Hiring a new employee can be expensive. According to Human Resources Director, on average, hiring an entry-level employee costs $9,772, and hiring an executive costs $34,440. While large corporations can manage these costs, they can be significant for small businesses, especially ones with low-cost recruitment budgets.
But a low-cost recruiting budget doesn’t mean you have to end up with low-quality candidates. You can still maximize your recruiting budget to find the best talent. Keep reading to learn how to use a low-cost recruitment budget to create a winning hiring process.
Why Good Recruitment Is Important
Your employees are the backbone of your business, so you want to hire the best of the best. However, it’s difficult to always hit the mark on new hires, which is why the recruitment process is so important for your bottom line.
Training alone is expensive, and you can’t determine whether your new hire is cut out for the job unless you invest in it. Small businesses spend on average $1,252 training new employees. A multitude of other problems arises when you hire the wrong person and have to start the process all over again.
This is why you need to dedicate a good amount of effort to your recruitment process. Even if your budget is low, you have a few options.
Hiring Staff On a Low-Cost Recruitment Budget – Your Options
Effective recruitment requires a lot of time, energy, and money to ensure you choose the best people. However, it’s an expensive process, and you need to ensure that you budget for it.
If you have a low-cost recruitment budget, you can still attract great candidates for the job. Here are your options for recruitment when you have a small budget.
Don’t Cast Too Wide of a Net
It makes sense to think that the more places you advertise a job opening, the more job seekers it reaches, and the more likely you are to find the best of the best. Although this strategy may seem tempting, it isn’t feasible when you’re working with a smaller recruitment budget and a tighter timeline. Not only does it require more money, but it can lead to a backlog of candidates, which increases the chances of your ideal candidate slipping through the cracks.
Instead, focus on targeting only high-quality candidates, which might mean putting up a single ad on a job board known to host high-quality professionals, being more strict with the candidates, and choosing to interview only a few. This strategy ensures you don’t waste your time and end up hiring someone who isn’t right for the job.
Use Free Resources (The Internet)
These days, every small business is expected to have a web presence, and your business success is often tied to how well you represent it online. The same applies to job postings and recruitment.
One of the best ways to hire staff on a low-cost recruitment budget is by leveraging low-cost or free resources to promote your job postings. When you have an open role, the first place that you should promote the job posting is on your business’s own social media channels. Not only is this free, but depending on your web presence, it can be an efficient way to reach a mass audience.
You can also encourage your current employees to share the job opening on their social media pages if they wish. What’s more, posting job openings on your social media channels can be a part of a great marketing strategy and gives people a glimpse into how your business operates.
Look In Your Network
Some of the best job candidates often don’t apply for the job at all. If you have a low recruitment budget, you can potentially skip most of the steps in the recruitment process entirely if you choose a candidate recommended by someone you trust.
When you first have a job opening, ask around to see if anyone in your network could recommend a good candidate. Better yet, to expand your search beyond your network, it may be more worthwhile to use part of your recruitment budget to incentivise your current employees to refer someone they know in their network. This strategy often brings on high-quality employees that you know may already fit in well with your company’s work culture.
While these options are great alternatives for small businesses with low-cost recruitment budgets, they do require a lot of time and work on your part, which is time that you can be spending on other areas of your business. Luckily, there is one more option to maximize your recruitment budget, hire the best talent, and save time and money doing it: outsourcing your recruitment.
Conclusion: Outsource Your Recruitment to Maximize Savings
For less stress and the highest chance of hiring the best employees, it may be worth enlisting the help of hiring professionals to help you out. Outsourcing the recruitment process is a great option for those who:
- Have a low-cost recruitment budget.
- Don’t have the time to focus on the hiring process.
- Don’t have a comprehensive recruitment plan.
When it comes to recruitment, HRonHand can help. HRonHand’s most affordable recruitment rates work on a percentage and can save you up to $3,285. Learn how you can take advantage and get the best candidates here.
