Vendor Selection & Technology

Big Business for SMEs

by Taleo Research

Small and medium size enterprises (SMEs) have both differences and similarities to the operations of large companies. Although SMEs do not manage their operations on the same scale as big companies, they share all of the same basic structures and business processes. The organization charts for all companies include departments for sales and marketing, administration, production, accounting and finance, human resources, and more.

However, large companies have historically held the advantage in hiring. Their size provided larger budgets to afford big recruiting advertisements. Large organizations had the advantage of dedicated and substantial resources for their corporate websites which included careers sections. They also allocated IT funding for acquisition and implementation of sophisticated back-end hiring management systems.

But times have changed. The good news for SMEs today is the opportunity to gain the same advantages from many of the business process and technology improvements that were designed for large companies, and until recently, have only been available to large companies.

With the combination of on demand availability, best practice processes, software as a service technology, and Internet connectivity, all companies are now only one click away from the same capabilities. In the area of human resources, SMEs now can leverage technology and process improvements that can transform their talent management operations to be more effective and efficient. Two areas with low-hanging fruit for SMEs are sourcing strategies and hiring management systems. The playing field is leveling.

Sourcing Strategies
The evolution from expensive newspaper recruitment advertising to online job boards represented a major shift in reach for candidate sourcing. For SMEs, job board advertising rates were often too steep – and the geographic reach was broader than they needed.

Hiring for SMEs requires identifying external candidates, yet may not involve high volume recruiting. Staffing is typically geographically limited. Sourcing strategies are often reactive: the need for a new hire occurs and advertising for that job opening is placed. Once the hire is made, sourcing for candidates halts. That method of candidate sourcing is expensive and misses out on the low cost/high yield opportunities presented on the Internet today.

Keys to Success
To drive recruiting success in the future, SMEs need to leverage a good message and employment brand, and be poised to react to quality candidates quickly. The employee value proposition must ring true and be communicated in all media including the corporate website and recruitment advertising. Low cost, local resources can be key to transmit the message and build a candidate pool.

One example is using Craigslist.com, an online community with a wide range of classifieds and forums. Craigslist has 190 sites in all 50 US states and 35 countries. Job postings are easy and free at all sites except the San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York City sites. Rates for job postings at those sites are substantially less than major job boards.

Craigslist has 22 job categories listed alphabetically including accounting/finance; legal/paralegal; medical/health; and skilled trade/craft, as well as part-time jobs. Will your job posting be seen? Craigslist was the number one classified site according to comScore Media Metrix, with 8,236,000 unique visitors for the month of October 2005.

Also, watch for opportunities for job posting and candidate sourcing with Google Base, a massive classifieds database combining listings aggregated from other sites, along with postings which are currently free. DirectEmployers Association, a consortium of U.S. companies, has announced a partnership with Google. All member company jobs currently available through the DirectEmployers search engine and those located at JobCentral.com will be included in a new Google database.

In addition, new online referral networks such as LinkedIn, Jobster and H3 provide opportunities for any web-savvy recruiter to engage in a “six degrees of separation” exercise and access a much larger network than a small or medium size organization’s own employee referral program could deliver.

Software as a Service
A strong sourcing strategy produces numerous candidate applications and information, and requires filtering and assessing candidates to make the right hire. Up until now, managing the hiring process has created an administrative burden for SMEs. Today, SMEs can improve business performance by streamlining hiring processes with self-service talent management applications delivered on demand, known as Software as a Service (SaaS). SaaS, a software solution that is designed specifically for a web delivery and supported by a vendor as a service, only requires a standard browser and an Internet connection. It is subscription-based and easy to configure and deploy. SaaS is a multi-tenant model where all clients are supported by the same line of code, and gain great benefit from true economies of scale.

This type of on demand talent solution can be the platform for:

  • Requisition management
  • Job postings
  • Approval processes
  • Candidate management
  • Campaigns by email
  • Contact management
  • Prescreening and ranking
  • Interview management
  • Reference and background checks
  • Careers website management
  • Reporting and analysis
  • Employee referrals

Big Benefits for SMEs
Without making a large technology investment, SMEs can land top talent quickly and reduce cost per hire. Posting job openings on low or no-cost localized Internet sites that enjoy high traffic, and finding candidates through web-based sources offer big business benefits for small to medium size companies. Utilizing new, on demand platforms for software delivered as a service essentially democratizes access to leading applications.

In the past, only large organizations could afford the resources necessary to deploy enterprise applications. Now small and medium size organizations can reap the same benefits by sharing the same infrastructure and code as their large enterprise counterparts. They can leverage the years of development and refinement focused on large companies to meet their needs. SMEs today can post their job openings on the web, network for candidates, manage their hiring processes with ease and compete for quality talent. SMEs can be the best at what they do in a more local market with limited resources. They can build a strong employer brand and use technology tools to support quality talent management just like big business.