30% of Small Businesses Have Trouble Matching Openings with Good Candidates



Alignable State of Hiring for Small Business Owners Finds that 30% of Small Businesses Looking to Hire Struggle to Find Right Candidates with Ads


Small businesses creating over 65 percent of new jobs are struggling to find good candidates and online hiring options are only offering some of the solutions.



Alignable State of Hiring for Small Business Owners

A new hiring poll from Alignable reports 30 percent of respondents believe matching open positions and good candidates is the biggest hiring problem facing small businesses.

Lots of Options

Small businesses have lots of options when it comes to online advertising but the poll finds there’s still much work to be done. Online hiring brands are among the least trusted resources small businesses use.  In fact, online hiring brands ranked 11 of 13 in a poll of trusted hiring tools. At least one reason is these online hiring brands aren’t delivering all the options businesses’ need.

Small businesses ranked getting people to show up for interviews, checking references and bringing new hires up to speed as other major hiring challenges.

“They can’t find people with the right skills, who are willing to show up and work!” one small business owner wrote.

Interview Scheduling Tools

One problem is there’s a lack of interview scheduling tools online. That gap is currently being filled by companies like AppointmentPlus because places like Craigslist and others don’t have this option.

Other areas were more positive.



Fourteen percent small business owners felt they needed help with information like interview questions and on boarding strategies. Here most hiring brands had resources like blogs and articles on subjects like these and other topics like best practices for checking references. For example, LinkedIn offers detailed information on hiring through its site. Monster’s blog has good information for checking references.

Trusted Brand

The poll broke the numbers down by industry too.

LinkedIn was the most trusted brand for advertising job openings in retail and hotels. For smaller bars and restaurants, Craigslist topped the list. Indeed had the most to offer when it came to scale and cost, according to the results. The site has boasted over 700,00 jobs posted in one seven day period.

For the State of Hiring for Small Business Owners, 3,000 plus business owners were asked the question: What’s the hardest part of hiring great employees? Alignable has plans to categorize the 200 responses they got and get experts to share their thoughts.



Image: Alignable 3 Comments ▼



Rob Starr Rob Starr is a staff writer for Small Business Trends. Rob is a freelance journalist and content strategist/manager with three decades of experience in both print and online writing. He currently works in New York City as a copywriter and all across North America for a variety of editing and writing enterprises.

3 Reactions
  1. Often times the SMB has a limited talent pool because they’re located in smaller cities or rural areas. Even if you could get the job posting in front of someone qualified, the location could be a deal killer.

  2. This is because more and more millennials want to be business owners instead of employees. They are not the type to apply for a job and stay there.

  3. As a lifelong recruiter and vocational counselor, I find MOST employers look for the experience and ignore the talent. Remember the adage about, “teaching pigs to sing?” Ya just can’t do it; thus employers who chase the experience are flying the wrong flag. Explore the talents necessary to do the job and pursue/select for those talents.