Towards the end of 2019, many of us were consuming blogs around the hiring and recruitment trends predicted for 2020, figuring out how they were going to affect our markets and activities. It is safe to say that none of those blogs predicted what 2020 had in store for the world, and the impact it was going to have on our industry.

At this time last year, social distancing, flattening the curve, and having a Zoom cocktail hour were foreign concepts. As the pandemic remains ongoing, our speech patterns and our social patterns have changed. Seasonal hiring has not been immune to the changing nature of how we shop and how we work.

In March as schools and offices closed across the country, many parents found themselves suddenly providing crisis schooling. Back then it seemed unfathomable that homeschooling while trying to maintain a full working schedule would be the reality come back-to-school season.

For the small business owner perhaps the biggest decision after making the choice to actually go for it, is whether or not you’re ready to hire. Your business is your baby. You’ve built it up with your blood, sweat, and tears. Someone else may come in and mess everything up. And let’s be real for a moment.

During the current climate, you may have felt the urge to build a stockpile. It could be toilet paper or hand sanitizer or chocolate chip cookie dough. But have you thought about stockpiling job candidates?  It may seem strange to think about looking for your next great hire especially in these tumultuous times. However, now is an excellent time to shift your approach from a reactive hiring mindset to a proactive one.

Do you cringe when you hear the word “recruiter?” Both employers and job seekers are eager to share their horror stories about working with a recruiter. But is everything that you know about working with a recruiter wrong?

There ARE recruiters out there that don’t do their due diligence and send clients tons of resumes that are clearly not a match or never follow-up with candidates. It’s SO frustrating and we completely understand why employers and candidates are hesitant to work with a recruiter. 

There is a buzz phrase that’s been going around the business world lately that you may have heard. Hire slow and fire fast. The truth about hiring slow and firing fast is that it should actually be hire strategically and fire fast.

A well thought and planned hiring process is key to the success of your recruitment efforts.

You understand the role that customer reviews play in your brand but have you given much consideration to how to really utilize employee reviews? And no, we don’t mean performance reviews. We mean employee testimonials where employees pull the curtain back on what it’s really like to work for you.

It’s in every arena of modern life. It’s transforming the way we shop, communicate, entertain and live life – it’s technology. But can critical human resources functions be digitized? What can technology provide when it comes to recruiting for small- and medium-sized businesses? And what techy tools can update the age-old process of on-boarding new hires? As it turns out… a lot.