Claire Williamson’s Post

What are your top tips for advertising for new Team members? 👊 We've just recruited for a new superstar to join our Team and we couldn't be more stoked with who we've wound up with, the lovely Mikayla who will be joining us in January 💖 After making tons of mistakes in the past, I've had a few people get in touch recently to ask about our process, so I thought I'd share a few of my top tips for getting the right fit for your new role 💪 (by no means exhaustive, nor am I an expert!) 1️⃣ Be super clear about the existing culture and whether the new person will fit into that culture. Paint a picture of how their day will look and the things they'll be doing. This is a big one and something we have failed big at in the past. In our world, it's all about flexibility, but also about owning problems and personal responsibility, too. We write about this in our job ads and actually have a list of who isn't the right fit for us 🙌 2️⃣ Create some barriers which mean people HAVE to engage with your business in order to apply. By this I mean they can't farm out a CV and cover letter and still be worth your time... having to sift through 40 applications for a role and none of them being the right fit is a waste of time for everyone involved. We do this by asking them to fill out a "thinking" questionnaire, which aren't related to the role but mean they need to do some research on our business 👌 3️⃣ Don't be afraid to shake up the traditional "CV + cover letter" approach. We ask for a 1 pager CV (more because we just want to see where they have worked, rather than qualifications) and a 1-2 minute video about them and what's important to them as people. We need to know if they are the right fit, and because everyone in our business spends time on the phone, they need to be able to speak relatively well. It's also another deliberate barrier which means people have to put in specific effort, so they only apply if they really want to! 😄 Two years ago, we advertised for a very similar role to the one we just recruited for 🙋♀️ We had 40 applications, and 8-10 were people who might be a good fit. It took a lot of time to sift through! 👩💼 This year, we had 10 applications, we interviewed 3, and employed our person from there 🙌 A huge time saver for everyone involved - and a great result all round 😍 This is definitely not a process that would work for every business but I thought I'd share in case it's helpful for smaller businesses without the big recruitment or HR divisions 🤝 Feel free to message me if you'd like the link to the questionnaire we use - which we have tweaked a bit over the years after chatting to other business owners we work with 👌 #business #smallbusiness #recruitment #employees