Jessica Amanoel, Lead Human Resources Business Partner at IT Services and Consulting company Quantium has found ways to refine processes in light of the current climate.
1. Assess your current costs
Having an accurate understanding of your fixed costs, such as salaries, recruitment tools, events and technology allows you to evaluate and assess where you can find efficiencies.
“You really need to look at your short- to medium-term requirements,” Amanoel says. “I imagine that in three to six months things will change again, so you need to make sure that whatever decisions you made, they have a direct link to the commercial outcomes of your business.”
Budget tip: Review your current toolkit and costs and see what can be adjusted.
2. Look to your employees to help fill roles
When Amanoel needed to recruit a front-end developer one of her recruiters spent time with the CX (customer experience) programmers to get a better understanding of the role they were hiring for. “I wanted my recruiter to understand the ins and outs and the challenges of the job,” Amanoel says.
“After taking the job to market, my recruiter can now identify talent she wouldn’t have been able to before,” Amanoel says. “She’s so confident and has got a whole new way of thinking about the role.”
Budget tip: Evaluate whether there are opportunities for employees to take on new tasks or play a role in recruitment by providing greater insight into a role.
3. Maximise hiring performance
Finding the right talent can be expensive. But knowing your expenditure as well as implementing consistent and accurate ROI tracking is crucial to making the most of your budget.
To work out how much you spend and where you could make savings, you’ll need to know your cost per hire. You can work this out by taking into account:
- Job ad costs
- Social media or social networking posts
- Reviewing applications and pre-screening candidates
- Interview preparation
- Hiring costs (including interviews, reference checks, communicating with candidates to let them know the outcome)
- Onboarding costs
- Training costs
- Salary
Budget tip: Evaluate your cost per hire and review each step of your hiring process to identify inefficiencies.
4. Reshape processes based on performance and budget
Amanoel notes that when talent acquisition managers or recruiters talk about ROI, it’s usually linked to retention, level of engagement or cost per hire. In the current climate, there’s another aspect to consider.
“You have to look at your decisions and how they link to the commercial outcomes of the business,” Amanoel says. “When we were recruiting for the front-end developer role, we set clear goals. For example, if the aim was for the website to increase the number of orders from 100 to 200, then the role ticks an important revenue goal for the business. It’s essential to work out what the role needs to deliver and link that to your budget.”
Budget tip: Consider attaching a commercial/revenue goal to tasks and evaluate progress regularly.
Facing complex decisions about how to maximise your budget can feel overwhelming but implementing these strategies may help your team to work through this. Having a tighter budget could give you an opportunity to review and improve your existing hiring processes and spend and present a chance to set your business up for improved success in the future.
