You have an ugly baby

Many SMEs struggle to hire.

Not because there’s one big obvious problem. It’s usually a combination of things. Some practical. Some financial. Some cultural. Some self-inflicted.

And, if we’re being honest about it, some of it comes down to a simple fact that many business owners don’t see clearly enough:

Your business is your baby… and your baby might be a bit… ugly.

What I mean is this: You see the business from the inside.
You know what you’re building.
You know where it’s going.
You know what the opportunity is.

You live and breathe it.
But the outside world doesn’t see what you see and, more importantly, nor should they be expected to.

They’re making a judgement based on what’s in front of them. The role. The brand. The people. The package. The risk. The upside.

And very often SMEs just aren’t presenting a compelling enough proposition.

“We’re growing” isn’t a proposition. Everyone’s growing, or says they are.
“We’re hiring” isn’t particularly engaging

Why should someone join you? Why should they leave where they are? Why take the risk? What does this thing become for them if it goes well? What do they get beyond a salary and a job title? What does your business stand for, what do you care about?

A lot of businesses never really answer those questions properly.
They just assume people will somehow “get it”.

Almost always, they don’t.

And that’s before money enters the conversation.

Many SMEs simply can’t compete on salary.

You’re not going toe-to-toe with large corporates or venture-backed businesses on pay, benefits, brand or perceived security. So if you’re weaker on salary and vague on story, and the business itself doesn’t look especially attractive from the outside, you’ve got a problem before you’ve even started.

Then there’s timing… which is usually poor.

A lot of smaller businesses try to do too much without growing the team alongside the work. The workload builds. People stretch. Standards wobble a bit. Things slow down. The business starts carrying more than it should and everyone just absorbs it for a while. That’s normal enough. But it also means hiring often starts from a place of pressure rather than planning. And pressure is rarely the moment people do their clearest thinking.

Agencies are another part of this. They’re expensive. Or they feel expensive. Sometimes they do a decent job. Sometimes they don’t. Sometimes the brief is vague. Sometimes expectations are unrealistic. Sometimes the business wants a miracle for a fee it resents paying in the first place. So agencies become one more thing SMEs are half-in and half-out of.
Used when desperate, blamed when it doesn’t work, dropped when cash feels tight.

And underneath all of that, quite often, there’s no real hiring structure or experience anyway.

No clear sense of what “good” actually looks like. No proper process. No consistency. No real employer positioning.

None of this is unusual. In fact, it’s very very usual.

That’s the point.

Most SMEs are struggling to hire because they’re also dealing with multiple constraints at the same time. Cash. Visibility. confidence. Structure. Story. Time. And when all of those things stack up together, hiring gets hard very quickly.

So yes… sometimes you can’t afford to hire.

Sometimes you’re not attractive enough.

Sometimes you can’t compete on salary.

Sometimes you’re trying to do too much without adding people.

Sometimes agencies feel like too much money for too little certainty.

And sometimes, if we’re honest, you just don’t really know what to do.

That’s business. Your baby might be ugly. But there are ways to make it more attractive.

And until you’re willing to look at that properly, hiring is going to stay harder than it needs to be.