In a perfect world, you would be supported by a robust team of recruiters working tirelessly to find the best candidates out there. But sadly, it's not a perfect world, and your small businesses — like many out there — relies on one dedicated HR generalist who, on top of your laundry list of duties, needs to single-handedly manage the full recruitment life cycle — from posting the open role to making the job offer and helping the new hire fill out paperwork on their first day.

in today's competitive market, top talent can receive and accept an offer in as few as 10 days.

So if you're one of those HR generalists who's flying solo, what can you do to stay in the game and ensure you're not only finding great candidates, but getting them to come on board? Here are five ways you can strengthen your recruitment and land the talent you need to help your business succeed.

So grab that cup of coffee (or the entire pot), and let's dive in.

1. set expectations with the hiring manager

Before you even publish the job description and conduct your first LinkedIn search, be sure that you and the hiring manager are aligned on what makes for a quality candidate. After all, when time is of the essence, you can't afford to screen dozens of candidates who ultimately may not fit the bill.

Get ahead of the game by having a "Hiring Manager Worksheet" available to your company's managers that makes your hiring workflow common practice — that way they can begin to anticipate your needs when they know they're going to have to hire in the near future.

A strong worksheet should cover these critical questions:

1. What are the primary responsibilities of the role you're hiring for?
2. What are the five most essential skills your ideal candidate should have?
3. What salary expectations will top talent have, and how can our company offer a compensation package that meets those expectations?
4. How can we interview candidates as efficiently as possible? Rather than holding multiple rounds, can we have one in-person interview with a small panel of people? Who should attend?

Having these questions documented and incorporated into your hiring process will ensure you and the hiring manager know exactly what to look for in a candidate and how quickly you need to move in order to keep top talent interested. This will be especially helpful in times of high-volume hiring and instances in which the hiring manager might be traveling, thus limiting in-person collaboration in this early stage.

work with the hiring manager to define the ideal candidate and set expectations for how quickly you need to move.

And to avoid reinventing the wheel, once you have the desired skills, qualifications and experience in place for the open role, start a database to archive this information so that it's readily available the next time you need to hire for a similar role.

2. entice your workforce to act as recruiters

When you're a one-stop shop for all things HR, you simply don't have the time to scour LinkedIn, attend networking events and sift through hundreds of resumes in order to identify top candidates. Even worse, you may gloss over a strong candidate because the only time you've had to read those resumes was at the end of a long day when you're at your most bleary-eyed.

But fear not, you actually have a small army of people eager to help you identify strong candidates: Your current workforce.

Tapping into your current employees' professional networks is an optimal way to build the talent pipeline you need — not just for the role you're recruiting now, but over the long term as well. No one can sell your company's culture and mission quite like your workforce, which is why 46 percent of candidates want to learn about your company's operations directly from your current employees.

What are the advantages to a "divide and conquer" approach to finding the best candidates?

• Your employees will be able to evangelize your company's culture, values and mission, to make sure the candidate will be a great fit if they're brought on board.
• Getting a referral from an employee who works closely with this role means they already have a strong idea of what will make for a successful candidate — whether it's an expert skill set, experience or even pure stamina.
• Receiving strong referrals means minimizing (or eliminating) the time you devote to screening resumes and weeding out those candidates who aren't qualified.

Not only will your employees feel empowered to play an active role in bringing new colleagues on board, but hiring referral candidates can also benefit your business in a number of ways:

• Referral candidates save an organization about $3,000 in recruitment costs per hire.
• They're 55 percent faster to hire, compared to candidates sourced through career sites.
• And they're likely to stay with your company for 25 percent longer.

3. prioritize internal recruiting and advancement

When you're strapped for time, it's easy to place too much emphasis on external recruiting and gloss over strong contenders for the position who may be right under your nose. After all, your ideal candidate may be that superstar you brought on board two years ago, who's been receiving rave reviews from their manager and is hungry for new challenges.

20% less likely to leave in their first two years than those sourced externally.

Building an internal recruiting program means advancing candidates who have not only provided value in their current roles, but are already familiar with the ins and outs of your company and its culture — a major plus, given today's trend of rapidly decreasing employee tenure. And when that promotion drives employee engagement and satisfaction with their work and your company, they'll stick around for longer, which means less hiring for you to do down the road.

So in addition to keeping institutional knowledge on board, fostering a workplace that rewards hard work and spurring employee engagement, internal hires can bolster your company's productivity and bottom line. Here’s how.

• Internal hires regularly outperform their colleagues recruited externally.
• They're 20 percent less likely to leave in their first two years.
• Their starting salary is an average of 18 to 20 percent less than that of external candidates.
• And they not only score higher on performance reviews, but are 61 percent less likely to be fired than external hires.

4. adopt recruiting technology to drive efficiency

Technology is your strongest ally when you don't have a team to support you. There's no reason to go it alone when there are a bevy of new technologies available to simplify your hiring process by eliminating many of the manual tasks you're currently taking the time to do.

For example, adopting an applicant tracking system (ATS), intelligent screening software or an AI for recruiting platform can eliminate the need to personally screen the hundreds of resumes you're likely to receive for an open role.

And given how quickly top candidates can leave the market (remember that 10-day stat we mentioned earlier?), add efficiency to the first round of your interview process by using on-demand video platforms to save you time scheduling phone calls and screening these candidates yourself.

screening resumes takes an estimated 23 hours of a recruiter's time for a single hire.

But look, we know how hard it can be to get the buy-in — and budget — from senior leadership needed to bring these tools on board. So here are some stats you can use when making the case for recruiting technology:

• Companies that have incorporated recruiting chatbots into their hiring process report higher levels of candidate engagement, faster hiring times and time saved thanks to task automation.
• After adopting recruitment technologies, insurance giant Esurance decreased their cost per hire 41 percent while improving their candidate experience by 36 net promoter score points.
• It takes an estimated 23 hours of a recruiter's time just to screen resumes for a single hire. (That's half your workweek!)

5. partner with a staffing firm

If you're flying solo at your company, you don't need the added stress of making the wrong hire, which can cost your business hundreds of thousands of dollars. So to maximize your reach, consider developing a partnership with a professional staffing firm. Staffing experts are just that: experts at building strong relationships with top talent — especially passive candidates — and matching companies with candidates who are the best possible fit.

In addition to gaining access to their nationwide pools of talent, a staffing firm's deep expertise in your industry will also add value to your overall hiring game. After all, you're not just hiring for one role today — you'll need to continue navigating the waters of an increasingly demanding job market in the months and years ahead.

Interested in learning more about how a staffing partner can help you find your next great hire and make you feel less like a party of one at a crowded restaurant? Head on over to the Randstad Learning Center to read about the ways a staffing firm can help strengthen your talent acquisition strategy and gain additional insights into making a great hire.