Finding the talent to help high-growth SMEs to scale
In 2018, advisory group Interreg Europe published a piece of research which showed that across Europe today, there are 23 million small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) that collectively account for two-thirds of all private sector jobs across the continent.
Access to finance has always been recognized as one of the perennial challenges facing SMEs, however those firms who are successful in securing funding, often then find themselves then facing a double-edged sword. They’ve got the capital they need to scale their business but they’re under pressure to attract the right talent to help them achieve this growth and meet their investors’ expectations. This situation is typically exacerbated by the fact that they operate in a market where talent demand far outstrips supply; hence the often-quoted ‘war for talent’.
The challenge facing high-growth SMEs is how to build the infrastructure needed to support the company’s development in a way that doesn’t consume their leaders’ time and attention, at a period when they need to be focused on delivering new growth targets.
From a talent perspective, this means developing recruitment capability to compete with what the biggest and best employers offer. Successful recruitment is key to growth and as such, needs to be managed by professionals dedicated to finding the very best talent.
This leads many companies to work with recruitment agencies because they are specialists in their market, but this is not a scalable solution. Because specialist recruitment agencies work with multiple clients across a specific industry where talent is in short supply, they tend to be more focused on placing the candidate, rather than meeting the needs of any one client – how many other employers has that agency sent the same candidate to? This is where an RPO provider may be a better solution; recruiters dedicated to hiring candidates for you and only you, significantly increases your ability to acquire the talent you need.
At Parisima, we’re passionate about helping smaller businesses to compete with the biggest and the best, by providing cost-effective solutions that enable them to attract the very best talent to grow. Not only do we find your talent, we also build the recruitment infrastructure within the business to sustain long-term growth.
