5 ways you can recruit more - and spend less!

For many organisations, recruitment is a real pain. It appears to be a dark art, that you always have to pay too much money for - either in advertising or agencies or in other ways.

But it doesn’t have to be like that. We have sought to utilise our years (decades in truth) of experience of recruitment to provide 5 useful tips that could save you a fortune.

Reduce your advertising spend

Adverting your jobs is critical to attracting candidates. However, merely placing them on your own website will produce very limited traffic. Instead, you probably need to use job boards.

But, I hear you say, that is where the cost starts to rise significantly isn’t it?

Not necessarily. Certain job boards are free to use - Indeed being the largest and the cheapest of these. If you want to post to Indeed and get in touch with them directly, you will inevitably be sold an advertising package. You will be advised that unless you pay for a premium package or sponsored listing, your job could disappear from view very quickly. This is potentially true, but is something that we think you can ignore!

If you have an applicant tracking system then you can simply post directly to your own website, and to Indeed (and to your social media platforms) all in one click – for FREE!

People looking for jobs will go to Indeed and search by their own filters - location; job type, salary etc. If your job is on Indeed, you will be presented as a match and candidates can then apply via your own website.

It’s as simple as that. Given that 45% of ALL candidates find jobs via Indeed, it really is a platform that is hard to ignore.

Agencies are expensive

There may be times when using agencies are essential – particular if you are seeking fairly rare skills in niche markets.

But what you want to avoid is paying a premium for new staff via an agency when you can source the same people directly. In many cases, you will do exactly what an agency does, but you will cut out the middle-man.

Simply advertise your role (as above) and you can quickly receive direct applicants. In addition, use your social media to share your jobs with your workforce. Now, this is important – why? Well, because referrals account for 40% of all hires in the UK.

Not only that, but employees who are hired via referral are seen to stay longer -are more loyal.

Sharing your jobs on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook allows your own staff to share with friends and family. This is a huge network that you can tap in – for FREE.

High administration = high costs

Often overlooked, unless you have to do the grunt work yourself, but the admin associated with recruitment can be a real burden. First, you have to acknowledge all the applications. Then you have to collate them from various emails, print them off (inevitably, even in this digital age); then you need to arrange interviews, send details to the people doing the interviews and when you have selected a candidate, you then have to go through the whole offer process (including Right to Work checks from April).

If only this could be done on one simple system….well, that is what Recruitment systems are designed to do (or they should be). Our system - Jobtrain - certainly handles all the essential administration and frees up a huge amount of your time.

Use reporting to track success

Without reporting there are certain things you may never know that could save you yet more money. But also, unless you are capturing a certain date, and can report on it with ease, then you could be falling foul of employment legislation – or at the very least, leave yourself open to claims in terms of discrimination in your recruitment process.

Aside from Equality and Diversity data (which is essential), every organisation would benefit from knowing how many hires they have made over an extended period. How many applicants per role? Where did these applications come from? How long did each stage of the process take?

This data (and much more) is at your fingertips in a Recruitment system and is reported on in real-time! Having this information allows you to spend only in areas that produce results. If you can measure it you can improve it.

Watch your time to hire

Time kills every deal, and losing momentum in the recruitment process can lead to you losing candidates. Having a really good recruitment system should allow you to automate responses; to create relevant, easy to use application forms; it will allow you to use killer questions to screen candidates when they apply, allowing you to focus 80% of your time on the 20% of candidates who are relevant to you; it will allow you to set up interviews and make offers without lengthy delays with administration.

Why is this so important? Because, according to Hire Lehigh, active candidates typically apply for up to 5 jobs per week.

If you take 2 weeks to screen candidates and then invite them to interview, they may have already applied for 10 jobs and be further down the line with another opportunity.
So, in summary, don’t spend money where you don’t need to. Don’t waste time when you can’t afford to. And don’t burden yourself with the admin when you don’t have time.

Instead, invest in an Applicant Tracking System – you may find it’s the best investment you make this year.