By Smita Menon
The cost of hiring quality talent and ensuring lower employee turnover rates has skyrocketed in recent times. HR spends several hours drafting the ad, then more time contacting candidates, conducting interviews, reference checks, and so on, to find the ideal candidate. It\’s critical to have some cost effective recruitment strategies in place to keep costs at a minimum.
Cost of Hiring
According to ELMO’s survey report, the cost of hiring talent in Australia & New Zealand has increased from $10,500 in 2020 to $23,860 in 2021. The time involved in hiring has also risen from an average of 33.4 days to 40 days in Australia.
This means that hiring the best talent comes with a price. And with the recent market trends, there has been an upward drive in this trend. Additionally, the pandemic has initiated a job hopper economy.
Job Hopper Economy
Workers are job-hopping in the search for a better career and pay, with the trend dominated by millennials.
The pandemic has led to a huge culture shift, with workers wanting to work remotely. This has made it easier for them to find new jobs, via online zoom interviews where they no longer have to take a sick day or annual leave to attend a face-to-face interview.
A recent Gallup report indicated that 60% of all millennials are willing to quit their jobs before the completion of their first year. In the past, employees would stick to a company for 5 plus years, and now employers are lucky if an employee stays for a year or two.
So, with more and more workers leaving their current jobs and looking for new opportunities, employers are having to invest more in hiring and recruiting new talent. On top of that, it can take up to 6 months for a company to break even on its investments in a new hire.
How to keep recruitment costs down:
- Clear position descriptions – Instead of only listing duties in the job ad, employers should focus on sharing the outcomes they need to achieve success in the role; such as the ability to multitask or strong customer service skills, etc. This saves time by attracting the right talent for the right role.
- Short interview process – Avoid conducting multiple rounds of interviews. This can overwhelm and exhaust the candidate. Four is the golden number needed to assess the candidate, understand their expectations, and signal an employer’s expectations.
- Better utilisation of talent – Before bringing in new talent, ensure you utilise internal resources. Organisations can implement referral payment schemes to reduce costs of recruitment.
- Employee retention – Organizations should focus on short terms goals and offer employees a prospective goal to attain for the next year or two rather than focusing on long-term objectives. This helps employees stay motivated and focused.
- Make use of social media – Invest a little time in putting together an attractive campaign to target specific audience groups. Social media can also assist you to answer candidate queries thereby eliminating a few of them at the initial stage. This saves time and best of all social media is free so make the most of it.
- Outsourced HR experts – Another way to cut down on recruiting costs is for organisations to partner with recruitment firms to find talent. Recruitment agencies act as an extension of the corporate HR department and have the time and resources to dedicate to sourcing, screening, and identifying qualified candidates so that hiring managers can cut down on the time to hire.
Hiring a new employee isn\’t a decision that should be taken lightly, as a bad hire is costly to an organisation. These practices help to improve the quality of your hire, which leads to higher staff retention rates and less ‘churn’. If you need any assistance with recruitment, the team at Integrated Human Resourcing is here help you.
Integrated Human Resourcing is an outsourced HR and recruitment consultancy based on the Gold Coast, Australia. Contact us here or call 07 5613 1846 / email: info@humanresourcing.com.au.