Talent acquisition can be an expensive business. In fact, research has shown that you could be spending as much as £50,000 for the first year with a new employee, even if that person is only actually paid half that as an annual salary.

But does it have to cost so much? Of course, finding the talent that will drive your business forward is always worth investing in, but there are many ways to improve the cost-efficiency of the process. Let’s take a look at just a handful of these cost-cutting measures, as recommended by HR software specialist CIHPR and other experts:

1. Streamline the process. If there are unnecessary steps in your procedures, not only does this potentially damage the candidate experience. It also makes the process take longer, which costs money. If you can speed things up for the candidate, it means greater efficiency and cost saving for you.
2. Go digital. Embracing digital recruitment is essential if you want to improve the cost-efficiency of your search. It’s also important for your company image. If you can digitise parts of the process, such as giving candidates a portal where they can upload documentation and check the progress of their application, you’ll save a small fortune. It requires some initial investment to finesse the process, but it can be well worth it.
3. Use social channels to market roles. Marketing vacancies is no longer such a formal process, and you can actually boost candidate engagement levels and applications if you take your marketing to your social media channels. Use these channels to communicate your offer and company ethos, to headhunt and actively engage with candidates – and all for relatively little cost except for your time.
4. Align your budget with trackable KPIs. To manage your campaign on a budget, you need to think strategically. Appoint a recruitment manager, set a budget and key targets alongside it so it’s easy to track your achievements. This means you can stay on track, and find it easier to get budgets signed off in future if you can demonstrate decent ROI figures.
5. Consider outsourcing. It’s a common misconception that it’s always cheaper to manage recruitment yourself, rather than outsourcing to an agency. However, it’s also easy to underestimate the actual costs of recruitment, especially when it comes to time. If you aren’t an expert (and many people in smaller companies tasked with recruitment tend not to be), everything will take longer. If you use a specialist agency for your industry instead, the chances are that they can find better quality candidates faster – which is cheaper for you.

If you’re looking for a cost-efficient way to source new talent and want access to one of the UK’s widest talent networks, choose SOLOS Consultants.

We’re specialists in IT, digital and technology recruitment and are known for the accuracy and speed of our work sourcing candidates. We all know that time is money in recruitment, so finding the right candidate first time is our top priority. Get in touch with the SOLOS team to find out more about how we can help.