10 Ways to Cut Your Recruitment Costs (Part 1)

Every HR professional knows how costly recruitment can be, but not every organization knows how to effectively contain these expenses.

To help offer some guidance, Software consultancy and developer, Access, has released a report entitled,A Director’s Guide: 10 tips to Cut Recruitment Costs .

A special thank you goes out this month’s Leadership Sponsors: Zoho and TheLadders. Please visit their sites to understand how these quality services can elevate your recruitment practices.

Drawing on the findings of the CIPD’s 2010 Annual Survey Report, this guide focuses on the role of technology, specifically, how HR software can help recruitment professionals gain greater return on their recruitment spend.

Let’s take a closer look at the first five of 10 ways to reduce recruitment costs :

 1. Utilize Electronic Job Specs

The report says that a formal workflow process ensures that all recruitment requests are created electronically. The requests are forwarded to your specified approver/s for authorization and checked against relevant with a few, simple clicks. A central system provides a database of electronic forms for management to view online as opposed to relying on job specs created from the memory of others. The report explains that similar or repeat positions can be quickly created, and templates easily tailored for new positions. Recruiters can quickly upload this information to relevant job boards, agencies or websites.

Highlighted benefits of using job specs:

– Quickly create job specs for repeat and similar positions

– Create consistency across your company brand and visibility across organization

– Reduce burden on line managers and marketing team

– Implement job creation and sign off procedures

– Reduce risk of people ‘owning’ old/out-dated vacancy information

 2. Give Your Company Website More Responsibility

The report notes that the CIPD survey showed that at 63 percent, advertising on corporate websites was the most effective method for attracting applications – beating recruitment agencies (60%).

The document explains that using an HR system in addition to advertising jobs on your company career site creates a secure online environment where applicants can upload CVs and other documentation. This reduces the paper processing, streamlines the flow of electronic documents, and makes it simpler and more convenient for applicants.

Highlighted benefits of career site responsibility:

– Attract a wider pool of applicants

– Create, edit and publicize positions in a few clicks

– Make applications simpler and more cost-effective to administer

– Applicants enter their own data – not HR.

3. Adopt Pre-screening Assessments

It’s no longer necessary to spend large chunks of valuable time sifting through CVs and resumes by hand. HR systems and ATSs, the report explains, make the sifting process much easier by ensuring that candidates meet specific criteria before submitting their application. Qualified candidates are sent directly to recruiters’ inboxes, saving time and effort that can be allocated to other tasks in the recruitment process.

Highlighted benefits of pre-screening:

– Speeds up the time taken to process applications

– Quickly prioritizes relevant candidates

– Lifts the burden on line managers

– Review applications at recruiters’ convenience

4. Provide Online Access for Agencies

The paper notes that using recruitment agencies is a fact of life for many businesses, but so are their costs. But, the paper notes, HR systems can decrease the costs associated with agencies.

HR systems makes information sent from recruitment agencies easy to store, update and search. For successful applicants, this keeps duplication to a minimum. As applications progress, you simply have to add relevant details as you go (as opposed to re-keying the information each time), the report explains.

For unsuccessful and/or unsolicited applications, the HR system provides a rich store of information which can be searched and refined by criteria of your choice (such as specialism, location, salary expectations) – saving you more time and money when looking to fill future positions.

And the paper points out a further step HR systems can take in making your recruiting process more efficient and cost-effective. If companies provide agency staff with online access to their system, the report explains that the agencies can enter candidates’ information directly into the database, reducing the workload of companies.

Highlighted benefits agency access:

– Get better value from agencies

– Reduce duplication of effort

– Screen candidates for future roles

– Easily store and search unsolicited applications.

5. Employ Automated Messaging

Job seekers don’t like being in the dark about their applications. And with the influx of resumes a recruiter can receive each day, sometimes it’s hard to keep every applicant up-to-date with the latest information. How can recruiters change this resume black hole habit?

By using automated messages, the report suggests. Sending messages like “we’ve received your application” and “we regret to inform you” emails only take a few clicks. And as the report points out, these HR systems therefore make it easy to keep many applicants in the loop at all times, keeping HR costs down and strengthening your company brand – in a fraction of the time.

Highlighted benefits automated messages:

– Keep applicants in the loop

– Decrease inbound calls and emails

– Be seen as a responsible employer

Stay tuned for part 2 of this article to learn the other five ways to reduce recruitment costs.

A special thank you goes out this month’s Leadership Sponsors: Zoho and TheLadders. Please visit their sites to understand how these quality services can elevate your recruitment practices.