeking qualified candidates outside your organization, consider if any current employees are looking for a change or promotion and might make a good fit. Not only do you already know this person’s strengths and experience, but because they know the organization, they may not need as much training and background knowledge as a new hire.
An added bonus to filling a role internally may be that you retain an employee who might otherwise have left the organization to pursue a similar position elsewhere. Reducing employee turnover can also help attract better talent because job candidates are usually more attracted to a workplace with low employee turnover.
Use social media
Social networks provide a great opportunity to get the word out about open positions. If you’re going to use these channels to share your job postings, make sure you’re available to answer questions from interested job seekers.
There are a few things you can do to make social recruiting especially effective:
- Encourage sharing. Ask people to share the job posting with their networks. The more it’s shared, the wider the audience and the larger the pool of potential candidates.
- Promote your culture. Include photos and videos that depict your company culture to help generate excitement about the role and your company.
- Provide contact information. Consider including an email address where job seekers can reach out with any questions they may have before applying.
Consider new job seekers
Just because someone doesn’t have a great deal of experience in your field doesn’t mean they won’t make a great employee—especially if they possess the soft skills and personality traits you’re looking for when seeking employees who are right for your business. Unless the role for which you’re hiring specifically requires industry experience, such as a leadership position, there’s no reason not to consider candidates who are fresh out of school or looking to make a career change. Never underestimate the power of a motivated individual who is eager to learn. After all, everyone has to start somewhere.
Read more: Recruiting College Students? What to Know
Help employees become brand ambassadors
When an employee loves their workplace, they naturally fall into the role of an advocate. They’ll tell friends and family about their great experiences and are often the first to share open positions with their network. Employers can fuel this behavior by creating a voluntary brand ambassador program where passionate employees have the opportunity to represent the company at various events and earn special rewards. Pair this with an employee referral program that rewards workers who help you find future employees. Rewards can range anywhere from a gift card to a popular lunch spot to a small bonus.
Maximize your job postings visibility
The best way to find employees is to make sure job seekers know you’re hiring. But with so many jobs posted online every day, it can be hard to stand out. There are a few things you can do to make your job postings more noticeable:
- Write a compelling job description. Among job seekers, 52% say the quality of the job description influences their interest in applying. Make sure to include a concise list of the required hard and soft skills, core responsibilities and the top benefits and perks of a job.
- Use specific job titles. The less generic the title, the more likely the job will catch the right job seeker’s attention.
- Be thorough. When job seekers search on Indeed, they have the option to narrow down their search by selected criteria. Include a location, experience level, salary estimate and other information to make sure your listing appears in filtered results.
- Opt for sponsored jobs. A sponsored job is a paid listing displayed at the top and bottom of relevant pages, and it won’t be pushed further back into the results pages over time.
Use job boards to find employees
Another way to find employees is to post on multiple job boards. Job boards typically feature listings submitted by employers and recruiters and are often specialized by industry, job or career type. By posting your listing on multiple job boards, you can potentially maximize your outreach. It’s important to remember that a job board is different from a job search engine like Indeed, which aggregates listings from thousands of online sources, offering an even broader reach.
Job boards usually reach a smaller audience compared to a job search engine. When considering how to find employees, it’s a good idea to list your job position on both platforms. A job search engine can index your job board listing and broadcast it to a wider audience, thereby maximizing your outreach.
Build a candidate database
There are times when you may receive a strong resume from a great job candidate, but it’s not the perfect fit for the role you need to fill. Rather than throwing that resume away, reserve these quality applications in case they are useful at a later date.
A job candidate database is great for these situations. The database allows you to save and store resumes from strong job applicants for future reference in case a job position that is better suited to the applicant comes up. With a job candidate database, you can define and attach keywords to each candidate’s resume so that it’s quick and easy to look up candidates with the right skills or qualifications for any open job position.
Broadcast your benefits and perks
Competitive pay, flexible hours, generous paid time off, remote work opportunities, 401k matching, free meals, on-site yoga classes—if you offer any particularly enticing benefits or perks, be sure to make them well known. Job seekers are highly interested in these sorts of details, and any special extras help attract great people and make them more likely to apply.
Be sure to list your benefits on your Company Page and share this information in your job postings. In addition to attracting qualified talent, benefits and perks help your business retain employees. If you’re wondering how to find an employee best suited for your organization, examining and advertising the quality of your company’s benefits and perks is a good place to start.
Seeking employees via offline methods
Post help wanted signs
In the midst of all the job listing options online, it can be easy to forget the more traditional, offline methods for how to find an employee. While it may not be the most successful method on its own, never underestimate the success of an old-fashioned help wanted sign.
A help wanted ad represents a version of in-person recruiting that, when used in combination with online recruiting, can increase your chances of advertising to qualified candidates for your business. These signs can help draw in foot traffic, previously loyal customers or other potential job candidates. You can post your sign outside your business or on job bulletin boards in popular spaces such as a university common space or office building lobby. Be sure to include a phone number on the sign or some other way for interested job seekers to follow up on the opportunity if they notice the sign after business hours.
Go to local universities
When considering how to find employees, teaming up with local colleges and universities is another excellent way to meet qualified new talent. Attend campus career fairs and offer to speak about your company in relevant classes or club meetings. In addition to finding a steady flow of interns, you can also engage students as they begin their post-graduation job search.
College and university graduates represent great options for new hires. What they may lack in real-world experience they make up for in recent education and an eagerness to learn. By advertising open job positions at local universities, you can increase the chance of recruiting college graduates. This can even help save money for your organization as recent graduates are usually less expensive to hire than more experienced workers.
Keep an eye out for talent everywhere
From industry conferences and networking events to dinner parties and coffee runs, opportunities for finding potential new hires are practically unlimited. You never know when someone may be looking for a job—or at least open to discussing new opportunities.
For example, if you’re hiring for a customer support position, be on the lookout for memorable customer service experiences. The friendly barista who engages you in conversation while whipping up your morning latte might be the perfect next new hire.
If you’re struggling to find employees, these tips can help make your search much easier. By combining online tools like Indeed’s sponsored jobs and resume alerts with traditional, offline methods like university career fairs and employee referral programs, you can increase the size of the talent pool from which you’re drawing and make your search for the best new hire much more effective.
Frequently asked questions about finding good employees
How do I find good employees for my small business?
Consider first creating a persona of your ideal employee, and then craft a job description accordingly. Make sure the job description is both accurate and well-written before distributing it across several job boards, social networks and a job search engine like Indeed to maximize your reach.
How do I attract quality employees?
There are several ways to stand out against competitors when it comes to attracting quality candidates. Quality employees are generally attracted to a positive work environment. If your company offers any benefits or flexible perks, make sure to emphasize these in your job description. Getting your employees involved in the recruitment process can also help attract quality employees.
Where do I look for employees?
Most employers post job listings on a job search engine site such as Indeed, in addition to several online and offline job boards. There are many other ways to find employees, such as advertising at a career fair, scouting students at a university or having current employees help in the recruitment process.
Brendan Sullivan is an Indeed recruiter based in Austin, TX with 4+ years of experience. You can usually find him enjoying one of the several amazing coffee shops in Austin or organizing his record collection.
