A Beginner's Guide to Applicant Management in a Small Business

Applicant management is crucial to business success. That’s why large companies have massive hiring teams. At a small organization, in contrast, one person may handle the entire hiring process. This guide provides an overview of applicant management for small businesses and HR departments of one.

What is applicant management?

The recruiting workflow has many components, which may include:

• ​Writing and managing job descriptions, job postings, interview scripts, candidate scorecards, and hiring communications
• ​Posting job ads to the company careers page, social media, and job boards
• ​Engaging with potential candidates on LinkedIn or other sites
• ​Tracking, organizing, and reviewing resumes
• ​Filtering and scoring candidates
• ​Conducting interviews and gathering feedback from your recruiting team
• ​Performing background and reference checks
• ​Negotiating employment contracts and extending job offers
• ​Onboarding new hires
• ​Tracking hiring metrics
• ​Managing the hiring budget
• ​Conducting skills gap analyses
• ​Creating hiring plans
• ​Maintaining recruiting compliance

Let's discuss these HR processes and recruiting tasks in detail.

Job Description

A job description is an internal document and formal listing of the specific responsibilities and important details about an employment position. Note that the job posting or job advertisement is not the same thing. A good job description will:

1. 1.Define the job responsibilities
2. 2.Reduce the applicant pool to those who qualify
3. 3.Introduce the applicant to your company

How do you write a job description?

First, define the basic information about the position. Next, identify the specific skills and qualifications the position requires.

• ​Location of job (or remote)
• ​Job title
• ​Salary range (optional)
• ​Job responsibilities
• ​Necessary qualifications
• ​Desired candidate credentials
• ​Statement about company and benefits
• ​EEOC statement
• ​Disclaimer

Make sure your job description is straightforward and concise. Avoid acronyms, jargon, and witty job titles. Remember that job seekers will search job boards using the job position and location. Therefore, put those in the headline. If it’s a remote position, put it in the job title. Example: Medical Coder (Remote Full-time).

All job descriptions should include a disclaimer that states that the description is only a summary of the typical functions of the job, not a comprehensive list of all possible responsibilities, tasks, and duties. Disclaimers should also state that other duties, as assigned, might be part of the job. This is most important in a labor union environment where the document can be literally interpreted.

Should you include the salary range?

There are good arguments for including the salary range as it will encourage applicants who have similar expectations and filter out those who have different requirements. Note also that some cities and states mandate salary information in job advertisements.

Create a Job Description Template

Create a template for your job descriptions so they will all follow the same format. Your job description will also be a template for writing job postings, candidate interview scripts, and candidate evaluation forms. With an applicant tracking system, you can create and manage a library of recruiting job descriptions. If you have several hiring managers, they can help you build the templates and update them as necessary in your recruiting software.

Advertise Your Job

Once you’ve written your job description, it’s time to get the word out. Post the job on your company’s careers page if you have one and social media sites. Job boards are also important as many job seekers use them exclusively. Choose job boards based on the position. Some recommended sites include:

• ​ZipRecruiter: Best for Large Scale Recruiting
• ​Indeed: Best for Free Job Posts
• ​LinkedIn: Best for Executive and Upper Management Positions
• ​Handshake Job Search Site: Best for College Recruiting
• ​Dribble: Best for Scouting Designers and Creatives

There are also sites that cater to a specific type of job, industry, or talent pool, such as diversity candidates, tech jobs, remote jobs, and internships.

Paid listings may be worthwhile when there is a lot of competition for applicants, as they get a higher profile on the boards.

Employee referrals are a great source of candidates. Be sure to ask your team for recommendations!

Applicant Management Analytics

Use analytics to best manage your recruiting time and budget. This includes tracking the source of everyone in your candidate pipeline so you can tell which venues are delivering good candidates. Results may vary based on particulars such as job location, job type, education level, years of experience, hours, and physical requirements. Applicant manager software can automate recruiting, candidate tracking, and reporting.

Organizing Applications

After posting your job, you’ll start receiving applications. Whether they are paper, electronic, or a mix, gather them in the same place and form. You can scan paper applications to create a digital copy. Create folders to manage your job applicant pool, such as:

1. 1.Top Applicants
2. 2.Unqualified (Do Not Pursue)
3. 3.Partially Qualified

The goal of the first-pass sorting is to isolate the best candidates and eliminate the unqualified applicants. Keep their applications for future openings to build a database of applicants to consider later.

Engage With Candidates

Let applicants know immediately that you’ve received their application. Many candidates prefer to communicate by text. If you decide to advance them to the next stage, tell them right away. If you eliminate them, inform them so they can pursue other openings. Don’t ghost your candidates.

You can create email or text templates for each type of hiring process communication. An applicant tracking system (ATS) can save you time with candidate communications by storing templates and setting triggers for automatic emails personalized with the candidate’s name and the position they applied for.

How to Conduct Interviews

When you have a pool of promising candidates, schedule interviews. Many companies start with a phone screening to verify qualifications and experience, clarify any questions, and get a sense of the applicant’s communication skills.

Phone screenings should further narrow your applicant pool. The next step is a video or in-person interview. The best practice is to create an interview script based on the job description. An interview script helps you evaluate each candidate based on the same criteria.

Score Candidates

When you write your interview script, create a scorecard for evaluation. During the interview, or soon after, fill it out and then sort quality candidates by score. Have your hiring manager and all members of the hiring team use the same scorecard. Applicant tracking software often includes templates for scorecards and other evaluation tools.

Reference Checks

If you didn’t ask for references on the application, do it now. This is where you talk to previous employers and look for any issues that were not uncovered. Try to automate this process as much as possible, for example, by sending an email to the references asking them to fill out a linked questionnaire, or calling the references and filling out the questionnaire yourself. Gather information in a consistent manner from each reference for each final candidate.

Background Checks

Background checks are an important part of an employer’s recruiting due diligence. They protect your business, your employees, your customers, and the public at large.

Background screenings protect:

• ​Employees from violence or harassment
• ​Customers from theft or harassment
• ​Your business from fraud, theft, a tarnished reputation, or legal liability

Laws that Govern Background Checks

The Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) applies when employers hire a third-party service agency to conduct consumer credit reports and other investigative reports. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) enforces the FCRA. When a third-party service performs background checks, they may obtain information termed as “investigative reporting.” An investigative consumer report may contain subjective judgment regarding the job candidate.

A report doesn’t need to be in written form; it could refer to information obtained in a short phone call and communicated orally to the hiring manager.

An FCRA consumer report is:

"Any written, oral or other communication of any information by a consumer-reporting agency bearing on a consumer’s credit worthiness, credit standing, credit capacity, character, general reputation, personal characteristics or mode of living. In the employment context, this definition may, for example, include credit reports, criminal history reports, driving records and other background check reports created by a third party, such as drug tests."

Employers must provide the applicant with a formal written disclosure and obtain the applicant’s consent before conducting the research. The disclosure and consent form must be a separate document and can’t be included in the application. The employer must disclose that the information may be used to influence the hiring decision.

After obtaining consent, you must inform the background check service that you notified and obtained the applicant's consent and verify that you met the FCRA anti-discrimination provisions. If you are asking a company to provide an ‘investigative report’—a report based on personal interviews concerning a person’s character, general reputation, personal characteristics, and lifestyle—you must also tell the applicant or employee of their right to a description of the nature and scope of the investigation.

Extend the Job Offer

When you’ve made your choice, it’s time to offer the job. Send an offer letter that states clearly the key information about the offer, including wage, location, and start date. You might also want to include where and when to report and any other details specific to the offer. Give the candidate a signature line and send it out.

Don’t waste any time. Talent acquisition is extremely competitive. Now that you have identified this person as the ideal candidate, others may have as well.

It helps to have a job offer ready to go before you start the process. Use an offer letter template to make this a speedy and consistent process. Include your company logo, standard text, and merge fields where you can easily add the details for the specific position. Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) have job offer letter templates. Once you’ve created a template for each job position, you can store and manage them in your ATS.

The Candidate Accepts!

Congratulations! You have successfully filled the job. Now it’s time to onboard your new hire.

For in-depth guidance on small business applicant management, consider resources on creating the position, conducting interviews, and hiring the candidate.