Recruitment costs and growing your own talent

June 11th, 2019 | Industry News

According to HR Director, a standard recruitment process can cost up to £11,000 and soak up around 27 days. That’s a substantial increase in both cost and time over five years ago. It’s no surprise to recruitment professionals with Brexit, economic uncertainty established talent gaps particularly in STEM sectors all contributing to the difficulty of finding, and retaining, the right people.

Limitations in the traditional ‘recruitment campaign’ include the process of the funnel which limits both speed and access to ideal candidates by taking a linear approach to hiring. New models which have a ‘wheel’ of recruitment change recruiting from a linear to a non-linear process but engaging all potential candidates – via recruitment software – in a process that puts them, rather than the job, at the centre of a web of connections. Recruitment agency software can be used to nurture relationships, staying in touch with each individual and establishing a long-term relationship via an applicant tracking system, UK-wide and able to recognise the vital moments when talent in the network can be rapidly recruited into appropriate positions.

Not only that, but once a candidate becomes an employee, they bring their own ‘wheel’ of contacts who can be nurtured until the time is right to activate them – a bit like cold war double agents!

Talent growth as a business priority

Chief Information Officers in the UK face problems recruiting effective talent – 77% say that they expect to struggle to find the personnel they need, an increase over the 69% who said so last year. Apprenticeships and graduate schemes have traditionally been approaches to ‘growing’ talent. Web based recruitment software doesn’t just keep track of potential talent, the best recruitment CRM can also help to deliver on an innovative approach to finding IT talent – incubator establishment. This is an approach where a large company ‘hot-houses’ IT start-ups that can bring both new technical developments and new individuals to an organisation, growing a talent pool that might otherwise not find that organisation, or its activities, an attractive proposition.

Once incubated organisations find their feet, or fail, they inevitably spawn talented individuals with innovative skill-sets, who can then be recruited into more traditional areas of the parent business. Familiarity with the hosting organisation often creates a more positive response to recruitment than any other kind of outreach and having been incubated in the organisation allows the individual to fit easily into the larger organisation’s culture and practices.