This is a guest post from Neil Purcell, CEO of Talent Works International, as part of our Recruiting Weekly Series. Neil shares his tips on how to ensure top quality hires with a limited budget.
When budgets are tight for businesses, recruitment isn’t always the main priority. Hiring new team members uses time, money and resource that could be spent elsewhere, particularly in times of crisis. The threat of a post-COVID 19 recession is making many businesses question their recruitment strategies; forcing them to think about cost-cutting measures or freezing recruitment entirely. However, sometimes, new hires are essential, especially if the world we are about to enter is changing rapidly.
To attract the best talent to drive your business forward, you don’t have to spend thousands; you simply need to be smarter with your recruitment strategy. Pausing recruitment won’t help you to grow but altering your approach to recruiting and thinking a little differently could help give you that competitive edge.
So how can business owners work with limited recruitment budgets and still ensure top quality hires?
Improve Your EVP
It may seem obvious, but reducing your need for recruitment will cut costs. Improve your employee value proposition, look after your employees, invest in their development and give them valuable benefits; these factors can all play a part in improving retention rates and reduce the need for recruiting. Refining your EVP will help ensure you do not have to replace volumes of existing staff, reducing your recruitment costs now and in the future.
Automate Your Recruitment
By automating the recruitment process, or at least some of it, you will save valuable time and money. Automation will also increase overall efficiency. Don’t worry; it won’t completely replace HR teams or recruiters. Instead, it will allow them to work in a more streamlined way. This will help to cut recruitment costs.
Services you should consider automating are; programmatic job advertising, applicant tracking and candidate screening; these are all time-consuming tasks which can free up your team to work on more essential elements.
Automating candidate communications will improve the candidate experience enormously and reflect on your employer brand positively. Keeping in touch with candidates is an integral part of the recruitment process and should be done at all stages; it keeps them in the loop and ensures they stay engaged. Plus, it means even if they’re unsuccessful, they’re likely to think highly of you; you haven’t just ignored them, and there’s a personal connection. Automating candidate communications like emails confirming applications can reduce your overall cost per hire by up to 39%.
Start Building a Talent Pool
Advertising a job costs $500 per day on average. According to studies by LinkedIn, only 30% of companies can fill a role within 30 days; others can take up to 4 months. Recruiting using traditional methods can prove pretty costly.
Having a ready-to-hire talent pool eliminates the need to advertise every vacancy that becomes available. It means you can hire quickly and reduce costs. A talent pool also gives you a diverse mix of candidates coming from a range of sources, whether it’s headhunting, social media, previous applications, or even registering through a careers site. You can be confident that candidates are interested in you as an employer as they have agreed to communication. Having talent at your fingertips will reduce the cost of recruiting in the future.
Involve Your Employees
Employee referral programmes are an ingenious way of improving employee engagement and recruiting on a budget. Referred candidates know a lot about your business from the get-go and trust their friends and family that you are a great employer, so they’re instantly more excited about working for you. Many of these individuals have hard to source skills; however, you’ll find they have a similar background to your existing staff as they’ve met at university or in previous employment.
82% of employers claim that employee referrals generate the best return on investment; they give better quality hires and reduce time to hire.
Use Smarter Targeting
With advanced digital marketing techniques and targeting capabilities, finding the right talent on a budget is much simpler. Targeting means you aren’t wasting money advertising your vacancies to anyone and everyone; your adverts reach relevant, qualified and interested people. You can ensure that your adverts are appearing on websites where your target candidates are spending time. You can also reach qualified people on social media in their spare time or even remind engaged audiences that have been on your careers site to apply. Save your business valuable time and money with smarter recruitment marketing campaigns.
Match Your Jobs to Searches
It’s crucial that you research before writing a job description. Write a long-winded, confusing or vague job description, and you won’t appeal to top talent. Or, if you write the perfect job description, but it doesn’t match the job titles or roles that relevant people are searching for, no one suitable will find it.
You may think fancy job titles will entice the best talent; however, they may not understand the job required. Plus, it can lead to overqualified and unsuitable individuals applying for lower-skilled jobs or fewer applicants because your advert doesn’t appear in searches. Make sure your job titles match similar roles in your industry, that people will search for and understand. Then ensure your job descriptions are clear. A job description is a waste of time and money if audiences can’t see what the job involves clearly.
Refine Your Screening Process
Interviews can be time-consuming and expensive. If you want to reduce recruitment costs, a robust screening process is essential. Reduce the number of interviewees, and you’ll save valuable time. After initial screening, if it’s appropriate to the role, consider asking candidates to complete an assessment test. They can indicate not only skill levels but dedication to the job.
If a skills test wouldn’t be appropriate, consider video interviewing as a cheaper and faster alternative to a face-to-face interview. The COVID-19 pandemic has made zoom calls and video chats standard, so why not use them as a cost-effective recruitment solution? Video interviews will help you to screen candidates quickly ensuring the best are invited to meet you face-to-face.
Outsource Where Possible
Many people see outsourcing as an expensive approach, but outsourcing your hiring efforts to professional recruiters can save you money in the long run and free up your HR teams. By using expert recruiters, you’ll be able to find better quality hires as they have access to more information and knowledge around talent sources. Plus, it’s less risk than hiring someone to take on the recruitment efforts yourself. Outsourcing can significantly relieve HR departments and provide cost-effective results. With experts managing your process, recruitment will be efficient and minimises the risk of expensive mistakes.
Author, Neil Purcell – CEO of Talent Works International
Talent Works International works to solve talent attraction problems for companies across the globe. From RPO services to recruitment marketing, Talent Works is dedicated to helping businesses scale and is the official talent partner of Tech Nation; working with the most innovative UK tech startups.
