Commerce has taken a new turn worldwide as the global pandemic has altered the ways we were once used to having things. In order to subsist, businesses from almost all industries have been compelled to switch to e-commerce operations and conduct the majority of their product and/or service marketing in the online space. Even before COVID, physical buying had already begun to experience a decline as more and more people kept getting drawn in by the convenience and other appeals of online shopping. Thus, anyone running an e-commerce business today not only has access to a vast global market of customers but also has an extensive line of similar businesses competing against them in several respects.
One of these respects is recruitment. When recruiting in the e-commerce industry, business owners must brace themselves for some fierce competition because there are so many online businesses in Australia today that are also looking to find, connect with and hire the best talents in the e-commerce market.
Nevertheless, just like with any other sort of competition, the first step towards winning, or in this case, achieving the goal of recruiting the most suitable workers for your e-commerce business is to know and understand exactly what you are competing for, and then receive a little guidance from those who have succeeded before you.
Here are 10 tried and tested ways to recruit suitable workers for your e-commerce business in Australia.
Table of content
Recruit Suitable Workers
Make Your Business Look Attractive
Research in 2019 revealed that over 50% of job seekers apply for a role after viewing a company’s online presence; this could be a company website, LinkedIn page, or social media account on platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Therefore, it is important especially as a business running operations on the internet to make your enterprise look attractive wherever it may be located in the online space.
All platforms belonging to your e-commerce business must be updated regularly to highlight new jobs and career openings. Your website and social media accounts need to stand out and let people know that you are running a lucrative enterprise and are welcoming new and qualified talents to your team. A visibly active and inviting online presence will attract the right talents to join your e-commerce business.
You should also incorporate mobile commerce capabilities into your online presence. With the rise of mobile usage, mobile-friendly websites and online applications can attract a wider pool of candidates who prefer to browse and apply from their smartphones and tablets.
Keep Your Team Compact
This is especially important if you are running a small business. You need to hire only the talents that your business requires. Keep your team compact and keep your hiring strategic. Small e-commerce businesses do not need too many managerial heads; most likely, just you as the business owner being in charge and maybe having one managing partner will be enough. Hence, when you are starting out, only recruit workers that will perform core functions that are truly essential to the day-to-day running of your business or the accomplishment of your current business goals. Then over time, as your business expands and responsibilities increase, you can begin looking into taking on more staff.
Recruit through Social Media
When you are looking for bread, you go to a bakery. So when you are in search of IT and digital talents, where can you find them? In digital spaces, of course!
In the e-commerce industry, there is always a steeplechase to snatch up the best IT and digital talents in the market. Therefore, if you want to be the first to recruit these talents, you need to meet them at their home base.
Through a promoted tweet, an Instagram ad, a Facebook business page, or any other kind of well-placed social media business outreach, top e-commerce specialists can find your business and reach out to show their interest in working with you. You can also actively search for these talents through their accounts on these platforms and reach out to them yourself to recruit them.
Network
Networking and requesting recommendations are some of the most reliable ways for small to medium-size business owners in the e-commerce industry to find skilled labor. Attending industry events, partaking in industry-relevant fora, and even asking your business connections to recommend brilliant talents that they may have seen or worked with in the past are excellent means to find suitable workers for your e-commerce business.
Be Open about What Your Business Stands For
This is a good strategy to implement in your business’ online visibility. Strike a chord with bright potentials in your industry by letting them know exactly what your business is about through the content of your online platforms. Let them in on what you have achieved thus far, what you desire to achieve by working with them, and how you expect the business as a whole to achieve its targets. Show potential employees how their input will play a vital role in taking your e-commerce operations to the next level.
Avoid Setting Your Expectations of Your Team Too High
Some employers are prone to hiring workers while harboring lofty expectations of overnight success from them. This can easily put off interviewees from applying to work with you. It is best to keep in mind that no candidate can fully meet 100% of your expectations (in fact, be wary of applicants that seem too perfect).
As an employer, you should always take care to keep your expectations within reasonable limits so that you do not end up losing your essential workers to your competition. Also, even if the members of your team are not perfect when you first recruit them, time and experience will refine their skills and have them swiftly acclimatizing to your business and its needs.
Do Not Be Quick to Trust Applicants’ CVs
This is where the importance of screening your applicants before hiring them comes in. Do not just stop at reviewing their applications and CVs. Go the extra mile and take measures or request information about them that is necessary to verify that they are indeed the right candidates for your e-commerce business. Some of these measures include identity verification, education verification, skills assessment, reference checks, background checks, and more.
With the preponderance of employment fraud in recent times, especially in this age of the boom in e-commerce, verifying the identities and even obtaining police clearance of the people you are hiring online is important. Conducting a criminal history check or police check on your business candidates will help to avoid acquiring vicarious liability for negligent hiring someone on the wrong side of the law.
Hire Only the Right Fit
Some candidates may look good on paper and everything on their applications and CVs may be checked out, but they can still be a bad fit for your business. Oftentimes, such candidates that will not work well with the rest of your team can easily be spotted during interviews. Avoid hiring such applicants. It is better to sacrifice one bright mind than to sacrifice the whole team.
Another good practice is requiring new workers to undergo a probation period (usually about a week) to ensure that they are truly the right fit for your team. This can also help to protect your business from making a costly hiring mistake.
Explore Employment Alternatives
If you do not have the business capital to hire full-time employees, that is still okay because there are employment alternatives that you can explore. Working remotely and freelancing are now big trends today, especially in the e-commerce industry. Working with freelancers and remote contractors is a viable temporary recruitment option while you build up your business’ revenue towards being able to take on more permanent staff. There are many freelance sites such as Upwork and Fiverr through which you can remotely outsource specific tasks to adept talents.
You can also consider recruiting part-time workers that will work remotely for a few hours in a day or a few days in a week. Tasks that require physical operations such as transportation and fulfillment can also be outsourced to services like CouriersPlease, StarTrack, or DHL.
After Recruitment.
Beyond just looking attractive, your e-commerce business should genuinely live up to its vision and mission. After you have recruited suitable workers for your e-commerce business, the next thing you must do is keep the new additions happy and engaged. Work cooperatively with them, request their input often, and keep them enthusiastic towards their roles in making your business succeed.
According to Forbes, in today’s business economy, offering employees enormous wages is not enough to guarantee that they will keep working with you. Thus, e-commerce business owners need to up the ante and make their workers feel valued enough to keep them loyal and industrious.
Conclusion
In the present day, we have numerous e-commerce companies popping up all over Australia and the world at large, almost on a daily basis. This comes as no surprise as there are a lot of heavy investments now going into the industry of online businesses. This may sound wonderful to any businessman or woman exploring their prospects of getting into e-commerce, but it also means the competition to succeed in the industry is now ten times as intense. Nonetheless, building the most suitable team for your business will place you way ahead in the race to domination as an e-commerce business owner.
References
Business Australia (Interview and Recruit Employees) – https://business.gov.au/people/employees/interview-and-recruit-employees
Australian Government JobActive (Meet the most popular recruitment methods in Australia: how does your strategy compare?) – https://blog.jobactive.gov.au/meet-most-popular-recruitment-methods-australia-how-does-your-strategy-compare
