SMEs face big brands in battle for talent

Johannesburg - When it comes to talent, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are fishing in the same pool as large companies who offer well-established employee brands, multiple career path opportunities and bigger remuneration packages.

SMEs provide 60% of employment opportunities and vital to the country’s economic recovery and growth, yet the odds seem against them in attracting people they need for their businesses to succeed.

Gender-lens investor, principal and founder at Africa Trust Group, Lelemba Phiri believes that the tide is turning for South African SMEs.

“Traditionally it has been hard for SMEs to offer competitive salaries; however, there is a substantial increase in funding opportunities for SMEs, which can be game-changing when it comes to attracting talent. Government has launched SME funding instruments, but there is also broader investor interest and funding innovations coming to the fore. This can empower SMEs to compete on remuneration and attract high calibre talent. We also see the global rise of fractional work, whereby employees work part-time for different employers during the week; a trend suited to SMEs and can open access to amazing talent. For instance, you may need a toplevel chief financial officer (CFO) input on your growth strategy, but that kind of salary is not possible in your start-up phase. However, there are now CFOs with those skills changing to fractional work, and you can get that input without paying a monthly salary,” she says. While big business may be offering bigger salaries, SMEs do have advantages in being able to offer more flexibility, learning-on-thejob, career and personal development opportunities, which suit younger generations of workers. Entrepreneurs hiring their first staff members need a focused, streamlined process encompassing all the important milestones; from crafting exact job descriptions to searching, screening, interviewing and making offers. In today’s fastchanging global talent marketplace, this is no longer turning out well, even for the biggest corporate players who find that top and rare talent slips away easily.

CEO of Job Crystal, an AI-based, SME-focused recruitment service, Sasha Knott says SMEs can compete with the big business brands if they can be smart and agile.

“RecTech innovations empower entrepreneurs to reach talent pools that once seemed inaccessible to them. Knowing what talent you need, engaging with potential candidates professionally and making sound but quick decisions can win the talent battle. Our Crystal platform can search and screen 34 million employable people across 43 websites, including job boards, job portals and social media sites, reaching a range of users, active job seekers, screening applications and passive hiders. This means that SMEs can hire better and faster than big businesses,” she says.

Typically, SMEs do not have experienced HR talent on their first team, which means the owner and perhaps an administrative person face the task of recruitment. Lack of recruitment skills can lead to wrong hires and a serious impact on a fledgling company.

Solutions offered by RecTech businesses such as Job Crystal help entrepreneurs to leapfrog this lack of recruitment skills and enable them to follow a strategic recruitment process.

Knott says recruitment costs are exceptionally high in business.

“The recruitment industry is gen- erally targeted at large corporations, and agency fees are standardised for them. Many SMEs cannot afford those costs or recruitment technology platforms that charge monthly subscriptions, which is why SMEs recruit on their own. Yet in a Price Waterhouse study it was found that a bad hire can cost about R250 000. So as much as recruitment is expensive, getting it wrong can be more expensive. It is important to find recruitment agency solutions that are affordable to the SME sector,” Knott says.

She adds that time is critical for an SME.

“Business owners have to do the sales, admin, marketing, finance, strategy, HR and training. Traditional recruitment tools do not work if you do not have time. Job Crystal’s own study found it takes 33 hours to hire one person, and no small business owner has this time to spare. Our tool Crystal helps with 24 hours of hiring by searching, finding and screening candidates. This frees up the business time to focus on the business and not in it.”

For tips about SME recruitment challenges and possible solutions subscribe to the Job Crystal podcast JobCast featuring Sasha Knott.