Hiring top talent with a bare minimum budget

Some of the reasons that cash-strapped businesses hesitate to start hiring, even when they need employees, is due to the actual costs involved with hiring. While recruiting, employers incur advertising costs, and go through thousands of resumes, calls, interviews, background checks, etc. in order to find the right talent but, this process is expensive.

More often, small businesses may not be able to afford dozens of recruitment agencies. The truth is, they are already recruiting with tight budgets, but when companies need to expand then it seems like a soaring exercise. To address the problem, we have listed some methods that will help you in budget friendly recruiting.

Internal advertising 

Many important and sensitive jobs are filled by internal candidates. Establish if you already have someone within the organisation who would be great for this new role. Revise your own talent pool and even consider retraining someone to fulfill the higher position.

Role sharing 

On a very basic level, ask yourself the question - do we really need to recruit someone new? You may be able to have one person handling two different roles if those don't require full-time cover. You may even find that some of those all-important positions were not cost-effective in the first place.

Employee referrals 

This option places emphasis on turning your current employees into recruiters. Referrals can produce high-quality candidates. One way to do this is to ask top performers within your company to provide you with a handful of names of top people in the areas you need and even make the initial contact for you. Most employees are willing to do this without an introduction fee, although it may be worthwhile to offer one. 

Old employees

Employers can go out of their way and contact their old employees who left the company before. Give them a call, ping them on LinkedIn or email them. Talk to them and get to know if they know any potential candidates or ask them if they would like to rejoin the company. Getting the old staff members to join the company not only cuts down recruitment costs but also help you save time and resources on training them.

Company website

Use your company website by adding a career page to build an employer brand. Attractive and user-friendly websites and pages allure job seekers. Employer brand directly influences your ability to attract, hire and retain top talents. “69% of the candidates would not take a job with a company that had a bad reputation, even if they were unemployed”  according to Glassdoor HR recruiting statistics.

Social media

Social media has the potential spread news like wildfire. Posting your job vacancies on social media sites; increases the chance of candidates applying for jobs at your company. According to research, 86% of people in the first 10 years of their career are likely to use social media in their job search. Jobcast reported that 93% of companies use LinkedIn for recruiting, 66% use Facebook, and 54% use Twitter. Without paying for anything, employers can build a solid network of followers and connections they can share their content with qualified candidates in their own network. 

Professional events

Try recruiting at local and national events, trade shows, award dinners, and seminars where your target audience is assembled. This approach has an exclusive feel and makes the targeted individual feel very special indeed. You can even ask your own employees to turn recruiters at such events.

Interviewees

Ask your favourite candidates at their job interview for the names of other talented people they know of. There's nothing wrong with letting them know that you need more people — especially to graduates who has access to a whole ready-made source of potential candidates.

Re-trawl of previous candidates

Take a look at the candidates who have applied for job positions at your company before. If they didn’t join your company initially or if you didn’t call some applicants for an interview, there is no harm in finding out if they would like to join you now. Likewise, take a look at those interviewees that your company might have narrowly rejected.

No matter which of these options you choose, it is much easier to focus on few candidates rather than posting job descriptions on multiple job boards and getting thousands of applications. Having minimum candidates in your talent pipeline gives you an edge when it comes to really getting to know the candidates.  

If you still find that the right calibre candidates are not being attracted by your job announcements, it may be worth revising job descriptions to make them more appealing to your target audiences.

Have the top executives management team of your organisation to call top candidates directly and encourage them to consider joining your firm. Such calls can be highly effective. There are thousands of approaches to reach top talent with no restrictions or limits. Sometimes simple, low-cost, methods can be the most efficient and effective when used in the right way. 

Created: February 23rd 2017.