5 tips to help you recruit the right people online

Using the internet to recruit new employees for business has become the norm in a very short space of time. For people working in creative industries the internet is an indispensable tool and subsequently online recruitment appears a natural step in order to reach out to target markets.

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The internet has quickly become essential at recruiting the right people for your business.

Recruiting on the internet gives companies and candidates alike a great opportunity to secure the ideal employees and find themselves an exciting new job. Here are five tips to help small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) access and recruit top talent for their organisations.

Use social networking sites such as LinkedIn

Career-focused networking sites such as LinkedIn are a goldmine of information for growing small businesses. It is a great way of viewing profiles of successful employees and entrepreneurs and engaging in discussion regarding their availability and/or interest in your vacant roles.

Many candidates choose to make their LinkedIn profile public, meaning they are indexed by search engines and can therefore be found in Google when searching for a particular type of candidate.

Extend your recruitment reach via job boards and online agencies

Don’t be afraid to submit your vacant positions across a number of online recruitment agencies and job boards. Instead of simply placing an advertisement in a magazine or newspaper, extend your reach online with the potential of millions of views rather than thousands a month offline.

A vast percentage of employers use the internet daily, almost exclusively and the ability to have your vacant positions online within literally minutes improves the efficiency of your recruitment campaign.

Reduce cost-per-hire and retain flexibility

One of the biggest challenges facing HR managers is to reduce the cost-per-hire within their company whilst at the same time maintaining the quality of new talent. It is said that companies who use online recruitment technologies save up to 90% more than those who use traditional recruitment agencies and methods. Online recruitment enables recruiters to streamline recruitment campaigns, whilst promoting the company’s brand and values to a wider, more diverse talent pool.

Recruit using your own company website

Depending on how your company website is built you may be able to advertise careers and vacancies through your own content management system (CMS). Your company website should explicitly portray the vision and values of your company and is one of the most underrated ways to advertise for new talent. Remember, your own website is your time to shine to new recruits as well as new clients.

Use Facebook to develop your professional identity

Facebook is increasingly used as an online recruitment tool, with platforms and solutions for small businesses recruiting via Facebook. Workplace groups, advertisements and profiles can be created to generate discussion about your company as well as encourage applications for vacant roles.

Now is the time to embrace online recruitment and social networking both as a research tool and as a cost-effective way of connecting users and potential employees to add value to your business.

The Power of WordPress

So what is WordPress? Well, put simply, it is everything you are looking at right now. This article is WordPress. This blog is WordPress. In fact, over 25 million blogs and websites worldwide are built on a strong WordPress foundation, and WordPress sites receive tens of millions of visitors every single day. It is used by everyone from casual bloggers like myself to celebrities and large businesses. This is one of the main contributions to its power – it’s infinitely flexible.

It is so flexible in fact, that most times you wouldn’t even realise that you are looking at a WordPress powered site. While most casual users will opt for a basic theme like the one you see here, this is by no means fixed. With some clever designing a theme can be manipulated or even written from scratch to produce a totally unique and wholly professional look. The site need not even follow a conventional blog layout. The possibilities are limited only by your imagination… (and coding skills!)

The Official WordPress LogoIf you’re one of those people that runs a mile at the slightest sniff of some PHP or HTML, then there’s no need to worry! WordPress prides itself on its ‘famous 5-minute installation’ and it really is that simple. It requires no coding knowledge whatsoever which is ideal for companies who need a quick, easy to maintain site and for standard bloggers who often have no knowledge of web languages at all. For a WordPress admin, the ‘dashboard’ is their home. From here, they can add posts, edit posts, add new users, approve comments, and even change the entire look and feel of the site in a few simple clicks – with not a scrap of code in sight!

So, you ask me, what’s the catch? How much will this cost me? The answer – nothing. That’s right, WordPress is completely free and open source. It started in 2003 as a couple of lines of code and has subsequently grown exponentially to become the framework it is now. But one thing has remained the same: it was designed ‘by developers, for developers’, and the community at WordPress are happy to help with any issues or queries. After all, your suggestion may help them to improve the project for everyone’s benefit. Everybody is a member of WordPress, and this is its power. It’s globally useful, it’s globally flexible, it’s globally accessible, and it’s globally free.