Finding skilled talent: How smaller employers try to stand out

'If you do a short-term solution, you're at risk of having short-term results'

Finding skilled talent: How smaller employers try to stand out

Small businesses are facing significant recruitment challenges. Overall, 35% of all small business owners reported job openings, according to the U.S.’s National Federation of Independent Business.

That number is down by just one point from November, according to the report.

And of the 55% of owners hiring or trying to hire in December, 89% reported few or no qualified applicants for the positions they were trying to fill, according to the survey of 10,000 small employers in the U.S., conducted in December 2024.

The data also reflects the reality in Canada, says Tate Hackert, president and co-founder of Calgary-based ZayZoon, a financial wellness platform.

“At the end of the day, we're still a small business dealing with a lot of the same problems, trying to capture… talent away from some of the large tech companies. And that comes at a high cost,” he says in talking with HRD Canada.

Many small businesses struggle to balance rising recruitment and training costs while offering competitive salaries and benefits packages, and it is spread across different sectors, including retail stores and franchises, says Hackert.

“They're trying to build and grow themselves from a small business into a medium or a large business. For them to invest… in the plethora of benefits that can exist – from health spending accounts and whatever it might be – it becomes really difficult for them to compete in that sense.”

Costs of unfilled positions

The practice of hiring workers, in itself, is expensive work, says Hackert, with employers paying good money to post job ads on Indeed, LinkedIn, or other job boards.

Also, tapping the services of a third-party recruiter costs employers about 15% to 30% of an employee's first year salary, he says.

Then there are the indirect costs that add up as well, like the distraction that employers face while struggling to fill open job posts and the time and resources spent interviewing candidates. 

Employers also spend resources when onboarding and training new hires, doing so while facing the challenge of these workers walking out the door.

“If you make the wrong call, if that employee decides to go somewhere else right away, all that cost that you had up front is now just a sunk cost that you can't retrieve,” says Hackert.

At a time when employers can reach out to a job seeker halfway across the world, hiring decision-makers are still spending way too much time doing tasks that can be automated, according to a previous Indeed report.

Customizable benefits stand out

With all these struggles, many business owners are now prioritizing short-term recruitment over long-term talent acquisition strategies, according to ZayZoon.

They often do this by offering workers perks or benefits that immediately catches jobseekers’ attention. 

However, this is a bad move, says Hackert.

“If you do a short-term solution, you're at risk of having short-term results,” he says.

“If you're trying to provide a short-term solution for what is really a long-term problem, you're just going to accentuate the issues that you're seeing.”

Hackert admits that small employers need to try to stand out in their offerings during the recruitment process. But just that is not enough.

“You do need to have something catchy, but there needs to be a lot more meat to your offer and to your benefits package to actually have those employees stick around,” says Hackert.

Small employers cannot take the same approach that large corporations take, because these companies often have far more resources, he says.

He believes offering more customizable benefits can be the key to success for small employers.

"As a small business, you need to think outside the box...: ‘How can I provide a more customisable benefits experience to my staff? What are the other small business benefits providers that are specifically geared for small businesses that I can partner with?’"

Ultimately, it comes down to “leveraging the toolbox that you have... and making your time and resources go as far as possible,” he says.

Hiring activity across Canada is poised to remain strong in early 2025, according to a previous report from Robert Half.