Small businesses have a big challenge when it comes to building their workforce. First, they sometimes don’t have a built-in HR department; if they do, HR personnel are often burdened with other job duties that prevent them from aggressively seeking out the best candidates. HR personnel in most small business environments are also often inexperienced recruiters that do not know how to leverage new media to attract the best recruits. Small business budgets also may not have the budget for paid job postings on job boards, let alone contracting a recruiting or staffing agency to get the next star for their business team.

Fortunately, small business owners have some viable options that can help them filter the applicant pool and source the best and most competitive candidates for the job.

LinkedIn Talent – By now everyone knows LinkedIn is a great resource for career networking. And with their new ads feature, the application is even better networked than before. But did you know about their talent searching services? From the three services offered: Talent Basic, Talent Finder and Talent Pro, small business owners can harness the full potential of LinkedIn for their company’s benefit. All three plans allow you to contact anyone on LinkedIn with InMail (LinkedIn messages), target searches with advanced filters, see more candidates through your search and save/manage candidates. Talent Finder and Talent Pro allow you to also search for talent with your groups.

Prices range from $39.95/month to $399.95/month. How much you’re able to gain from each feature will depend on which plan you purchase since each plan has a limit in terms of how much you can do.

Jobvite – Jobvite uses social recruiting to help you attract a wider pool of applicants. The platform allows your own employees to view available jobs and send both general and targeted invitations to their social media outlets such as Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin. Referring employees can also help track the interview process and provide valuable input on each candidate. Jobvite also searches through social media platforms of prospective candidates and matches them with jobs they may not have sought out otherwise.

Jobvite also hosts resources worth checking out despite your final decision to use their products. Their resource page offers social recruiting tips, hiring trends and webcasts. Jobvite’s cost ranges from $500 to $10,000 per month, depending on your needs.

The Resumator – An applicant tracking system, Resumator replaces your HR inbox with tools that make hiring easier and a more collaborative effort. The process includes 4 steps: publish, promote, source and hire. After publishing all your open jobs into applications, spread the word through social media and free job boards and grow your applicant pool organically through referrals and free job traffic. The Resumator lets you collaborate to get to your final decision through a real-time dashboard, activity feeds and on-demand reports.

Pricing and packages vary, ranging from 3 job openings at a time for $49/month to 30 at a time for $399/month.

BranchOut – Turning social media connections into professional contacts is just as useful when conducting ongoing recruitment. For this aim, check out BranchOut that is designed for jobseekers looking to leverage their Facebook connections to see if any of their friends’ companies are hiring. You can turn this to your advantage by getting into the same pool by using the application to search for potential employees.

InternMatch – Getting interns to work for you is a great way to keep salary costs low. Interns work hard, bring a fresh perspective to the table and are often an easy way to educate yourself on what’s cutting edge. Interns are also easy to get, but it’s hard to get the right intern that could turn into a valuable employee down the road. InternMatch also has a ton of great tools to help you with the process, including helping you craft an internship listing and offering work-study calculators. Small business owners can expect a $99 fee per listing. In return you get a 100% match guarantee and you’re assured that only students and grads are applying; InternMatch only allows those with active college email address to apply to your listing.