Why Even Small SMEs Need a Recruitment Strategy

As a recruitment agency, many of our clients are SMEs. Often, they first come to us when something breaks; a staff member leaves, they unexpectedly win a new client, or the business suddenly grows.

And I totally get it. When you’ve got a small team, hiring can feel like a mad dash rather than a planned move. But I genuinely believe that even the smallest of businesses need a recruitment strategy – not just a quick fix when things get busy.

I’ve seen it first-hand. Not just with our clients, but within our own team too.

Why strategy matters more than size

Here at Thompson & Terry Recruitment, we’re a small team, but every single person in our business has a big impact. From day one, we’ve focused on the skills, values and personalities we need to bring in that align with our mission statement — not just today, but in line with our 10-year business plan.

Recruitment isn’t an afterthought. It’s central to our strategy because we all know that in most businesses, people are the biggest asset but if you get it wrong, they can become the biggest cost. Shouldn’t we all take that investment seriously?

We should all ask ourselves:

• What skills will we need in the next 6–12 months, and how can we plan now?
• Where are our growth areas?
• Who do we need to support the team we already have? (Sometimes, that’s an external partner — not always another hire.)
• What if you won all the clients in your pipeline, or what if they didn’t come off?

It’s not always about hiring more. Sometimes, it’s about hiring better or waiting until you’ve found the right person. The biggest cost in recruitment often comes from rushing or settling, which makes it far more likely to go wrong.

The difference in approach

Our approach is simple but incredibly considered. For each vacancy, we search, screen, and interview before submitting the original CV along with 20 bullet points and a single promise: we’d only ever send a candidate to our clients if we’d personally employ them ourselves.

That’s our bar.

In 2024 86.4% of the first CV’s we’ve submitted have resulted in a job offer. Compare that to the national average of around 5%, and it shows just how much a clear strategy and thorough process can outperform volume.

This isn’t about ‘selling’ a job or favouring the employer (our Candidate Experience Manager Aoife would have something to say about that). It’s about mindset. Our job is to ensure both candidate and employer fully understand the good, bad and ugly, and have totally aligned expectations so that a year down the line, both sides have no surprises.

Recruitment is part of your brand

Whether you’re a business of 5 or 50, how you recruit says a lot about who you are and how your customers, your staff and the community around you perceive your business.

We speak to candidates every day who’ve had poor experiences, things like unclear roles, ghosted applications, or culture mismatches. That doesn’t just cost you a hire, it damages your brand. And in small communities, word travels fast.

Having a strategy helps protect your brand, your culture and your future plans. It gives you space to make better decisions and offer a better candidate experience even when you’re growing quickly!

A moment of reflection

We’ve recently been announced as finalists in two categories at the Oxfordshire Business Awards – SME of the Year and Young Business Person of the Year. I’m incredibly proud of our team and truly honoured to be shortlisted personally.

As part of the awards process, I was asked what makes our business stand out. It made me reflect on how important our recruitment strategy has been in building a team that deserves every bit of that recognition.

For us, it’s never been just about filling roles. It’s been about building the right team, in the right way and at the right time, which is something we absolutely encourage all our clients to do!

Final thought

If you’re running a small business, I’d really encourage you to take a step back and ask: what’s our recruitment strategy?

You don’t need a 10-page document or in almost all cases a total overhaul; just start thinking ahead. What are your business aspirations, and how does recruitment help you achieve them?

Done well, recruitment can transform your business. Done reactively and rushed, it can just as easily stall it and cost you far more in the long run. We all know the cost of a bad hire, it’s not just salary or recruitment fee, but when you factor in time and impact internally and to your clients, it’s worth avoiding.

As always, we’re happy to chat if you want a sounding board, even if you aren’t a client or even actively hiring, at very least we’ll be able to point you in the right direction. 

Thanks for reading,
Ben Thompson