7 Steps to Creating a Small Business Hiring Plan

Are you ready to hire your first employee but aren’t sure how? Many small businesses start as side jobs for their owners, and that owner is also the only employee. In order to streamline the process of hiring new employees, it’s best to create a plan that you can follow throughout the hiring process. This helps avoid time-consuming delays and ensures that every candidate is evaluated according to the same criteria.

However, as your business grows, you may find yourself with more work than you can handle. This article will provide seven steps you can use to create the best hiring plan for your small business.

1. Set Your Hiring and Onboarding Budget

According to SHRM, it costs $4,700 to hire a new employee. However, that figure can fluctuate, depending on the size of your business, HR department and your HR team’s salaries. The costs associated with hiring an employee may include:

• Any costs associated with hiring an external recruiter
• Time it takes to create the job description and position details
• Costs associated with posting the job ad
• Cost of any recruitment software you purchase
• Time it takes to screen the resumes
• Time it takes to interview, whether that be online, by phone or in-person
• Background and credit checks
• On-boarding and training your new employees

The lion’s share of the recruitment and onboarding costs are the salaries you pay to your hiring team because it takes time to create job descriptions and ads, screen candidates, perform interviews and make final hiring decisions. The next fee is the one you’ll pay to your preferred recruitment platforms, including Indeed, LinkedIn, Monster and Zoho, so that your job ad reaches the right target audience.

If you choose to purchase recruitment software to help you screen candidates, you’ll incur that cost. The last cost is in the form of onboarding and training. During this time, you’ll pay your new hire their salary while they learn the basics of the job, and you’ll pay salaries to any trainers or mentors that are designated to help the employee acclimate to their new position.

With this information, you’ll need to develop an accurate budget for each employee you hire. This typically averages $4,700 per new employee. Alternatively, you can set a budget that is a percentage of the new hire’s salary.

2. Determine How Many Employees You Need

How many employees do you need? Answering this question involves determining which departments in your business are understaffed and if you need any new departments or have a new job role to fill. If you’re a small business that’s just starting on your recruiting endeavor, you’ll probably want to hire someone who can perform your business’ core duties or handle tasks that you no longer wish to complete.

This could be entering customer information, answering phones or managing your business’s social media accounts and creating new content for your website. As your business expands, you’ll probably need more people in roles like human resources, accounting, customer service and packing and shipping if you sell physical products.

3. List All the Job Titles and Duties

Once you know how many employees you need, list out the job titles and job duties. If you need more than one person for a role, make sure you add the number of employees needed for the role. If you’re not using HR management software, consider putting the job titles and descriptions in a spreadsheet so that you know which jobs are filled and which you still need to fill.

4. Set Your Salary Budgets

Next, set the salary budgets for each employee you plan to hire. To help you ensure your wages are competitive, you can look at the information provided by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. Along with wages, don’t forget about benefits. In order to attract the best talent, you’ll need a comprehensive benefits package that includes health, dental and vision coverage, PTO and any added-value benefits, like discount cards, gym memberships and bonuses.

5. Determine Where You want to Post Your Job Ads

Next, determine where you want to post your ads. If you’re looking for free ways to get your job seen, you may want to choose your professional social media accounts and insert a new page on your company website that lists open positions. If you’re looking for paid placement, you’ll want to choose well-known and trusted sites, like Indeed, Monster, LinkedIn, Zip Recruiter, Zoho and Glassdoor.

6. Create Your Interview Questions

Once you have your jobs posted, it’s time to create your interview questions. You can start with the standard questions, including:

• How did you hear about this position?
• What attracts you to this company/job role?
• What skills or experience do you have that would be a benefit to this job role?
• Do you work best being left alone or as part of a group?

If you’re doing multiple sets of interviews with each candidate, this list could be for your first interview in order to weed out candidates that may not be the best fit for your organization. As you progress in the interview, your questions can get more specific about the job role and your company’s culture.

7. Determine How You Will Sort Through Applications

You’ve probably heard that most recruiters only give between three and five seconds of time on each resume, and if you’ve received hundreds of applications for your open position, you’ll likely only have a few seconds to give each applicant. Therefore, it’s a good idea to determine what sets a candidate apart from the rest in your eyes and what’s a deal-breaker for missing education, experience and skills.

To start, discard any applications that don’t meet your minimum qualifications. Next, look at the applications that do meet the minimums and check for skills or experience that you could use in the future or that would make the candidate a good selection for the current position and future advancement opportunities.

Lastly, read the cover letters. A good cover letter can explain the resume and any additional qualifications that the candidate may have. During this step, you’ll want to further reduce your candidate pool and determine which candidates you wish to interview.

Most recruiters these days start the hiring process with a phone or online interview before potentially bringing the candidate in for a face-to-face interview. Additionally, if your teams are entirely remote, you may request a video interview for your final candidates.