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Introduction

The complete recruitment guide for small businesses

For many business owners, the main goal when it comes to recruiting is simple: find enough people capable of filling the gaps in the rota as quickly as possible, then get back to work.

While this makes absolute sense on paper — after all, the more time you spend recruiting, the less you spend making your customers smile — this approach can create all kinds of headaches further down the line.

That’s why we’re proposing an alternative route for small business recruitment. Rather than focusing on short-term gains, we suggest trying to maximise the quality of your hires in the first place, employing people who will both help your business grow and who will stick with you for years to come, reducing the need for further recruitment.

Over the course of this guide, we’ll show you how to revamp your hiring process to give you the best chance of securing these exceptional employees, without the need for fancy recruitment software or huge sums of cash, covering:

  • The different types of workers and employees (and when to hire them)
  • How to write a job ad, and where to publish it
  • How to shortlist candidates and conduct interviews
  • Making the final hiring decision (and rejecting other candidates)
  • How to avoid discrimination and keep everything fair

...and much more.

Throughout the guide, you’ll find plenty of recruitment resources that you can download, edit, and print, including a sample job advert and templates for interview records, offer letters, and more.