Nearly 60% of all employees in the U.S. are hourly workers. Yet small businesses struggle to tap into this huge pool of potential candidates.
If you’re hiring for a minimum wage position, you can’t spend a ton of time and money on recruitment. Often the turnover rate is high, it doesn’t make sense to spend thousands of dollars to fill these positions.
So, how do you find great employees that won’t break the bank?
Luckily, there’s a bunch of different low cost options and that’s exactly what I am going to show you in this article. We will go over some specific places that you can source candidates and break down the pros and cons of each of these places.
If you’re ready, let’s jump in.
Friends and Referrals
If you have existing employees, then you should be leveraging them to help get the word out about new openings. There’s a lot less risk with hiring someone that is referred to you by an employee that you already trust and like.
You can further incentivize your existing employees by offering a bonus for referrals that lead to a hire. It doesn’t have to be a lot of money, even $50, might help motivate people.
Also, ask your friends for recommendations. If you do have an online ad, have your friends share the ad, that might help get it in front of the right person.
Pros:
- Reduces hiring risk since you are hiring based on a recommendation from someone you trust
- Relatively low cost since you might be paying out a small bonus to your employees for a solid recommendation but this is less than many other options
- Referrals are the fastest way to hire in comparison to other approaches
Cons:
- It can lead to potential awkwardness with the person that referred the hire if things do not work out
- If you are not careful, you might hire someone that is unqualified because you base too much on the recommendation
Online Job Boards
There are tons of job boards and some, like Snagajob, are aimed at hiring hourly employees. The cost and effectiveness of the job board for different types of positions can vary wildly, but here we will try to provide some guidance for some of the major boards.
Craigslist
Craigslist is one of the best and least expensive options for hiring hourly employees. A job listing varies in price from free up to $75 in the San Francisco Bay Area. Craigslist is particularly great for restaurant, hospitality and lower end sales positions.
Pros:
- Low cost and effective
- Very easy to use
Cons:
- Exposes your inbox to potential scammers and spam
- Can be time consuming to sift through all the applications in your email
- No control over quality or fit
Snagajob
Snagajob is another relatively low cost solution ($49 for 15 day postings and $89 for a month). They specifically target hourly workers and have 75 million registered users.
Pros:
- Designed specifically for hiring hourly workers
- Perfect if you are looking to hire retail, hospitality or retail
Cons:
- Not as effective in the Western U.S. as in the East
- Applicants have to sign up on Snagajob to apply, which can reduce your application conversions versus a place like Craigslist where they just need to send an email
General Job Boards
Besides Craigslist and Snagajob, posting a job on Monster or Indeed is another great option. With Monster, you pay per listing and if you only have one job to post for, it can be expensive. However, as one of the world’s oldest job boards, your listing will get in front of a massive audience.
With Indeed, you get the benefit of a massive audience but you also pay only for performance, meaning that you only pay when people click on your ad. The advantage here is that you have more control over the budget and what you are willing to pay for an application.
Finally, sites like Proven will allow you to post to all these places from one site, so you can test multiple options all at the same time.
Social Media and Online Groups
Like referrals, social media is a great free resource that you can easily tap into. If you have a big social media presence, than you should be leveraging this audience to help get the word out about your open positions.
Even if you are not that active, you can search sites like Facebook for groups that might be relevant to the job opening that you have. These groups are filled with tons of active people that are interested and passionate about a topic relevant to your business. That’s a great sign.
Pros:
- Free resource
- You can tap into passive candidates that may already have a job
Cons:
- Little control over who applies to your position
- Some online communities can see your posting as negative if you are not an existing member of that community
Final Thoughts
Finding great hourly workers can be a challenge. There’s often a high turnover rate associated with these jobs and as such, small business owners cannot afford huge budgets to fill these positions.
However, with the state of technology today, we have more low cost resources available than ever. Referrals, job boards, social media and online communities are just a few low cost and effective options. It’s a good idea to use all of these in conjunction.
So, next time you need to hire, give these a try.