How to ace your recruitment efforts even with a tight budget

5 steps to optimizing your recruitment budget

1. Assess your recruitment budget

If you’re on a tight budget, you probably have a number in mind for your spending on recruitment.

Typical expenses incurred during recruitment include:

- Internal or external recruiter salaries

- Recruitment software services

- Marketing and job board fees

- Referral program rewards

- Background checks

- Interview costs

You should also consider comparing past recruitment budgets to predict your spending on each part of the hiring process. This can help you identify areas to save money or improve efficiency for a more cost-effective hire.

Note: Make sure you’re using the best business phone systems so that remote hiring processes, such as video interviews and conference calls, don’t cut your budget.

2. Track and analyze your recruitment process

Whether you hire two new employees a year or 200, tracking and analyzing your recruitment process is essential for spotting problems and streamlining your hiring strategy.

Some metrics you should consider monitoring include:

- Cost per hire

- Sources of hire (e.g., LinkedIn, referrals)

- Time taken to fill the role

- Time spent on recruitment

- Applicants per hire

- Offer acceptance rate

- Retention rate

Include recruitment KPIs in your evaluation for clear benchmarks. This will help identify areas for improvement, like finding weak hiring sources or addressing low retention rates, so you know where to concentrate your efforts.

3. Use digital recruitment channels

Recruitment today is largely dependent on online tools and platforms. But popular job boards like Indeed come with a fee.

To reduce your dependency on paid platforms, you should make the most of social media hiring. After all, a survey found that 86% of job seekers use social media for their search.

Social media posts also allow you to personalize your job advertisement, and show off your company culture.

Make sure your job posting on social media includes:

- Job duties

- Salary, benefits, and perks

- Images of your staff and workplace

- Visual branding in line with your company

- A clear call to action

Since your job advertising is already online, consider making your entire recruitment process remote by conducting virtual interviews. 

With the right conference call company, you can ensure that calls and video interviews are considerably cheaper than expenses incurred on paying candidates to travel to your office.

4. Perfect your interviews

With 41% of recruiters struggling to assess candidates in interviews, you must have a straightforward, standardized interview process that will help you choose the right candidate and increase employee retention.

Conducting effective interviews will help you better assess candidates’ skills and show your company culture.

Here are some tips for running interviews that’ll benefit both you and your candidates:

- Prepare your questions in line with the applicant. Rather than asking vague questions unrelated to the role or your company, prepare focused questions that align with the specifications you’re looking for in the candidate and your company values.

- Ask open-ended ‘opportunity’ questions. Don’t search for specific answers from candidates. Ask questions that allow them to talk about themselves and their experiences.

- Prepare the candidate. Expecting candidates to interview blind doesn’t help them or you. Instead, send the candidate details of what to expect from the interview, what you expect from them, and a timeframe.

- Explain the job and your company at the start of the interview. By reiterating the job description and the details of your company, you and the candidate can focus on specifics and respond directly to the role required.

- Create a broad interview panel. Assemble a diverse interview panel to ensure a more comprehensive assessment of candidates, reduce bias, and promote better decision-making.

5. Leverage talent of internal hires and referral programs

You already have talented, loyal employees, many of whom you might wish you could duplicate.

During the hiring process, start by looking internally. Consider setting up an employee mobility program and training programs to upskill your employees and prepare them for potential promotions.

Employee referral programs are a great way to leverage your existing employees and cut costs.

Referred employees often have better retention rates and a lower cost-per-hire, making 88% of employers believe that referrals are the best source for new employees.

A lot of companies offer cash rewards for referrals, but there are some alternative referral rewards you could implement to cut costs, including:

- Extra vacation days

- Educational or practical courses

- Gift cards and meal vouchers

- ‘Experience’ gifts

- Donations to the charity of the employee’s choice

Cutting costs when it comes to your recruitment process involves a well-thought-out strategy. You must have a referral program, a hiring team, social media, KPIs, and a budget to manage.

But if you have a centralized platform to manage your entire recruitment process, you can save a significant amount of resources. With Recruit CRM, you can leverage a streamlined applicant tracking system to store, manage, and track your recruitment data in one place.

Recruitment should be like any other part of your business — you carefully monitor, analyze, and budget for every step of the process.