How To Find Employees In 5 Easy Steps

Hiring the best candidates requires businesses to understand how to find employees. Job candidates’ skillsets and qualifications will vary greatly depending on your company’s recruitment strategies, so it’s essential to build a strategy that prioritizes attracting good employees.

If your business is seeking employees, we’ve got you covered. This guide will break down the best ways to find employees to hire for your business, including where to post jobs, write great job descriptions, promote from within, and more. Let’s get started.

How To Find Employees For Your Business

To find employees for your business, you’ll need to write an enticing job posting, decide where to post your jobs, and consider whether to promote from within. Here’s a list of recruitment strategy tips to help you find employees for your business.

Write A Job Post That Attracts Candidates

The recruitment process starts with a great job posting. A great job posting starts and ends with a ton of details. Job candidates want to know what they are getting into when applying for a job.

A Gallup job seeker study found that job candidates are most interested in a job’s salary, benefits, and responsibilities. If you’re looking to attract candidates, your job posts should include that information.

While including benefits and job responsibilities in job posts is expected, some businesses still hesitate to include salary information. However, new state-level salary transparency laws have been enacted across the country, including in California, Colorado, New York, and Washington.

This support for salary transparency may be a part of a larger trend, so be sure to review your state or local salary transparency laws to ensure that your job posts and recruiting practices are compliant.

Your job posting should also give prospective candidates information about the type of work environment they would be joining. If you prefer to run a more laid-back workplace, you might consider using a less formal tone in your posting. However, if you like strict professionalism, keep the tone of your job posting as formal as possible.

You might even go as far as describing the current team an employee will be joining or consider directing prospects to your company’s staff page for more information on the individuals with whom they’ll be working.

In short, attractive job posts offer an insightful look into the role, work environment, salary, and benefits a potential candidate would be taking on.

Choose The Best Places To Post Jobs

Choosing where to post your open position can be challenging, considering that your options range from online job boards to sticking a “Now Hiring” sign in your business’s window.

However, being selective when choosing where to post your jobs should be a part of your business’s recruiting strategy because where you post your positions will impact who applies for them.

For example, if your business is looking to hire a new intern, you may consider recruiting at a college job fair, where you’ll find upper-level students looking to get their foot in the door. However, if you want to find employees to hire for positions requiring years of experience, you may consider a traditional online job board, such as Indeed or LinkedIn.

Where To Post Jobs For Freelancers

Another factor to consider when posting jobs is the type of employee you are trying to hire. For example, are you looking for a 1099 contractor or a W-2 employee?

If your business is hiring a contractor, there are freelancer-specific job boards designed to connect businesses with talented freelancers.

Here’s a look at some of the most popular job posting sites for freelancers:

• Upwork: Businesses can post jobs on Upwork for free. The platform has been around since the nineties and is a great place to find established freelancers across multiple industries.
• Fiverr: Fiverr allows freelancers to post their projects and services, so it’s best suited for businesses with well-defined projects that need doing.
• Working Not Working: As a Fiverr company, Working Not Working connects businesses with freelancers specializing in creative work.
• TaskRabbit: TaskRabbit is the perfect fit for small businesses needing short tasks or manual labor done quickly and efficiently.
• Social Media: As social media is just an informal means of networking, it can also serve as a great place to post jobs and connect with a larger pool of candidates.

Where To Post Jobs For Employees

Businesses looking for employees have plenty of options when it comes to job posting platforms, including Indeed, ZipRecruiter, LinkedIn, Angel.co, and more.

Here’s a breakdown of the top places to post jobs when seeking employees:

• Indeed: As one of the most popular recruitment platforms in the world, Indeed allows businesses to post jobs for free. The platform offers paid post sponsorships that promise to increase your post’s visibility.
• ZipRecruiter: Another popular platform, ZipRecruiter isn’t free but posts your open positions to over 100 job boards across the web.
• LinkedIn: LinkedIn’s built-in job board is great for businesses with an established presence on the site. Businesses can post jobs for free, but those jobs would only be visible to those within your network. To cast a larger net, you’ll need to pay to post.
• Angel.co: Designed for use by startups, Angel.co connects startups with employees who don’t mind taking a risk. It’s a great place to find both established talent and entry-level employees.
• Social Media: Rounding out our list, social media is free and effective means of finding employees. A solid social media marketing strategy can boost your job posting’s visibility and help connect your business with the right talent.

Need more information about the difference between a contractor and an employee? Check out our guide to 1099-contractors versus W-2 employees for an in-depth breakdown of the differences between the two most common employment types.

Recruit Offline

Even in the digital age, offline recruitment is still a viable way of finding employees to hire. Offline recruiting can take many forms, including posting signs around town or even the old reliable “Now Hiring” window sign method.

However, offline recruiting can be most effective when you get in contact with job seekers. For example, heading to job fairs is a great way to connect with those looking to break into the workforce with an entry-level position. You may also consider attending industry events to network with talent within your industry.

Promote From Within

Promoting current employees to fill new roles allows businesses to take advantage of the talent they already employ.

If your business has an open role that can be filled by one of your current employees without creating a major disruption, it’s a good idea to consider that option before hiring a new employee. Not only will you save time on the recruitment process, but you’ll also save money by not having to onboard a new employee.

Additionally, creating a company culture that prioritizes upward movement through promotion can motivate employees to stay with your company longer, as they won’t have to worry about a stagnating career. In short, promoting allows businesses to nurture top talent and stay competitive when recruiting.

Keep in mind that there are some laws that dictate whether a business must publicly advertise new positions, so be sure to check with your local laws on the matter.

Create A Referral Program

Employee referral programs are a great way to reward current employees while tapping into their professional networks. For example, you may not be connected to an excellent software engineer, but your current software engineer may have a large network of connections in the industry.

Referral programs that include some form of prize or award can incentivize current employees to refer the best talent in their networks, as it increases their chances of being rewarded. As a result, your business gains direct access to top talent without much additional effort.

You can also use your business’s referral program to build a talent database with candidates to reach out to when new positions open up. This strategy may also increase employee buy-in, as a single referral has multiple chances of success rather than just one.

The Bottom Line On Seeking Employees

A successful business is built on the work of excellent employees, so it’s essential to spend time honing your business’s strategy for seeking employees. When it comes to finding employees to hire, how and where you advertise your business’s open positions will determine the quality and quantity of candidates, so be selective.

Take the time to think about your vision for the best candidate for the job, including their qualifications, salary expectations, and experience. With this information, you can draft a job post to attract this ideal candidate and choose the best platform to advertise on.

Want to take a deeper dive into hiring employees for your business? Check out our small business hiring resources for step-by-step hiring instructions and in-depth recruiting insights:

• • How to hire your first employee

How To Find Employees FAQs