The Best Way To Control Hiring Costs

So here’s an interesting statistic, according to our friends at Towers Watson: hiring is expected to increase this upcoming year, while HR funding – you know, the department that does the hiring – likely won’t change very much.

It is something HR has heard before: do more with less.

First off, we don’t agree with being overly-worried about cost-of-hire. It is far more important to measure the quality-of-hire than the cost-of-hire, as at the end of the day, that’s going to make a much bigger difference to a company’s bottom line.

But still, companies do worry about cost-of-hire, so HR departments across the country need to figure out how to keep them low – without hurting quality-of-hire. Sound impossible?

It isn’t.

Force Multipliers

Since HR costs are going to be controlled, bringing more people on isn’t an option. So the goal should be to make the people you already have more efficient. And the best way to do that is via technology, which acts as a force multiplier.

For example, say you use candidate screening software that does your screening interviews for you. Contrast that with trying to do those interviews yourself.

If you use screening software, you can send out your interview and everyone in your entire applicant pool takes it and then you can just go through and assess the answers. Or, since every answer is either recorded or transcribed, you could just pass it along to the department head that is doing the hiring, with a complete log of the information.

If you don’t use the software, you’ll never have time to interview everyone, so you’ll probably pick 10 or so. And then you have to get ahold of them, which means wasting time playing phone tag back and forth. When you finally do get them, you have to interview them and then somehow pass along that information to the hiring manager. Maybe that means taking notes, which is a pain, and yet still the hiring manager is only going to get some of the information.

With the candidate screening software, you have better information in 1/20th of the time. That’s a perfect example of a force multiplier.

Resistance

While candidate screening software is one case, there are technologies out there that can make HR more efficient. And yet, you might find resistance to using them, both internally and externally.

The internal resistance will be primarily that some will see this technology as potential replacements for their job. But nothing could be further from the truth; you’re actually empowering those people. Now, rather than them spending time on administrative tasks, they can focus on strategy and higher-priority work.

The external resistance is often more imagined than real. Yes, there is some cost to buying software, but the cost-savings they provide pale those in comparison. And good leadership is generally welcoming and even encouraging to using technology as a solution, especially if it means their workers can focus on higher-priority tasks.

Bottom line, there is no possible way to increase your output without increasing your headcount, unless you are just going to run your employees into the ground. HR is at a point where it has to look for technology for solutions, or else there is going to be a lot of stressed out workers in human resources.

About VoiceGlance

VoiceGlance is a cloud-based hiring tool used by forward-thinking companies to hire smarter, instead of harder. Learn more here.