Budget Cuts? 10 Ways to Ensure You Don’t Cut the Quality of Your Recruitment Process
Welcome to Recruiter Q&A, where we pose employment-related questions to the experts and share their answers!
Today’s Question: How can you cut recruitment costs without sacrificing the quality of the recruitment process?
These answers are provided by Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC), an invite-only organization composed of the world’s most successful young entrepreneurs. YEC members represent nearly every industry, generate billions of dollars in revenue each year, and have created tens of thousands of jobs.
1. Introduce a Referral Program
What works extremely well when you are on a low budget is introducing a referral program for your current employees. It doesn’t cost you to get candidates into your pipeline, your current team handles a lot of the storytelling from backstage, and you save some money on marketing campaigns. The effect is that your company has more motivated team members, both current and new. — Dmitrij Żatuchin, DO OK
2. Tap Into Your Existing Networks
In moments of budget cuts, you have to make do with what you have. Go back and look at your existing networks from a different perspective to find new ways of leveraging those candidates. It’s in moments of need that we find new capacity, always! — Fabi Hubschmid, Markaaz
3. Use Recruitment Software
We have started to use recruitment software for sourcing and screening. We get more accurate resumes and video responses from the candidates, which in turn reduces our time and cost in the recruitment process. — Piyush Jain, SIMpalm
4. Limit the Number of Interviews
You can cut recruiting costs by limiting the number of people you interview each week. Create strict rules and qualifications that applicants need to meet. Block out a few hours to review applications and only pick the absolute best candidates for the job. If you use this strategy, you’ll spend less time and money going through interviews and talking to unqualified applicants. — John Turner, SeedProd LLC
5. Invite Your Customers to Apply
I think the best thing a company can do is invite its own audience to apply for roles. You could send an email blast to customers letting them know you’re hiring or post about your roles on social media. Your customers will either want to work for you or know people who do. Since they already buy from you, they might be interested in helping you recruit people, too. — Syed Balkhi, WPBeginner
6. Be Your Own Recruiter
Reach great candidates and bring them through the process yourself rather than using recruiters and premium hiring platforms. You will have to make time to find and screen candidates yourself, but it will allow you to see what the process looks like from end to end. Not only will you save a lot of money, but you’ll be able to scale the process back up more effectively the next time you need to. — Cody Candee, Bounce
7. Leverage Social Media
To cut recruiting costs without sacrificing the quality of the recruitment process, you can try recruiting through social media. Many people use platforms like Twitter and Facebook to market to their target audience and improve conversions, and you can do the same for the recruiting process on social media. — Stephanie Wells, Formidable Forms
8. Conduct a Trial Period
If you have a few promising candidates for a position, try bringing them on board for a short trial period to see how they function in the workplace. This allows you to accurately evaluate their ability to work with the rest of your team while mitigating the loss of productivity that can come from lengthy job interviews. Just remember to compensate them for their time! — Bryce Welker, CPA Exam Guy
9. Outsource the Process
One way to cut recruiting costs without sacrificing the quality of the recruitment process is to outsource operations to a nearby country. With remote work dominating the world today, it’s easier than ever to successfully outsource operations. You can be in constant communication with your team overseas, scale up or down as you please, and save time and money. — Alfredo Atanacio, Uassist.ME
10. Post on More Targeted Networking Sites
Post your job requirements on professional and industrial networking sites to appeal to a more targeted audience. You can avoid posting on generic platforms that attract candidates from a wide number of fields. You’ll focus on the right places and avoid spending money on irrelevant platforms. — Blair Williams, MemberPress
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