The primary consideration for any company drafting recruitment plans on a small budget is whether they value the prospective talent or not. That is one factor you have to be particularly careful about if you are conducting recruitment on a small budget at any company.
Something else often taken for granted by people conducting recruitment on a small budget is that recruitment itself is actually a sales process. A key detail of any sales process, whether that be in an HR department or at a manufacturing firm, is that every single element of that process needs to be dealt with comprehensively.
In the same way that leaving out a wheel in an automobile production line will derail the entire process, failure to pay attention to every single chapter in recruitment will bring about abysmal consequences for your business and everybody that the business serves. Something seemingly insignificant, like failing to check references, will lead to you making an uninformed decision when you approve or reject an application.
In a climate where there are so many different solutions available for recruitment on a small budget, businesses don’t actually pay enough attention to the process. Simply being cost-effective with your recruitment is not enough.
While a company should never be comfortable with just throwing money at a recruitment solution, the greater emphasis should be on finding a solution that checks every box in the recruitment process. If that can be achieved efficiently and affordably, that would be the proverbial icing on the cake.
Here are five more important factors that apply when hiring top talent with small budget, regardless of the solution that you end up using.
Top 5 Ways To Do Recruitment On A Small Budget
Master The Recruitment Basics #1
An outstanding example of employers laying a poor foundation for recruitment is the drafting of a vague - and sometimes woefully inaccurate - job description. Even some of the most sophisticated companies do not do an outstanding job with their job descriptions, and that sets off an employment cycle that is unproductive and costly in the medium to long term.
Here is a straightforward example of how this scenario typically plays itself out. You will source a large group of the wrong people for the job. From that group of the wrong people, you will then interview a smaller group of the wrong people. From that smaller group of the wrong people, the hiring manager will find himself stuck between a rock and hard place, and just accept that these are the best candidates that he is going to get.
That manager then ends up hiring the wrong person (obviously), because this recruitment is invariably put on a clock, based on the nature of the project and targets for the financial year.
That manager will then find himself stuck with the wrong person for a couple of years until somebody finally accepts or acknowledges that the candidate hired simply wasn’t even suitable for the job.
The major mistake that employers and hiring managers then make is that they pull out the exact same job description that placed them in this quandary in the first place.
Typically, nobody has the foresight to acknowledge how this went so terribly wrong, and the cycle invariably starts again. It becomes a waste of time, recourses, and ultimately it hinders productivity. All things that you cannot afford when you are operating off a small budget.
Why Housing Matters With Recruitment On a Small Budget #2
It is exceedingly difficult to attract the best talent to your business location if the people you are trying to hire cannot afford to live in the immediate or surrounding areas. While a considerable amount of this will actually fall onto the shoulders of civil servants and elected officials, that onus should also be on your business to help facilitate housing solutions that will make a transition easier for a prospective employee.
However, not all government departments are efficient, which means that the responsibility for finding suitable housing solutions for prospective employees could ultimately fall squarely on the shoulders of employers and hiring managers.
The most this should ever cost you is time. If it is anything more than that, you are doing something wrong. Access to low-income housing for potential employees can be just as crippling to businesses operating out of big cities, as it is for businesses operating in remote locations.
Don’t Put All Your Eggs In One Basket #3
One of many budgeted recruitment examples is posting your jobs online. While it is impossible to ignore that there are tremendous benefits that come with that, the level of your success is often determined by the industry that you are in, and what is done with the information on that job board.
Beyond the industries that naturally attract the most tech-savvy people on the work market, there are not actually any meaningful guarantees that you will find the best candidates online.
There is some evidence that suggests most of your best hires are actually secured through direct and indirect connections to the employer.
Networking is as valuable now, as it has ever been. It should also be noted that this level of networking - which is perhaps considered old school to some - can also be done online. Job boards and social media platforms are themselves very useful sources of networking.
A compelling example of the ideal online business networking solution is LinkedIn, which is already a happy hunting ground for many employers. There are other solutions and recruitment apps that are just as effective, though.
The key takeaway here is that simply posting on an online platform is not enough. Whatever recruitment solution you end up pursuing needs to take other important features of hiring into account. Try to use all of the tools that are at your disposal.
Draft And Implement A Talent Recruitment Strategy #4
Developing a talent acquisition strategy is one of many cost-effective recruitments on small budget examples.
Not actually having a tangible talent recruitment strategy is a business plan in and of itself, but it is not a very good plan and it will probably cost you more in the short and long term. That is not a great recruitment on a small budget template to follow. You should never try to fill a company position just for the sake of filling it.
An efficient company needs to have sufficient clarity on what it is that the business is looking for, how much the salary is going to be, and how much potential relocation will cost the company. These are details that need to be clearly ironed out before you actually list a job anywhere.
Don’t Just Focus On The Hard Costs #5
When embarking on any recruitment process, it is always important to acknowledge that there are hard costs, which are mostly monetary. However, there are also a set of hidden costs that factor into the equation. A glaring example of this would be time.
It is important to understand that everything costs you something, including time. If you know that a set of positions are on the horizon, you will need to consider if you might need third-party help with the recruitment drive.
Do you have the internal capacity for recruitment? Will you need contingent or contract recruiters? What are you going to use for sourcing, beyond just job boards? Having sufficient clarity on that before you start the process provides a suitable window for you to budget accordingly, knowing that you will not run into a set of unexpected costs down the line.
