5 hiring tools that level the playing field for small business owners

We recently went through a hiring process here that just dragged on and on, during a very busy time of year. Instead of getting a fully staffed team up and running to handle the volume, we were stuck in an endless back-and-forth while waiting for a completely manual process to run its course.If you run a small business or manage a lean team, you know this pain all too well.You’re competing for the exact same talent as massive corporations, but they have dedicated recruiting teams, bottomless budgets and automated systems.

You have an inbox and an Excel sheet.When your hiring process relies on manual data entry, you don’t just lose time.You lose excellent candidates to larger companies simply because they moved faster and had a better process.To compete, you have to arm yourself with the right technology. You don’t need an enterprise-level budget, but you do need tools that act as an administrative backbone so you can focus on making the actual hire. Here are five hiring tools that level the playing field.If you are still managing candidates by starring emails in your inbox, you’re already behind.An Applicant Tracking System (ATS) centralizes your job postings, candidate applications and team communication in one single dashboard.

Think of it as a CRM but for hiring. For employers who do not already have an established hiring process, a built-in ATS centralizes and simplifies decision-making. Inside this system, your hiring team can review, rate, manage the status of and ultimately decide which candidate to hire.Posting a job and crossing your fingers that the right person sees it is an outdated strategy.It’s time to move on.  This was my personal “aha” moment while using hiring tech.

In our last round of hiring, I was looking for a very narrow set of areas of authority with writers and editors that didn’t necessarily align with traditional commerce roles.Instead of making me sift through hundreds of irrelevant resumes, I let the tech do the...