11 Guidelines for Hiring the Best Employees for Your eCommerce Business

Remember the quote, “A company is only as good as the people it keeps,” which implies that the quality of a company’s employees is what truly makes or breaks it.

Your business’s employees are its greatest strength because they contribute significantly to every aspect of its success and growth. They help your business grow and are mainly responsible for the brand’s products and service quality.

And, let’s face it, your business goals are useless when you hire the wrong employees. This is because your workers are primarily responsible for running your business and accomplishing all its goals.

For example, a company trying to reach all its prospective customers worldwide should only employ customer support agents that can attend to diverse groups of customers.

Bad hires can also cost your company money. According to research, one bad hire can cost a company up to 30% of that employee’s first year’s salary.

Since companies do not want to lose money, they adopt extensive practices and hiring strategies to ensure they only recruit the best employees.

However, due to the 2020 global pandemic, the eCommerce industry has expanded dramatically, increasing the competition for eCommerce talent among businesses. Because eCommerce hiring is expected to increase by 32% in 2022, your eCommerce business must up its hiring game.

This article will discuss guidelines for hiring the best employees for your eCommerce business. But let’s first consider eCommerce businesses and their hiring needs.

What Is an eCommerce Business?

An eCommerce business is a company or brand that conducts its buying and selling over the internet. It is when a business markets its products and transacts with customers worldwide over the internet.

Some eCommerce businesses only sell over the internet, while some sell over the internet but still have physical stores in one or more locations.

Because eCommerce companies operate their business online, they must create a website as their digital storefront. This digital storefront allows you to conduct business activities like showcasing your products and services, providing customer support, and accepting payments. 

Like a brick-and-mortar store, your eCommerce website also enables you to provide a branded experience for your customers. You get to customize your online store with your brand’s color code. It also allows you to build customer relationships even though you might never meet your customers in person.

Although people tend to think that eCommerce businesses rarely need to hire employees because they operate online, it is not so. Online stores still need to hire professional employees to complete tasks and conduct their business smoothly over the internet. 

Let us briefly see a few essential roles eCommerce companies hire employees for to help them run their business smoothly.

Content Manager

A content manager is an employee responsible for establishing your eCommerce business’ presence online. They ensure your business has relevant content that properly represents it online.

Content managers oversee your team of content creators to ensure they make quality and unique content. The quality content, in turn, helps your eCommerce website rank higher in search engines. 

Data Analyst

An eCommerce data analyst is responsible for tracking, collecting, and analyzing your business data. They then use this data analysis to make business suggestions that drive sales in your online store.

Employees in the data and analytics positions provide your eCommerce business with an effective growth strategy. They also forecast business trends and help you prepare for them.

Web Developers

They are responsible for writing codes that effectively design and maintain your eCommerce website. eCommerce developers help you create an efficient store that gives your online customers a great shopping experience.

Your developers can build your eCommerce website from scratch, or they could use website builder software to do the brunt of the work.

Logistics Manager

Logistics managers control the storage and distribution of products to customers. They process shipments and ensure that your products meet customers in good condition and at the right time.

Also known as supply chain managers, they sometimes collaborate with third-party shipping platforms to deliver products cost-effectively. Logistics managers supervise and coordinate your eCommerce company’s supply department to ensure its smooth operation.

Customer Service Specialists

Customer service representatives are responsible for attending to customers and answering their questions online. They resolve customers’ issues and provide helpful information about products and services they might need.

Your customers turn to them first when they have problems. And they use tools like emails and help desk software to communicate with customers and provide support at every step of their sales journey.

eCommerce Specialist

An eCommerce specialist is an overall manager that oversees all aspects of your eCommerce business. They create and implement business strategies to drive your company’s growth.

Employees in eCommerce specialist positions are required to have specialized knowledge of that position. Some companies only hire eCommerce specialists with previous experience in the eCommerce industry due to the importance of the role.

Why Should You Hire the Best Employees?

Beyond creating the best products or even opting for eCommerce funding to support your small business, you must employ the right people to fill positions and run your business. 

Your eCommerce business can only be successful and stand the test of time with the right people in it. Here are a few benefits of hiring the right employees for your eCommerce business.

Cost Reduction

Not only is the hiring process tedious, but it is also cost-consuming. Aside from the onboarding process, the average American company spends between $2,000 and $5,000 to hire one new employee.

Imagine spending all that money just to hire the wrong employee who contributes nothing to your business or having to devote more training to an inefficient hire.

Employing only the right workers for your eCommerce business saves unnecessary costs by ensuring you do not have to start the process all over again.

Better Brand Reputation

The better your employee selection, the better your business’ reputation. The right employees act as good ambassadors for your business and convince prospective customers to patronize you.

For example, efficient customer support agents will provide the proper support for customers and help them solve issues. This would increase customer satisfaction and make them spread the word about their fantastic customer experience.

Higher Overall Productivity

Your business is only as productive as its people. And even one bad hire can dramatically affect your business by reducing its productivity.

Your business will struggle to meet its goals and complete milestones if you hire unproductive employees. It also affects other employees by making them spend time correcting the errors of incompetent employees.

Hiring the right employees will allow your workers to spend more time on their jobs than they do correcting others’ mistakes. It also lets your business grow continuously and surpass milestones.

More Lead Conversions and Sales

Bad hires represent your brand poorly to customers and give them a terrible buying experience. And unsatisfied customers tend to leave bad reviews that could devastate your business.

Bad reviews don’t just give your business a bad reputation, but they also scare prospective customers off.

Existing buyers might also leave your business for another after reading bad reviews to avoid it happening to them.

People will only patronize your brand when they trust it to satisfy them, and your business can only serve its customers and make sales when it has good-quality employees running it.

Higher Employee Morale

A bad hire in a team can put a damper on other team members’ spirits and affect their work efficiency. Having lousy hires could also create a toxic work environment because team members would have to pick up the slacks and may resent them for it.

The proper employee selection makes your workers feel good about working for you. It also allows them to spend more time on new and exciting projects than on repeating tasks and correcting mistakes.

However, owning an eCommerce business enables you to hire diverse employees worldwide. This further complicates the hiring process, as some of the candidates that apply for positions could speak different languages or reside in countries with different time zones. 

As a result, eCommerce businesses use various hiring tools and software to streamline recruiting and make the process seamless. Let’s see a few hiring tools your HR teams could use to simplify their hiring process.

Popular Hiring Tools And Software

Applicant Tracking System (ATS)

Applicant tracking systems are software or apps that help recruiters collect and track applications during employee hiring. 

This software help hirers sort through up to thousands of job applications and select only the ideal candidates. It does this by scanning each resume for keywords that they must have inputted.

As it selects appropriate candidates, it also ranks them. This makes it easy for hiring managers to know the best candidates to employ for the role.

Job Boards

Job boards are websites that allow companies to advertise their job openings and connect with prospective employees. 

It connects your business with job seekers and ensures that you get the best candidate to fill job positions. Some job boards like Indeed help you screen candidates that apply to ensure they have the potentials you require for that role.

Chatbots

Chatbots automate the hiring process and allow you to communicate with hiring leads. They provide automated questions and responses to job seekers interested in a particular position. 

They also help you attract and keep the attention of qualified candidates by automating conversations with them. With a chatbot, your company can continue the hiring process even after business hours.

Some chatbots integrate with job boards, your eCommerce website, or even social media platforms. This enables people to reach you directly and ask job-related questions from different platforms.

Recruitment CRMs

Recruitment CRMs are software that helps you manage all aspects of the hiring process. It enables you to streamline and track communication with candidates.

They ensure you hire the best employees by helping you reach out to the most qualified candidates and maintaining a relationship with them.

Some recruitment CRMs also store candidate information for you and provide it the next time you want to hire employees for similar positions. 

Social Media

You can use social media platforms like Facebook or Twitter to connect with highly qualified professionals. Social media content also gives interested candidates more information that lets them know if they want to work with your company.

Since people can always lie on their resumes, social media is a handy tool in screening your job applicants. It allows you to browse their content to see if they are the right employees to fill that position.

Best Guidelines for Hiring the Best Employees

Create Concise Job Descriptions

Since your job description lets your prospective candidates know if they would enjoy working for you, it should be as clear and detailed as possible.

First, make job titles very clear to ensure that it attracts the candidates that are suitable for the role. Then provide an overview that summarizes that role to let its readers determine if they would be interested without wasting their time reading further.

The content in your job descriptions should be well-written to give thorough information about job roles and commitments. It should include the necessary criteria that relate to prospective applicants and the specific qualifications and traits the position requires.

Consider Former Applicants

The hiring process is very tedious and cost-consuming. And it would be even more tasking if you start from scratch every time you had to hire a new employee.

A former applicant who did not make the cut for that job could be the ideal employee for the new position. You should look through your existing network of former job applicants for prospective employees ideal for the role you are currently hiring for. This speeds up the hiring process and helps you cut costs.

Recruitment CRMs like Zoho recruit help you store all your existing applicants’ data and allow you to screen them for new job positions in your eCommerce business.

Include Present Employees

Employees working in similar roles in your eCommerce business would be great at determining if your candidates possess the right qualities for certain positions. Your current team members can also interview prospects to ensure they would fit into the team properly.

Your employees could also assist you with answering applicants’ questions about the company. They give the most accurate description of business activities to let customers know what it would be like to work for your eCommerce business.

Besides the hiring process, employees are also good at recommending job openings to people with the right qualities. Including your present employees in hiring can hasten the hiring process and reduce hiring costs.

Screen Applicants Properly

It is not enough to just create a fancy job application that compels the most qualified job seekers to apply. But you must also sort through them to ensure you only hire the best employees for your eCommerce business.

You should start by finding and eliminating the least qualified applicants. Then consider the preferred candidates and inspect their credentials thoroughly. You must also inspect their work experience and values to determine if they would work well with your company.

After the proper screening, you can shortlist the most preferred candidates and invite them for interviews.

A helpful tip is to note questions about your prospects while screening them and ask them during their interviews.

Conduct Thorough Interviews

Interviews are valuable because they help you make a good impression on your shortlisted candidates. So you must ensure you conduct them properly to avoid scaring them off.

Since interviews usually involve many steps, sending your selected candidates an email with thorough details about the process is good practice. This helps you avoid miscommunication and lets them know what to prepare for.

Most roles in an eCommerce business do not require an in-person interview. But you could use video conferencing tools like Zoom to conduct face-to-face interviews that let you pick non-verbal cues online.

Make Quick and Competitive Offers

The eCommerce industry is growing rapidly, increasing the competition for good employees among businesses. You must make offers to the best candidate that satisfies your criteria immediately after screening and interviewing them.

Sometimes, candidates reject job offers, and you need to be proactive and make an offer to the next best candidate, so you do not lose them to competitors.

You should also make competitive job offers within your budget that make the best candidates eager to work for you. 

Make Quick and Competitive Offers

Businesses can sometimes become desperate and hire employees too soon. When you rush into hiring, you risk hiring the wrong person.

You must first devote just enough time to determining what your company requires and what qualities an employee should possess to meet those requirements. Then you can devise an effective hiring strategy to help you select the best candidates from your pool of candidates.

Hiring at the right time lets your business access, screen, and make offers to the right candidate. It also allows you to know what your business can afford so you can make cost-effective offers.

Use Recruitment Software

It can be difficult to properly publicize your job openings in order to attract the best candidates. Many HR departments find it difficult and time-consuming to sort through hundreds of job applications to fill a single position.

Recruitment tools assist you in advertising job openings and connecting with qualified candidates for positions in your eCommerce business. Breezy HR, for example, will screen thousands of resumes in record time. Following that, the tool will present your eCommerce business with candidates who are ideal for that position.

They also help you communicate with interested candidates and store their information to use later.

Create Quality Content Online

Most people are careful and do a lot of research before applying for a company’s job role. And the smaller your business is, the more skeptical people are to work for you. 

You should create relevant content on your eCommerce website and social media platforms that properly represent your brand to candidates. So when prospects who have never heard about your brand before visit your website, they leave with a good impression that compels them to apply.

Quality content also ranks your website higher in search engine result pages (SERPs). And this attracts candidates to you by making it easy for them to find your job offers.

Always Use Social Media

People are not always what they say they are. And social media is a handy tool that gives you some insight into prospective employees. 

Social media will enable you to know your candidate’s personality to determine if they would fit into your eCommerce company. Additionally, you should simply browse through your candidates’ social media pages to see their content rather than questioning them about their values or interests.

Social media platforms like LinkedIn let your HR team post job adverts and connect with job seekers. You also widen your talent pool when you reach out to specific people with potential you want to work with online.

Keep Updating the Hiring Process

A growing company will always be hiring. There will always be a new position to fill or a person to replace. As a result, you should constantly improve your hiring process in order to stay current and hire the best employees for your eCommerce business.

Examine hiring trends and new hiring processes to see which works best for your company. You should also update your recruiting tools to take advantage of any new features that may streamline your hiring process.

Additionally, it’s important to learn from past hiring errors. With the right questions in mind, you can quickly and effectively screen potential customers.

In Conclusion

Because your company requires the best employees to grow and reach its full potential, you must exercise extreme caution when hiring and screening candidates.

The hiring process is also time-consuming and expensive. As a result, you should develop an effective hiring strategy and methods to ensure that you only hire qualified employees for your eCommerce business.