We all know the story of David and Goliath: Young and seemingly outmatched, David successfully trounced the giant Goliath by accurately throwing a stone that hit Goliath’s forehead. His calculated attack made him victorious.
The story is a great lesson for early-career recruiting: The size of your organization can be a competitive advantage, even if you aren’t a global behemoth. Here’s how small businesses can leverage their agility and precision to win the war for top talent.
Goliath was a lumbering man who was brought to his knees because of a stone thrown at him by a scrawny boy. In other words, size does matter—only in this case, your small early-career recruiting team can be a competitive advantage by making you more agile than other companies.
According to ERE, top talent is only available for 10 days. That means you have to move fast—very fast—to get the best early-career candidates to join your organization. Data from the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) supports this. According to NACE, the average time-to-hire for enterprise companies is 63 days—with an average of 38 days from job posting to interview, plus another 25 days from interview to offer. That highlights just how stark the chasm is between how long top candidates are available and how slow-moving larger organizations are.
Your David-esque team, though—with fewer hurdles to jump over—can have a quicker time-to-hire than the 63 days.
Agility will also give you the ability to be more experimental than bigger companies. You won’t have to climb through the same number of hoops an enterprise organization faces when considering a new vendor partnership or trying a different technology platform (like WayUp!). A fast-moving team helps your business stay one step ahead of the competition.
David only needed one throw to defeat Goliath. His efficiency helped him bring down a giant.
Your smaller team also cuts the cost-per-hire for your organization. According to the NACE 2017 Recruiting Benchmarks Survey, the average cost-per-hire for companies that recruit on campus is $6,275 (a figure that includes personnel costs). The cost without on-campus personnel? $2,027 per hire. Your small team just saved your company a lot of money!
Before David and Goliath battled, many favored Goliath to win. In the case of top talent, however, there’s a growing percentage that wants to work for small companies.
According to Accenture, 47 percent of recent college graduates chose to work at a startup/mid-size organization. Your small-but-mighty team can use this to its advantage to attract—and hire—early-career top talent.
By being a David, your team can get more qualified candidates to join your company—so you can continue to take on the Goliaths of your industry.
