While recruitment is undoubtedly a great investment for any company, finding the right talent can be quite costly and time-consuming. Faced with financial challenges posed by the approaching recession and impacts of inflation, many companies are striving to find new ways to become more cost-efficient, without sacrificing the quality of their hiring processes and candidate experience.

Pairing strategies like Connected Recruiting with powerful technologies such as automation can help firms engage better with talent throughout the recruitment lifecycle, improving time to hire while cutting costs.

Andy Ingham, Senior Vice President, EMEA and APAC, Bullhorn provide some guidance on how can recruitment professionals cut costs this year?

Here are three important areas to focus on.

Attract

One way to attract more candidates without necessarily spending more is by rethinking job descriptions. If you simplify job descriptions by cutting out “nice to have” skills and focusing on core competencies, you can attract a larger talent pool who are better suited for the role. It is also important to use more inclusive and gender-neutral language, emphasising the employee experience and the company’s work culture as well as the role itself.

Investing in automation will also help with candidate sourcing. Recruiters can use it to automatically screen candidates that come through job boards or similar sources, meaning you only need to contact those who fit the role – a real time saver.

However, recruiters need to ensure that the use of technology does not lead to an impersonal candidate experience – all interactions with candidates (even those which are automated) must have the human touch in order to foster positive relationships.

Recruiters should also consider using 24/7 chatbots and CV parsing, which can help greatly with this sorting process and the initial outreach to those candidates that make it through. A CV parsing tool integrated with the firm’s applicant tracking system (ATS) makes it quick and easy to review so you can match qualified candidates to jobs at scale.

Engage

“Application abandonment” is increasingly prevalent among candidates that are growing frustrated with slow and unresponsive recruitment processes. To avoid this, recruiters must ensure that they keep candidates engaged at all times. However, this is easier said than done!

While automation can help streamline candidate engagements, recruiters can also go a step further by offering candidates a self-service portal that gives them more control and visibility over the progress of their applications.

This translates into a win-win situation: candidates are given more control over the process – and therefore have a better experience – while recruiters are able to devote their time to other high-value tasks.

Automating data hygiene will ensure that all interactions are based on up-to-date information. This improves overall efficiency as no time is wasted on candidates later found to be unsuitable or unavailable.

But the automation does not have to stop there. Other options to increase productivity include:

• Application confirmation via email and text messages;
• Instant new applicant follow-up and;
• Candidate re-engagement in the applicant tracking systems (ATS).

Onboard

Providing effective onboarding is just as important as attracting the right candidates. In fact, around one-third of new employees leave their positions within 90 days, often due to poor onboarding.

Investing in a quality onboarding process upfront will break a cycle of rapid turnover as new hires will feel more informed and supported. Businesses may be hesitant to invest in new processes due to budget constraints, but keep in mind that hiring new employees can be a lot more expensive than retaining existing ones.

For firms that work across multiple industries or countries, automating processes such as documentation and credentialling – which often hold up the latter end of the hiring process – can also improve candidate experience. Automatically scheduling regular check-ins with candidates after they have taken up a new position or assignment is another fantastic way to identify any issues that may otherwise go unaddressed.

When hiring temporary workers, it is worth thinking about ways they could be utilised on a longer-term basis. Automated recruitment tools with artificial intelligence capabilities can instantly review your talent database and match a candidate’s details, which could streamline their placement or redeployment into a new assignment —  and at a fraction of the cost and time.

A faster, more precise recruitment process

The ongoing skills shortage, combined with a challenging economic environment, should give recruiters every incentive to improve and streamline your recruitment processes.

While automation can require some investment upfront, the payoffs are clear: streamlining back office and routine tasks will speed up the overall process and allow businesses to consistently deliver responsive, personalised experiences to all candidates.