How to maximise your recruitment budget

Written by talentspa on .

There comes a time in every HR manager’s life when matching what a business needs with what they can afford seems like an unattainable task.

According to LinkedIn’s, 2017 Global Staffing Trends Report, “more than half of staffing industry leaders expect their firms’ budgets to grow within the next year. Whilst this seems like good news for HR Managers, 79% also expect the volume of candidates placed to increase, too, which leaves many recruitment managers still trying to fulfil expectations with a limited budget.”

So how do you, as an HR leader, overcome the challenge of hiring quality talent whilst maximising financial resources? The key is to find a balance between traditional methods and alternative ways of recruiting.

Go Social

Social media has grown phenomenally as a marketing avenue for companies and can be tuned into an effective channel for recruitment. Millennial professionals use social media to search for jobs, connect with prospective employers and peers and get industry updates. Being low-cost and convenient, this is a place where you can easily connect with your desired candidates and, by engaging them properly, increase your chances of conversion.

Start a referral program

Word- of- mouth is a powerful tool. One of the traditional methods of connecting with prospective candidates is via referrals, which can be a fruitful way to hire within a limited budget. It requires minimal initial investment and can be initiated in various ways:

Employee Referral

Tapping into your current employee base to attract new talents is a great way to hire the right candidate and fast. Your employees are your best marketing tool as they can talk about your organisation to their friends and acquaintances. This can further be incentivised by adding a small return in terms of employee benefits or a salary bonus. Referrals not only work as a recruitment channel but also as a tool for promoting your organisation.

Interviewee Referral

Shortlisted interviewees are the ideal candidates to use as referrals. If you have multiple openings for the same position, your interviewees can help you refer the same to their friends and peers, especially if they are fresh graduates. This can help them feel more connected to your organisation and improve their chances of accepting the job. Additionally, it saves you from spending extra on your marketing activities

Hire internally

Reshuffling your existing talent pipeline can be a smart recruitment strategy. Consider a current employee for a new role and re-train them if needed. This allows your talent pool to become multi-faceted, explores their alternative skills and encourages career growth. Additionally, it helps you save on the cost of hiring externally from the marketplace.

Optimise your career page

A recent survey conducted by Talent Spa, uncovered that a candidates use, on average, 16 different resources to search for jobs and 80% of them visit a company’s Career page as part of their job search. By improving your career site, not only will you provide value to these job seekers but you will also increase your chances of converting them into potential leads.

Here’s a checklist for optimising your website career page:-

Make your website easy to search through with a well-structured navigation design.Create an option within your career page to capture leads who are not yet ready to apply for jobsEnsure that your career page design is mobile optimised, since most job seekers use mobile devices to apply for jobs and get updates on-the-go.Maximise on the opportunity to automatically re-engage via email.

Ensure that your page design is talking more to the candidate and less about you. This helps them relate better to the job they are applying for.

Rethink employer branding

“Employer Branding is fundamentally a Marketing Strategy applied to Human Resources. Just as companies realise marketing and communication activities to attract and retain high value clients, at the same time communication and marketing strategies can be realised in order to attract and retain high value people for their own business performances.”

Employer branding has evolved from simply communicating an organisation’s value proposition to retain current employees and attract new ones. By creating a robust strategy and an excellent brand experience on your communication channels, you are more likely to attract a whole new pool of talent, make your brand stand out from the crowd and give prospective candidates enough reasons to join your company over another. Job security, personal development and work culture all play important roles, if not more so, alongside traditional job specs such as salary and annual leave allowance.

Parting thought…

In a tight hiring market and with a stringent recruitment budget, opting for alternative means to connect with candidates is the key to finding the right talent. With a few wise decisions and smart marketing techniques, you can still optimise what you have in hand. To explore such effective recruitment strategies and to find out how our recruitment software can help to maximise your recruitment budget, contact us at Talent Spa today. We ensure your hiring success by finding the right people in the most optimal ways.