In this interview, Matt Vaadi asks a hiring expert (Speaker B) about the most common errors small and medium-sized businesses make when handling recruitment internally. The expert emphasizes that many companies severely underestimate the difficulty, time, and cost of hiring, even without using external recruiters. They often focus on product development and overlook the need for a structured, process‑driven talent acquisition function. A key mistake is relying on passive job postings or internal referrals, assuming candidates will come to them, rather than actively sourcing talent through outreach on platforms like LinkedIn. The conversation also highlights that hiring is not a one‑off event but a continuous process that includes attracting, selecting, and retaining employees, requiring dedicated resources and strategic planning.
What are some of the biggest mistakes you see small businesses make when they're trying to fill roles on their own, and some of the ways that they can improve based on what you guys have implemented at your company?
I think the biggest challenge for small to medium-sized businesses is they underestimate how difficult it is and how, how both time-consuming it is and both how costly it is, no matter how you do it. I'm not talking for like the guy at the recruiting firm saying you know, this is going to cost you a lot to use us. I don't mean that at all. I mean, even if you're going to do everything internally, it's very time intensive. And it's also building out a world-class talent acquisition team internally also has a lot more cost to it than I think most companies realize. So that's something we always notice is that whenever you're a small business, no matter what your business is, any size, your employees are your most valuable asset. And I think that a lot of companies are so excited about their products, about what they're taking to market, about, you know, the other things that make them different, that they kind of, they put blinders on and they want to focus just on those things. That's what got them excited to make whatever product, whatever it is, in the first place. So I totally get it. But it's— there's a lot of times there's a lack of awareness of just how challenging hiring is, and that, like, if you're a leader in the company, like, that's, that's going to be a big chunk of your day one way or another, whether you want it to or not, you know. Like, great employees don't just randomly find you and randomly want to stay, you know what I mean? It's very much a process-oriented thing, both from a how we're going to find people, how we're going to attract people, then also how we're going to obviously retain them. So I think recognizing that first off is— usually when I see companies that struggle to hire, it always starts— there's a lot of, there's a lot of different things that make them struggle, but the core issue is always there was kind of an underestimation and just how tricky it can be.
Yeah, it's a really good point. Several good points. But the time-consuming part, and one of the biggest mistakes I see, and it obviously speaks to why your industry is booming and why your company is doing so well, is that too often people think they're just going to post a job or tell their team that, hey, we're looking for somebody, bring in your friends or whatever it might be, and then people are going to find them. Whereas, you know, recruiting, the reason people pay a fee for your service and for so many other recruiting firms is the fact that you have to actually recruit to find the best talent. Like, you have to go get them. They are not actively surfing the job boards all day, every day. If you want the best people, you've got to pick up the phone or pick up LinkedIn or whatever it is and seek them out.
