SMB Hiring Hacks: Competing for top talent without big budgets

Hiring can be a challenge for businesses of all sizes, but for small and midsize businesses (SMBs) attracting and winning top talent has never been more difficult. According to a survey by NFIB, 89% of small business owners reported not being able to find qualified applicants for open roles. But with over 28% of Americans looking for work there are more qualified job seekers than ever, but SMBs have to compete with much larger businesses with higher budgets and dedicated recruiting teams to find them.

The SMB hiring spiral

When it comes to recruiting, hiring managers at SMBs have several disadvantages compared to their large and enterprise counterparts.

1. Lack of brand awareness can make it difficult to get new applicants, losing out to companies with recognizable names and logos. 

2. Small teams with a broad set of responsibilities have less time to thoroughly evaluate candidates and match their skills to the role, meaning many qualified applicants might get passed over. 

3. Lower budgets mean more difficulty meeting an applicant’s salary expectations, and opens the door for larger companies to outbid for top talent. 

4. Outdated or inefficient hiring processes can create applicant friction and cause delays, creating an opportunity for a faster team to make an offer.

   
   

Over time these problems can compound. Longer hiring cycles can lead to increased workloads organization wide. In turn, increased workloads create burnout and can lead to higher turnover rates for existing employees.

This can create a sort of SMB hiring death spiral as recruiters and HR teams struggle to meet talent needs without creating new ones. In time, an already overworked hiring manager may find themselves struggling not only to fill new roles, but also to backfill others that have turned over during the hiring cycle. All the while, higher rates of turnover and lower productivity can harm a company’s reputation with prospective applicants. 

That’s the bad news. But the good news is that there are tactics and tools that can level the playing field and make it easier for SMBs to overcome these obstacles and win top talent. Here are just a few SMB hiring hacks.

Hiring Hack #1: Maximize your funnel

Even the most efficient hiring process in the world isn’t going to help an SMB that can’t find applicants. Thanks to digital job boards, listing a new role has never been easier, but that also means that hundreds of SMBs nationwide are competing to have their listing seen by the right applicant. SMBs can expand outreach by leveraging existing employees to get the word out about new openings.


AI-powered hiring tools like CLARA can also help resource-strapped hiring teams maximize the candidates that do get into the funnel by better identifying hard and soft skills critical for each role.. Identifying these skills can also help SMB recruiters target specific candidates for personalized outreach. It can also help you surface talent that other systems are likely overlooking.

Hiring Hack #2: Reinforce employer branding

Unless they have great profit margins or are exceptionally well funded, most SMBs can’t afford to outbid larger companies on financial compensation. But salary ranges aren’t the only way a company can stand out from the pack. 

The first step is to craft a compelling, authentic, and informative job description (follow this guide). A great job description helps potential candidates understand what makes an employer worth working for. 

Throughout the process, hiring managers should highlight their SMB’s values, benefits, and the perks of working there. Things like hybrid work options, paid childcare, or a healthy PTO policy are often more important to job seekers than a simple total compensation number. 

Beyond job listings, SMBs can help their employer branding by creating a page dedicated to explaining company culture and employee benefits.

Hiring Hack #3: Automate, automate, automate

Attracting a fair number of applicants can create a new set of problems for hiring teams at SMBs. The average SMB job listing receives over 200 applicants. That’s great for choice, but awful for bandwidth as the team will have to spend hours skimming resumes and arranging interviews. It also means that, even under the best circumstances, it’s likely that not every candidate can get their due.

Tools like CLARA use ethical, customizable AI to thoroughly—and equitably—screen resumes. Unlike traditional ATS platforms that rely on keywords to filter candidates, CLARA does a holistic analysis of each application to gauge actual job fit. CLARA can also send automated follow-up assessments so that recruiters and hiring managers can schedule their first interviews confident that they’ve found candidates matched to the most critical skills and traits needed for the role.

The average job applicant has to wait two or more weeks before getting a response—if they get one at all. By using AI to assist the candidate screening process, SMBs can book interviews with the best candidates days or even weeks before their competitors.

Hiring Hack #4: Focus on ability, not pedigree

When time is tight and pressure is high, it’s tempting to default to the safest-looking resumes. You know the ones: top schools, brand-name companies, linear career paths. But that instinct can limit access to incredible talent, especially for SMBs where adaptability, curiosity, and proactivity matter just as much (if not more) than a traditional background.

Instead, look for transferable skills and traits like learning agility, resourcefulness, and critical thinking. These “intangibles” go unnoticed and unmeasured by traditional screening tools.. CLARA identifies these value-add abilities and also helps teams combat unconscious bias with customizable deidentification features allowing greater focus on skills. By shifting focus from “who has done this exact job before” to “who can do this job well,” SMBs can tap into a much broader talent pool.

Hiring Hack #5: Prioritize candidate experience

A poor candidate experience can slow down the hiring cycle and cause top applicants to drop out of the process. Many SMBs unknowingly create friction through redundant applications, confusing portals, or delayed communication. These challenges don’t just cost time. They impact how a company is perceived by future applicants and can reduce the likelihood of offer acceptance.

CLARA helps SMBs eliminate these bottlenecks through a user-friendly interface that keeps applicants engaged and informed. With fewer barriers and faster touchpoints, hiring teams can move from application to interview with greater speed and confidence. A smoother candidate experience can lead to shorter time-to-hire, richer applicant pools, and a positive candidate experience that helps attract future talent.

Screening smarter, not harder

Hiring in today’s market will always come with challenges, but SMBs don’t need to be at a disadvantage. With the right tools and a few strategic shifts– targeted sourcing, stronger branding, automation, a focus on abilities, and an improved candidate experience– smaller businesses can compete for top talent without burning out internal teams. CLARA was built to make this kind of hiring possible: faster, fairer, and more effective.