Hiring is a never-ending cycle for a company. The perpetual process of finding, onboarding, training, and firing employees isn’t just constant. It is expensive.
Most people have seen the dated statistic that hiring someone costs around $5,000. However, HR professionals at SHRM make it clear that this is just the tip of the iceberg. When you consider the full impact of employee turnover, it can actually be as much as three to four times the position’s annual salary.
This makes the hiring process a multi-million dollar business. HR representatives must work to minimize costs and streamline the process of finding and attracting top talent for each position.
If your business is struggling to reduce these large costs, you’re not alone. Here are some hiring tactics that can help you identify quality talent and reduce the time spent on each hire, all without spending a fortune in the process.
1. Be concise and thoughtful with job postings
If you want to improve your hiring process, you need to start with the basics. What tactics are you already using that you could improve? Where can you improve your current hiring and firing processes to create efficiency and save costs?
One of the easiest ways to slow down the hiring process is to create low-quality job descriptions and ads. Just as an employee wants to make a good impression on the first day of a new job, employers want to send the right message when job seekers find their job postings.
Part of this comes from being careful about what you include in each description and how you include it. Job postings should be concise and thorough. They should be well structured and describe and therefore sell each position well.
For the record, this includes information like salary ranges, perks, and perks. You can bet that most job seekers prioritize this information. In fact, according to a heat map published by LinkedIn, day-to-day job details, qualifications and salary were some of the top things potential candidates were looking for.
These are often excluded from job descriptions in an attempt to attract the best candidates who might otherwise move on to the next, higher paying advert. Still, it’s a courtesy to candidates to show them this critical information right from the start. Show that you respect them and want to earn their trust.
If you want your hiring tactics to be effective, you need to meet your workforce halfway. Provide high-quality job postings that help you attract authentic, qualified candidates. This will quickly refine your search and, as a result, reduce the time and costs you are investing.
2. Use a global jobs platform
The modern ability to communicate and collaborate from anywhere in the world has had a dramatic effect on the size of the talent pools that many companies can work with. Of course, hiring someone for a specific position when they live on the other side of the world can be expensive.
When a company tries to tackle the international hiring process on its own, it can face a number of obstacles. Deciphering what a competitive salary is in each geographic location is difficult. Legal regulations and requirements are a cause for concern. Benefits packages don’t always translate smoothly.
Fortunately, the ever-changing world of technology is creating more convenient options. Global employment platform Oyster, for example, offers hiring support in several ways, including:
- Generating real salary data by location
- Compliant and fair compensation calculation
- It offers pre-created local and global benefit packages
- By providing an easy signup directly through their platform
All of these features are available without the need to set up a traditional EOR (Employer of Record) or work with a PEO (Professional Employer Organization). By using a global employment platform, you eliminate bureaucracy while reducing the costs of hiring abroad.
3. Consider using referral programs
Referral programs are an effective way to encourage your audience to help you achieve your business goals. In a customer environment, a referral program incentivizes existing, satisfied customers to invest in spreading positive, sales-oriented messages about your brand. When they help acquire a new customer, they receive some sort of reward or compensation for their contribution.
In the context of hiring, referrals are an employee activity. A company establishes an employee referral program in an effort to empower its existing workforce to help it find the best talent available.
When a referred candidate is hired, the referring employee receives a reward. This could be a gift card, a cash bonus, or even additional PTO.
Hiring platform Indeed emphasizes that referrals speed up the hiring process. It’s true that there is a cost for each successful referral. However, this is typically much less than the expense of using other established channels for talent discovery, such as working with a professional recruiter.
If you’re short on money, create a referral program. This can save resources and simplify the collection of candidate information. It also reduces the costs of posting job offers and speeds up candidate selection.
4. Proactively hire from within
A clean and efficient job advertisement can improve the quality of the candidate. A well-incentivized referral system reduces steps in the hiring process. A global employment platform makes it easier and more convenient to find and hire international talent.
These are all ways to improve your external-facing hiring tactics. However, there are also times when looking internally at your company is the best option.
The convenience factor here is easy to spot. Consider, for example, an employee who decides to leave your company, creating an open position that you need to fill quickly. The simplest solution is to place a knowledgeable and capable employee from the lowest level of the organizational hierarchy in that slot.
That said, finding an ideal individual can be difficult. The Peter Principle is a very real thing. You don’t want to promote internal candidates into positions of incompetence.
Instead, you want to cultivate internal talent pipelines well before a position opens up. The Academy to Innovate HR (AIHR) points out that this requires multiple steps:
- Start by identifying critical roles that you don’t want to leave vacant for a significant period of time.
- Establish a succession plan to fill those roles when the time comes.
- Conduct skills assessments to evaluate each employee’s capabilities.
- Post internal job openings to attract interested candidates and don’t ignore cross-departmental opportunities.
As you discover candidates within your company, start investing in them. This may include coaching and mentoring, performance feedback, and ongoing learning and development. Above all, maintain transparent communication.
When you do this, you create a confident and positive current of upward professional momentum throughout your brand. This can have a direct and profound impact on ongoing hiring costs.
5. Invest in quality brands to improve employee retention
A comprehensive approach to hiring must consider retention as much as acquisition. The speed with which you retain quality talent in your company has a direct impact on the hiring process. A longer employee lifecycle can also have a serious impact on the cost-effectiveness of your hiring efforts.
One of the best ways to improve retention is to foster a healthy and engaging workplace culture. There are many ways to do this. However, since the conversation here is about hiring and the costs associated with it, we’ll move on.
Assuming you already have a healthy work environment and brand identity in place, the next step is to promote that reputation to people outside your company. If you want to attract and retain the right workers, you need to show candidates your attractive company culture.
This can be done through employer branding. This is the process of positioning your company as an attractive place to work. Demonstrate your organization’s unique set of culture, values, vision and mission.
You can convey your company culture in various ways. Social media allows for personal yet public interactions. Your company website also offers a space to detail company ethics and post employee testimonials.
Employer branding isn’t just effective. It’s convenient. So much so that the US Chamber of Commerce lists it as the #1 way. 1 with which a small business can attract the best talent through inexpensive strategies.
If you want to reduce hiring costs, use the tips above. But remember, these are short-term solutions tied to specific job searches. If you want them to truly save you money, you need to start here with retention and a high-quality, well-promoted employer brand.
Find cost-effective hiring solutions
Every company has different resources that they can invest in their hiring strategy. If you find your current staffing budget is restrictive, use the tips above to reduce costs.
Create targeted job offers and use referral programs. Consider efficiently expanding your search with a global job platform. Narrow your parameters with an internal talent pipeline if that makes more sense for certain positions. Above all, create a company culture and work environment that attracts and retains talent for the long term.
If you can successfully implement these tips, they can reduce your brand’s ongoing investment in the hiring and firing process. This can help you stick to your budgets while building a talented workforce that can help you achieve even greater success in the future.
Featured image credit: photo by Sora Shimazaki; Pixels; Thank you.
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