Managing the costs of talent acquisition

Finding and hiring the right talent is one of the top priorities for many organisations. 

From sourcing, attracting, interviewing, hiring, and on-boarding employees, the function of a talent acquisition (TA) team is a complex one and holds a lot of responsibility.

Yet, the success of a company largely depends on the talent who work there, which means that a well-functioning and effective Talent Acquisition team is the key to achieving many organisational goals. As such, it also represents a significant investment as the cost of sourcing, recruiting and hiring can be high.

No new hires come for free and the cost of hiring in the sectors affected by skills shortages are skyrocketing. However, there are a few different strategies that you can use to manage your talent acquisition costs more effectively.

Understand your current talent acquisition costs

First and foremost, approach your talent acquisition strategically. This means monitoring and understanding the story your data tells you about your current state of talent acquisition.

It’s crucial to understand how much your organisation is actually spending on recruitment in order to be able to contain these costs. Calculating your average cost per hire is another way to better understand your current hiring costs.

Automate as much as you can

Digital HR and recruitment tools can handle the majority of the administrative tasks, which means that recruitment professionals can focus on finding the right talent, coordination and providing a positive candidate experience.

This in turn helps to increase the productivity and cost effectiveness of the TA function. Ultimately, the effective implementation of TA automation can take away much of the administration, increase sourcing efficiency and help to reduce hiring costs.

Reduce your time to hire

Reducing your time to hire goes hand-in-hand with the reduction of the cost per hire.

There are numerous ways to achieve this, from making sure that the job description is thought-through and finalised before being advertised, to the use of technologies such as video interviewing, and having hiring managers involved in the process from the early stages.

Tap into advocacy

What better way to promote and market your employer brand than through your employees’ own voices?

Advocacy can be a powerful and inexpensive tool that can truly make a difference to your talent acquisition strategy. It gives the TA function a good starting point for their recruitment efforts, it also increases referrals and encourages people to find out more about your organisation as an employer.

So if you believe that what you’re doing as an employer is aimed at helping your employees to feel more supported, happy and fulfilled then try to encourage them to share their experience of the workplace as a whole on their social media.

Communication is key

Being able to clearly communicate the cost per hire, ROI for a filled role or the impact of leaving a position unfilled is a skill in itself. The key to managing the costs of talent acquisition is making sure that the HR/TA team is heard when it comes to conversations on headcount planning, forecasting and talent strategy.

Setting up regular meetings to discuss the budget in the context of market changes and the company’s goals and objectives is a simple way of keeping everyone informed and on track. What’s more, managing expectations on the side of hiring managers, especially in relation to time-to-hire and their impact on the length of the recruitment cycle is yet another way of making sure you remain in control over the process.

Managing the talent acquisition budget

Despite careful internal audits, data analysis, forecasting and using the most suitable and innovative recruitment methods, there are still numerous factors which cannot be predicted and controlled that will have an impact on the overall TA budget.

It is almost impossible to predict how your hiring requirements might change over the next 12 months, yet the budget must be created in advance. Regular data monitoring and a strong collaborative culture between HR, senior leaders and operations is the key to ensuring efficiency and keeping the TA costs contained.

If you’d like to find out more about how outsourcing your recruitment processes could help to reduce your overall talent acquisition costs, please get in touch with us and one of our consultants will contact you to arrange an informal chat.