One of the most important thing that any business can do is hire the best talent available for them. Because it is so important and because companies want to get the best possible person for every role, it is not surprising that recruitments costs make up a huge percentage of the average business’ annual expenditure.

That being said, most businesses could easily slash the amount they spend on recruitment and keep it at more manageable levels. So, if you’re currently spending a lot of cash on hiring the right people, take a look at the following tips to keep the costs associated with that more reasonable:

Work Out How Much Your Spending

The first step to cutting your recruitment costs down to size is, of course, knowing how much you’re spending now. Work out exactly how much you’re spending on the whole process from turnover to admin to advertising roles and then you can start to identify where you are spending too much so you can start making changes.

Hire Smart, Save Money

Perhaps the biggest cause of too high recruitment costs is choosing the wrong candidate. If you do that, then not only have you wasted a lot of time and money on recruitment in the first place, but you’ll have to go through it all again to find someone more suitable. Add to that things like severance pay and hiring temps to cover until a more suitable employee is in place, and you can easily see how costs add up. So, if you do nothing else, hire smart the first time around.

 

Automate as Much as Possible

There is absolutely no point in employing excessive levels of HR staff when so much of the process can be automated right now. From applicant tracking systems, which significantly cuts down on the amount of time and energy it takes to manage one’s talent pool to messaging apps that make contacting applicants after they have expressed interest so much simpler, there are countless technologies that will come in at a fraction of the cost of using humans. So, be smart and automate.

Make Use of Screening

I could have included this in the automation section, but it’s worth taking a moment to discuss screening on its own. There are still too few businesses who are using applicant screening technology to narrow down the field and find the most suitable candidates right off the bat. This is bad because manually screening applicants even if it’s just going over their resumes, takes so much time, effort and money that it is literally sucking some companies dry. So, if you want to get the right people and spend as little as possible, build pre-screening into your recruitment process from the beginning.

Make Use of Social Media

There are still a lot of business owners and HR staff who think that using social media to find candidates is a bit of a joke – it isn’t. Actually, it makes a lot of sense to use what are essentially free platforms used by billions of people all over the world, to recruit new talent. The key is to use the most appropriate platform, which is likely to be the platform your ideal employee is using and to screen them as extensively as you would any other candidate. In fact, screening them might be a whole lot easier when you can see what they’re up to on social media!

Recruit More Quickly

It’s simple really, when you cut the amount of time you’re giving yourself to recruit, you’ll spend less resources and therefore less cash on the process. Cutting recruitment time can also make you and your candidates much more focused and it will mean you don’t have to try and cover a position with fewer staff or bring in an expensive temp for quite as long, too.

 

Always Offer Market Value

Trying to save money by offering candidates less than market value for their skills is a false economy. It is far better to offer them a fair salary right upfront, so that you don’t end up having to spend way longer recruiting someone who’s willing to accept less, nor do you have to waste time hiring someone who isn’t up to the job and then re-recruiting at a later date.

If you do as many of these things as you can when you’re next recruiting a new employee, you should notice that not only do you spend a more reasonable sum of money, but also that the process is much more simple too!