Reducing Cost of Recruitment – Whose Priority is it in the Organization Anyway?by Wenger & Watson Team ‐ September 26, 2017

Every organization plans how and where to hire new recruits for their companies. But whose priority is it to reduce cost incurred towards recruitment?

By interacting with procurement and Talent acquisition leaders we undoubtedly conclude that reducing cost is definitely an organizational priority. Here are few comments we could gather while seeking opinion from Industry leaders.

“Every recruiter knows how costly recruitment can be, but not every organization knows how to effectively contain these expenses. As long as there is adequate budget allocated towards recruitment, the recruitment team will focus primarily on the quality of hires. The problem is when the management wants you to hire more but spend less.”

• Kashyap Bharathy- Recruitment Leader @ World’s leading Healthcare IT Organisation.  

“We are always looking for ways to reduce costs for each function in the organization without sacrificing the quality. Recruitment is no different.”

• Praveen Acharya – Procurement Leader, Flipkart

From the Talent acquisition standpoint the demand is always to identify best of professionals in the shortest period of time, however cost becomes critical to increase the bandwidth to source and select the right candidates. From the procurement standpoint, engaging multiple sources becomes an expensive affair. Buyer’s (Procurement team) typically appreciate ways to optimize the cost incurred towards recruitment. While each organization are specific about quality of hires, we noticed the need to address cost of recruitments in more efficient way.

So here are a few of the best practices that organisations can adopt to reduce cost of recruitment.

1. Increasing Employee Referrals

A well-designed employee referral program reduces dependency on external sources for recruitment. As a result, the organization could have a control over the cost of recruitment and yet lead to hiring high performing and stable teams with lowest cost per hire.

2. Managing Contract to Hire

Matured organisations always ensure to have a portion of their workforce on contract. This not only helps them avoid overhead cost, but also gives them the advantage of having a steady pipeline of tested workforce. Effective management of contract to hire significantly reduces recruitment costs. Few challenges that organizations face during contract to hire are rigid contracts with service providers that does not permit conversion of contractors or even higher conversion fee.

3. Reducing Hiring Managers’ Time to Interview Candidates

A prolonged time-to-hire means opportunities lost and resources wasted. One of the most critical elements an organisation does not take into account is the time spent by technical hiring managers to interview candidates.

Imagine a scenario of a hiring manager interviewing 8 to 10 candidates to select and offer 1 candidate. It’s a lot of valuable time  spent on recruitment by technology professionals. This means to hire about 10 candidates an organisation has to end up dedicating its hiring managers’ time to meet over 80 to 100 candidates. There are several ways to save hiring managers’ time. One of the best ways to do this is to increase interview to offer ratio. Matured organizations are moving towards measuring partners with the criteria of interview to offer ratio.

4. Proactive Pipeline Development

Talent pipelining refers to the process of building long-term professional relationships with passive talent for future opportunities. Developing a talent pipeline requires a shift from reactive recruiting to proactive recruiting. Proactive pipeline development impacts the speed to market and is highly appreciated among GIC’s and product development companies. Proactive pipeline building means lower chances of meeting contingent situations.  

Talent pipelining allows organizations to be two steps ahead in the hiring process and saves time and cost in actively sourcing and narrowing down the ideal candidate profile.

Wenger & Watson follows the best practices for proactive pipeline development, helping you craft a long-term recruitment strategy with incredible cost benefits.

The author of this blog is a Strategic Program Leader in Wenger & Watson.

Wenger & Watson is a leader in providing workforce solutions to some of the best brands. Considered one of the top recruitment firms in Bangalore, we create recruitment programs that can address to organziation’s priorities. Contact us for a conversation: https://buff.ly/2ypPjfV