When we talk to our clients, who are primarily small to mid-sized local employers, they frequently tell us that keeping up with escalating pay requirements is one of their most noticeable staffing challenges – impacting not just their hiring success but dipping into their ability to retain the right employees.    

No question, small to mid-sized employers (sized anywhere from 2 to 1000 employees) face some unique challenges when it comes to attracting and retaining the top talent they need to compete oftentimes against the larger, better resourced enterprise organizations that have crept into their local and/or specialized spaces over the last several decades. 

We’ve seen some of our clients navigate this landscape really well while others have unfortunately lost some talent they really wanted to hire or retain because of deficits in what they were able to pay them either to begin work or down the road.    

Here’s some advice we give to our clients who can’t rely on overmarket pay plans to attract and retain employees…

• When you think about putting your best foot forward, don’t just think about pay. Small to mid-sized employers have a lot of intangible benefits they can provide their employees that the larger enterprise level organizations can’t. Lean into those and make sure your recruiters are articulating them clearly.

• Don’t get bogged down in the bureaucracies of an over engineered hiring process. If one of the features, you think sets you apart from your competition is your ability to move quickly – showcase that in your hiring process. This doesn’t mean you short cut all the steps that lead to a successful hire, but it does mean you move through those steps quickly. Executing each step in an effective hiring process is key to hiring success – unnecessary red tape gets in the way.

• Focus on a candidate’s talent not just their here and now skills or work experiences. There are a lot of candidates out there who can do the job if given a chance to use their talents to develop the skills you need along the way. We’re big believers in the temp-to-hire audition which is a great way to give a talented candidate a chance to show you what they can do that doesn’t necessarily show up as a specific set of skills or work experiences on a resume.

• Make sure you’ve got a great recruiter on your hiring team – someone you can count on to keep the train moving, to make sure each step is executed well, and that the hiring manager always has the information they need to make the right hiring decision.  While small to mid-sized companies can’t always afford to maintain an inhouse team of recruiters, they can turn to the recruiting community to find a recruiter or an agency that can help you get the job done – hiring better candidates, faster.