Tiny Firms Didn’t Grow in 2019: How to Find Top Talent in 2020

Tiny companies weren’t able to grow their workforces in 2019

Are you struggling to keep your small business staffed?

Hiring is tough for companies of all sizes, but the smallest companies are having the hardest time.

Overall, U.S. firms with fewer than 20 employees didn’t add workers in 2019.

The Hiring Standstill for the Smallest U.S. Businesses: 5 Key Findings

1. Last year, the number of employees in total at tiny U.S. companies (fewer than 20 employees) didn’t increase. (Wall Street Journal)
2. Compare that with the fact that organizations with 500+ employees increased their workforces by 2.3%.
3. 2019 was the first year since 2010 that tiny companies didn’t add workers to their payroll.
4. Tiny firms aren’t tiny when it comes to their impact on the U.S. labor force. There are more than 5 million U.S. firms with fewer than 20 employees. They make up 89 percent of all U.S. companies. (Small Business Administration).
5. Firms with less than 20 workers employ 16.8 percent of the U.S. labor force.

Applicant tracking systems enable small businesses to grow

Unfortunately, there are common misconceptions among small business owners and entrepreneurs that keep some from even looking into software solutions. ATSs are too expensive for an owner-operator. ATSs are just for companies that add hundreds of employees every year. Nonsense.

Actually, hiring software is just as important for tiny firms. Possibly even more important.

7 reasons ATS are a must-have for tiny businesses and start-ups

1. The business owner has to do all the hiring PLUS everything else
2. They don’t have the name recognition of larger companies
3. They need to have a super-fast hiring process to compete
4. They need to automate manual hiring operations to process more applicants
5. They need to automatically filter out unqualified applicants before spending time on them
6. They need a way to incorporate best practices
7. They need to provide an outstanding candidate experience to attract quality talent

How MRV Banks solved their hiring problems with ApplicantStack

Let’s look at a case study of a small Missouri bank that solved their staffing problems with ApplicantStack. ApplicantStack is SwipeClock’s affordable applicant tracking and hiring solution.

Though MRV Banks is now slightly larger than ‘tiny’, they have the same challenges faced by smaller companies. (They were tiny just a few years ago.)

In the first half of 2019 the company grew from 35 to 44 employees across five locations. Finding and hiring the right employee for each open position is a key success factor for MRV Banks. With steady growth and continuous demand, hiring became difficult and time consuming. MRV Banks turned to ApplicantStack to solve three critical issues.

We needed to reach more well-qualified applicants, get fewer unqualified applicants, and reduce the administrative time spent per job opening, Lydia Sumner, MRV Banks Director of Human Resources.

Let’s break that down. MRV Banks needed to:

1. Reach  more well-qualified candidates
2. Get fewer unqualified candidates
3. Reduce the administrative time per job opening

ApplicantStack makes it easy to create and post job descriptions to popular job boards, social media and internal sites. This helps hiring managers reach a higher volume of qualified candidates in a shorter period of time. Applicants are automatically scored according to rules set by MRV Banks, helping them screen candidates before they are considered for an interview.

Knockout questions are included in their questionnaire to eliminate candidates based on specific requirements of MRV Banks. The candidate view in ApplicantStack makes it easy to see which candidates are qualified for the position before any effort is spent on reviews.

With ApplicantStack, we now easily post to multiple job boards and automatically prescreen applicants based on a required application and questionnaire. The most qualified applicants are easy to see in the ApplicantStack dashboard. We also get fewer unqualified applicants because they self-select out during the application process.

The company posted several jobs and hired a qualified Loan Processor within the first month using ApplicantStack.

EEOC Compliance

As the company approaches 50 employees it becomes increasingly important to document hiring history and protocol. ApplicantStack maintains a record of all applications, applicant history and communications.

ApplicantStack applies the same prescreening rules to all applicants and the scoring is transparent to auditors, proving our commitment to fair hiring and equal opportunity.

With ApplicantStack, employers create applications and questionnaires that all applicants complete. Each questionnaire has rules associated that assign a score to answers, making it easy to review at a glance. ApplicantStack also streamlines interview scheduling, interview feedback, and selection. All interactions during the hiring process are preserved for auditing and review.

HR Management Connection

ApplicantStack is part of a larger HR ecosystem at MRV Banks, including HUB and TimeWorksPlus. This integrated system provides an employee portal for new hire onboarding, timekeeping, paystubs, company directory, and employee engagement.

As an administrator, Sumner has single sign-on access to all functions of the system streamlining HR workflows and saving time and effort.

These tools help us find and keep the best talent while improving our efficiency. That combination fuels our growth and supports our commitment to delivering premium banking services.

ApplicantStack is affordable for the smallest businesses

Want to grow your business? Try ApplicantStack for free for 15 days. You won’t be tiny for long.

And it may be the most important decision you make this year.