Recruiting great talent is one of the keys to a successful business. To that end, making sure you’re getting the most for your recruiting dollars — without spending too much of your budget — should be a high priority. Ideally, you’re getting the best return on your investment, or ROI.
Recruitment budgeting comes with challenges, from balancing spending against performance to navigating the ups and downs of the job market.
“On the one hand, you’re contending with the unpredictable nature of hiring — the perfect candidate may come along tomorrow, or it might take months to fill a role,” says Peter Wood, founder and chief technical officer of Spectrum Search, a recruiting company for crypto and blockchain talent. “On the other, there’s the pressure to minimize costs without compromising the quality of hires, which is no small feat.”
Plus, recruitment budgeting can be tough in this economic climate, where inflation is a factor and the labor market is tricky. Strikes have affected employers in manufacturing and information, and labor shortages are ongoing in healthcare.
Tracking Your ROI is Crucial
The more you know about how your recruiting dollars are performing, the more efficiently you can hire great people.
Data points can help inform your decisions. How long is it taking to fill your roles, from start to finish? How far into the process are you finding the candidates you end up hiring? How many people are applying to your postings?
“It’s not a great sign to have hundreds of people in the search,” says Kyle Samuels, CEO of Creative Talent Endeavors, a boutique executive search firm. “That usually means that you don’t know what you’re looking for and you’re reaching out to everyone.”
The more you can work with data to gauge the results you’re achieving with your recruiting dollars, the more informed you’ll be when you make future decisions.
Optimize Your Company Website for Recruitment
One cost-effective strategy to attract talent is to use your website as an always-on recruiting tool. When your site clearly reflects your company culture and brand, candidates who are attracted to your message will stick around.
“Make sure you have a clear and defined employer value proposition,” Samuels says. “You need to send that signal to attract the tribe that you want.”
Showcase your company strengths. If you’ve got diverse talent, highlight it. If you’ve got a great benefits program, make sure candidates can find information on it. The more you can sell the experience of working for your firm, the more you’ll attract passive candidates. (Not sure how to brand yourself? Use Monster’s guide.)
Understand the Value of Talent Pipelining
Talent pipelining is the practice of keeping qualified potential job candidates in the wings, so to speak, so when an opportunity arises, you can move fast. This shrinks your time-to-fill and saves money overall, since you’re not starting from scratch for every search.
Tom Humble, founder and CXO of E.C.D. Automotive Design, a company that builds custom vehicles, says he’s used talent pipelining to identify candidates that met their skills and culture requirements — and then stayed in touch with them. “This ensured we had a pre-vetted talent pool to contact whenever a new requirement arose, reducing hiring time and costs substantially,” he says.
You can also use talent pipelining to help you develop a more diverse workforce. By building relationships ahead of time with people and organizations from a variety of backgrounds, you’ll be in a position to proactively hire diverse talent from your pools of existing contacts.
For best results, tune in to candidate needs — if you aren’t offering what candidates are looking for, it won’t matter who’s in your pipeline. Use hiring tools that flag you when candidates in the system are active (and potentially looking for work). And engage workers via text and email tools that meet them where they are. Check out Monster’s Always Be Recruiting guide for tips.
Consider Pay-for-Performance Postings
Pay-for-performance job ads only cost you money when candidates engage with the ad — so your money goes to the most effective ad placements. These are high-yield ways to increase your ROI, since dollars go directly to the ads that are bringing in the most candidates.
In one case study, a large staffing agency doubled its hire rate from 7% to 14% by using Monster’s Pay-Per-Click solution. It also found that Monster’s PPC strategy yielded more qualified candidates for open positions.
“Pay-for-performance job postings, where you only pay when the desired outcome is achieved, can be a game-changer,” Wood says. “It aligns the cost directly with results, ensuring that every dollar spent is accounted for.”
Curious about how it works? Learn more about pay-for-performance with Monster.