Organisations of all sizes are now looking to keep costs as low as possible. Having the right team in place is more important than ever, yet sourcing and securing talent is an area where a huge chunk of operational costs are usually positioned and one that can easily spiral out of control and eat into a business’s profits.

Employers can end up investing and sacrificing huge amounts of time and money in the interview process, principally in the hope of limiting the risk of a bad hire. Further, those employers that do not have a dedicated, in-house recruiting team usually rely on an external agency, which can often be expensive, despite them taking the headache of sourcing candidates away.

Although purse strings will get tighter over the coming months, it is unlikely that the hiring within certain sectors will completely diminish. Some sectors such as ecommerce, last mile delivery services and healthcare have experienced high levels of demand in the last few months. Regardless, in such uncertain times a key priority for all employers should be looking at ways they can reduce both the time and cost per hire, as well as getting the right talent in place, first time around.

With this in mind, employers should be looking to take the following steps to reduce their hiring costs:

1.     Leverage recruitment technology

If you don’t have the right recruitment technology, your capacity to reduce cost per hire is already limited. The recruitment technology that you use should help you identify well-suited candidates quickly to save time during the time-consuming ‘sourcing’ phase. Ideally, this technology should give you a 360 degree view of the candidate’s professional background and career history, including their qualifications and experience.

Your ability to hire cost-effectively will be hampered from the start if you don’t have the right tools in place. Whether it is background checking software or profiling, these new and innovative technologies are there to help, not hinder. Once in place, employers must make sure that all their technology is working to the same goal – to make hiring as seamless, streamlined and stress-free as possible – rather than working against them. The time and money that is invested in the right technology will soon pay dividends in reducing both the cost and time per hire, particularly when processes that used to take weeks, such as background screening, can now only take a matter of days.

2.     Make the right hire, first time around

A huge amount of time and money is wasted when you think you’ve hit the jackpot and have found the dream candidate, only for their experience to fall short during the onboarding process or their first few months in their new role. It means you have to start back at square one all over again – effectively doubling your recruitment costs for this one role. Get things right the first time around by verifying the information provided to you during the recruitment process – check and validate qualifications, experience and references to confirm each applicant’s claims.

Once qualifications and experience are proven, it is also a good idea for employers to test candidate’s suitability for the role through a pre-employment test or presentation. This will help them learn the strengths and weaknesses of a candidate, which can significantly cut down the time-to-fill and improve the quality of hire.

3.     Build a talent pipeline

Just like when it comes to creating new business, a talent pipeline should follow the same pattern as your inbound sales pipeline. If you are leveraging your employer brand and communicating the great work you’re doing outwardly, industry professionals will view your company as a promising potential employer. Having a strong pipeline of potential hires who are interested in a new role will cut recruitment costs quickly. There will be no ‘downtime’ caused by vacant roles while one employee finishes and you wait to hire a new one.

4.     Reduce the ‘churn’ of employees

 Employees constantly moving in and out the door means potentially significant costs, not only in terms of exit packages but also talent acquisition. As such, retaining existing employees is arguably the most effective way to drastically reduce recruitment expenses. Ensuring you have a good culture, opportunities for growth, great candidates working and learning from one another are all great ways to improve how employers can support their existing employees, which should lead to better staff retention rates and less need to hire replacement staff.

Not only should employers start looking to leverage the latest recruitment technologies to reduce hiring expenditure, but they should also be looking to build an environment and company culture which ensures the employees you have worked hard to recruit, stay within your company for years to come.