Recruitment cost per hire is an important metric in HR, for various reasons. First, it’s an accurate indicator of how resources are spent when hiring a single employee. Second, this KPI can help you determine how your business is performing relative to the industry average. And lastly, cost-per-hire is a useful metric in strategic HR planning and budgeting.
Today, we look at the different ways in which Blue Octopus can help cut down your cost-per-hire while ensuring you target the best candidates for each role.
What is cost per hire in recruitment?
The first step in keeping cost-per-hire down is knowing exactly what expenses are involved in recruiting a staff member. Expenses can be external (marketing costs, travel expenses if attending job fairs, background and eligibility checks, outsourcing and third-party fees, etc.) and internal (recruiter or interviewer salaries, employee referral bonuses, fixed costs and overheads incurred by the HR department, etc.).
Bear in mind that there could be hidden expenses that go unaccounted for and which substantially increase cost-per-hire metrics. For example, you need to consider the time factor (i.e. the total number of hours spent recruiting a staff member – including admin).
It’s also useful to calculate the cost of poor hiring decisions as part of your cost-per-hire metrics, as these can triple the annual salary in question and cause financial losses via productivity drops.
How Blue Octopus can reduce your cost-per-hire figures
1) Make the most of social media
Social media platforms, especially LinkedIn but also Instagram and Facebook, can be used to build and promote an attractive employer brand that gets the attention of qualified candidates. Through the expert use of these platforms, you can interact with job seekers for free and generate enthusiasm about the prospect of working for your company. You can even do this before a vacancy arises by building a talent community on social media, which ensures you always have a pipeline of qualified applicants.
With Blue Octopus, we can create a social media recruiting strategy that suits your needs and set up company careers pages on your behalf to connect and communicate with potential candidates.
2) Create a compelling Careers Microsite
According to a HR survey, online internal sources are among the most effective when sourcing talent. Having a careers page or a microsite on your website has been known to attract the best candidates for each role, which in turn reduces cost-per-hire expenses, as it eliminates the need to pay for vacancy ads on third-party sites.
Blue Octopus offers a bespoke and fully responsive career site service which can be integrated with your existing ATS or with Octo Platinum. This level of personalised integration can help attract top talent, as well as generate valuable insights thanks to the analytics data collected.
3) Professional Outsourcing
Time is a hidden cost that can substantially increase your cost-per-hire. The solution isn’t to devote less time to recruitment, but rather to hire an experienced third party who can take care of part or the entire process for you.
Working with a professional recruitment agency is a cost-effective strategy, since you’ll get the best candidates in a shorter period time and without tying up internal resources. Just tell us what you want to include in your managed campaign and Blue Octopus will do the rest!
Next steps
At Blue Octopus we can assist in your recruitment process to help ease cost-per-hire concerns. Our Managed Recruitment Services have been created to make hiring easy thanks to an innovative combination of human expertise and technological support. We’re here to help reduce your cost-per-hire and find the best talent, whether it is using our Octo Recruitment Software or through a managed campaign tailored to your preferences. Please get in touch to find out more – call us on 0113 532 3418 or email [email protected].