Recruitment is costly. Companies spend on average USD$4,000 on attracting and hiring a new employee – $4,000 that could be better spent elsewhere – especially if that new hire turns out to be a new disaster.
Join us, as we take a look at the hidden costs of recruitment, and how you can maximize your return on investment by securing the best talent for your business.
The trust costs of recruitment
No matter whether a long-serving employee has decided to retire or your business is growing fast and requires additional headcount – you know that searching for, attracting, and retaining the top talent is going to be costly. But do you know how costly?
Obvious costs
Recruiting for junior positions, senior roles, and everything in between generates certain predictable costs, including:
- Print and online advertising;
- Attending job fairs and networking;
- Legal fees;
- New equipment costs; and
- The final salary.
Hidden costs
What many managers and recruiters fail to take into account, are the hidden costs involved in recruitment, including:
- Time – anyone’s time spent away from the business sifting candidates, arranging interviews, attending interviews, and onboarding new employees.
- Performance – any delay in recruiting the right person, will result in a dip in performance for their team, or the costly hourly rate of a temporary worker.
- Engagement – losing a team member and taking on their workload while you recruit a replacement will impact upon the wider team’s employee engagement – resulting in reduced performance or other notices being handed in.
- Reputation – while your competition is gossiping about why someone left your company, candidates are also talking about your recruitment process (warts and all).
So, how do you go about reducing these costs and maximizing your return?
Maximizing your recruitment ROI
Ultimately, you want to recruit the top talent in the quickest and cheapest method possible. This requires:
Maximizing your time
Is your time best spent advertising vacancies, sifting through applications, and arranging interviews – or is it better spent elsewhere in the business? If you can generate more profit and business impact than the cost of hiring an external recruitment agency, then it’s time to outsource.
Minimizing the time to hire
Taking a long time to hire no only elongates your recruitment spend, but it also risks losing potential candidates to your competitors. Reduce your time to hire by using automated hiring selection tools to speed up selection and remove bias, becoming DISC personality certified so you can carry out profiling yourself, and creating a recruitment competency framework to streamline your interview questioning.
Attracting the right candidates
Too much time and expense are wasted during the recruitment process on candidates that just don’t fit the position. Change this by attracting the right candidates through clear competency-based job descriptions, by using strong branding that demonstrates your company values, and by pre-screening candidates using background checks and Skype interviews.
Making the right choices
There is nothing more expensive than making a bad hire. Not only do you need to repeat the costs of recruitment and onboarding, but projects are placed on hold, team engagement is further dented, and your morale takes a beating. Make the right hire choice by using employee assessments and job matching data to avoid hiring mistakes and competency-based interview techniques to improve your interviews.
The true cost of recruitment – final thoughts
Recruitment can be costly, but done right, that cost can be returned through increased performance, profits, and engagement. Ensure that you make the right hire by investing in the right branding, assessments, and screening techniques to maximizing your ROI and begin performing at full capacity once again.
About the Author: Jocelyn Pick
