Recruiting costs a lot, but if you save money by reducing the quality of your recruiting process the organization is doomed. What can HR do? Here are the top tips for reducing recruiting costs.

1. Assess value, not cost – By far the biggest cost of recruiting is hiring poor performers. Assess quality of hire and go the extra step of asking managers to put a dollar figure on the difference between top, average and poor performers.

2. Go all out to improve retention – You don’t have to spend a ton of money hiring new people if your existing good employees stick around. Study retention, track it, and continuously work to improve it.

3. Get decent applicant tracking software – There is nothing more painful than watching skilled recruiters waste time because they are stuck with lousy recruitment software. Get them a tool that does the job. There’s no excuse to lose the talent acquisition battle for want of decent software.

4. Stay on top of new sourcing technology – No area of recruiting is as volatile as sourcing. A continual investment in experimenting with the latest techniques will pay off. Don’t let the pressure of today stop you from keeping sourcing capability in top form.

5. Consider bringing executive search in-house – If you do a lot of executive search consider bringing it in house. Don’t confuse it with everyday recruiting—you will need a different kind of recruiter and you will need to compensate them differently. However, if you take the plunge and do it right there is a lot of money to be saved.

6. Ramp up your employee referrals – Research shows employee referrals are one of the best ways to find high performers and one of the cheapest ways to recruit talent. Invest a little in sprucing up your employee referral program as an integral piece of your talent management software.

7. Take onboarding on-board – It is sad when after HR has successfully recruited a strong candidate that they get dropped into an organization that appears not to care. Onboarding is an integral part of recruiting and employee onboarding software should guide a seamless transition from being hired to being a happily integrated new employee. If necessary, bring onboarding under the aegis of the recruiting function.

8. Assessment technology – Have we mentioned how important technology has become in recruitment? When recruitment software includes assessment tools you save money by speeding up and improving selection. Just be sure to validate the tool and continue to check how well it is working.

9. Consider outsourcing – If your hiring needs are volatile it can be hard to staff your recruiting department appropriately. Recruitment process outsourcing can help—but only if you do it to get a better overall outcome customized to your needs. If you only look at costs you court disaster.

10. Use social recruiting – Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn are inexpensive tools for building your employment brand, advertising openings and seeking passive candidates. Perhaps, those hours your kids spend on Facebook are not wasted; maybe they are developing their skills in social recruiting :-)

Top 10 Ways to Reduce Recruiting Costs

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