When budgets are tight for businesses, recruitment can’t always take a priority. Finding the right talent uses time, money and resource that could be spent elsewhere, taking care of existing employees. The impending threat of a post-COVID19 recession is making many businesses question their future recruitment efforts and forcing them to think about cost-cutting measures.
When it comes to sourcing and hiring talent, cutting corners can often mean higher costs in the long run; it’s very much a buy cheap, buy twice situation. Refusing to recruit and freezing hiring altogether could lead to employee burnout and the eventual high recruitment costs of replacing your worn-out staff. Similarly, if you rush into hiring the first person that comes along, as you believe it will be convenient and save money, you run the risk of a lower quality hire. According to a recent survey, bad hires produce lower-quality work, delay company goals, are more likely to make an early exit and can even cause other employees to leave. All of which are costly mistakes that businesses can’t afford to make, especially in times of financial crisis.
So how can organisations work with limited recruitment budgets without impacting the quality of hires?
Embrace Automation
Automating your recruitment process, or at least some elements of it, will not only save you valuable time and money, but it will increase overall efficiency and is proven to generate a better quality of hire. Automation doesn’t replace HR teams or recruiters but allows them to do their job in a more streamlined way, which will help cut recruitment costs. Some of the services you can automate include; programmatic job advertising, applicant tracking and candidate screening; all of which have previously been time-consuming tasks.
Automating candidate communications not only saves time and resources but improves the candidate experience and consequently, your employer brand. It’s crucial to maintain a relationship with candidates throughout the entire hiring process not just when they’re actively being interviewed and considered but also if they’re unsuccessful; it’s only polite to let them know. Automated email flows nurture candidates, ensuring they stay engaged, don’t lose interest in the role and may consider applying for a more suitable position in the future. Owing to this, automating candidate communications can reduce your overall cost per hire by up to 39%.
Build a Talent Pool
On average, advertising a vacancy costs $500 per day. According to LinkedIn, only 30% of companies can fill a vacant role within 30 days; others can take up to 4 months. So, it’s clear that recruiting can become pretty costly.
Having a ready-to-hire talent pool can significantly reduce these costs as it eliminates the need to advertise every single vacancy and results in faster hires. Building a talent pool ensures that you have a diverse mix of qualified and appropriate candidates at your fingertips. The candidates have all registered interest in your company showing a willingness to hear about you and current vacancies, which means they’re more than likely to accept an offer.
Combining a memorable recruitment marketing campaign, data management and candidate nurturing strategy, you can significantly reduce the cost of recruiting in the future as you’ll have a pool of talent ready to dip into as roles become available.
Introduce Employee Referral Programmes
Employee referral programmes are a great way of enticing new hires on a lower budget. As these candidates know someone within your business and are aware of how great you are as an employer, their willingness to work for you and knowledge of your company is second to none. Employee referral programmes give employers access to individuals with hard to source skills, as it’s likely that most connections have a similar background to your existing staff. It’s also expected that candidates will have been pre-qualified by the individual recommending them; after all, no one wants to endorse an unsuitable hire!
82% of employers rate employee referrals above all other sources for generating the best return on investment as they produce better quality hires and can fill roles quickly. In fact, statistics show 1 in 5 referrals result in a hire.
Referral programmes also help to improve employee engagement and retention, as your existing employees feel they are helping the business to grow and contributing positively.
Target the right talent
With digital marketing techniques becoming more advanced every day, the possibilities for targeting are endless. This means you aren’t wasting budget advertising your vacancies where anyone can see them and apply; instead, you’re ensuring your adverts reach relevant, qualified and interested individuals. Whether your ads are appearing on websites where your target candidates are spending time, reaching individuals that meet your criteria on social media or even displaying for those who have been on your website; with new technologies the possibilities are endless. Save yourself time and money with smarter recruitment marketing campaigns.
Optimise job listings to match what candidates are searching for
If you need to advertise a job through traditional methods like job boards, make sure you do your research before crafting a job description. Write a poor job description or fail to optimise it for what your ideal candidate will search for and you’ll be writing it (and paying for it) twice.
Fancy job titles may seem like a way to attract the best talent; however, it can lead to overqualified and unsuitable individuals applying or a lack of applicants because they can’t find your advert in the first place. Make sure your job titles match other roles in your industry, that people are likely to be searching for and understand. Then ensure your job descriptions are clear and concise. Yes, we want to grab attention and stand out from the competition, but this is a waste of time and money unless candidates can see what the job involves and if they’re suitable for the role.
Reduce the number of interviewees
Interviews are a time-consuming and expensive part of the recruitment process; sometimes they can mean members of staff are spending a number of significant hours in their working week in meetings with candidates. If you want to save recruitment costs, a robust screening process is essential as it reduces the number of interviewees and saves valuable time; we all know time is money. After initial screening, consider asking candidates to complete an assessment test (if it’s appropriate to the role). If a candidate completes them, not only will you be able to see how good they are, but you can see their dedication for taking the time to complete it and the quality of the result. If the role doesn’t have any requirements you can test for, consider video interviewing as a cheaper and quicker alternative to a face to face interview. COVID-19 has made zoom calls and video chats the norm, and there are ways to use them after the crisis as a cost-effective recruitment solution. Video interviews will help you to whittle down your candidates and ensure only the best are invited to a face-to-face interview, saving time and money.
Outsource your recruitment process
While it’s often considered an expensive approach to recruiting, outsourcing your hiring efforts to expert recruiters can save you a significant amount of money. By using experts in recruitment and in specific industries, you’ll have access to all the secrets and know-how which will find better quality hires. Whether it’s working on your employer brand, filling urgent vacancies, building a talent pool or working on plans for expansion; outsourcing can help take the pressure off HR and provide cost-effective results. It means your recruitment process will be streamlined and efficient from the get-go and avoids the risk of costly mistakes.
Reduce employee turnover with a better EVP
A final way to reduce your recruitment costs is to reduce your need for recruitment. By refining your employee value proposition, taking care of your existing staff and giving them benefits that are not only useful but enhance their life and career, you’ll improve retention rates. An appealing employee value proposition gives you a competitive edge, retains candidates that support your brand vision and values as well as encourages employees to act as ambassadors for your brand. It’s reported that a well-executed EVP can reduce employee turnover by 69%. If your talented people want to remain working with you even during a global crisis, you’ll save on recruitment costs when finances are tight. Refining your EVP will help prevent the replacement of existing staff and will reduce recruitment costs on a long-term basis.
To attract talent, you don’t have to spend a lot of money; you just need to be smarter with your recruitment strategy. If a recession hits, pausing recruitment won’t help your business to progress, but altering your approach to staffing and thinking outside of the box could help give you that competitive edge. If you need help with intelligent recruitment marketing, building talent pools, refining your EVP or outsourcing any other aspect of your recruitment process, the Talent Works team will be happy to help, so get in touch.
