We often get calls from businesses who are wanting to expand their team or replace a leaver but they just can’t find the ideal candidate. They tell us they’ve been recruiting for several months and they haven’t had any joy in finding the right candidate, so now they need our help.

Several months and no success. Argh!

Obviously we’re more than happy to help at this stage, but it got me thinking about the hiring manager and the time and hassle they could save themselves if they’d engaged us straight away, instead of giving it a shot on their own.

Now don’t get me wrong, I completely understand that businesses aren’t in the habit of spending money unnecessarily, especially in the current economic climate – as a business owner myself, I’m always weighing up the extent of the investment versus the return.

So let’s look at the considerations a hiring manager might make when it comes to recruiting and whether getting some outsourced help from a recruitment consultant is justifiable.

Time to hire

Usually company’s start hiring when they need the person; either someone is leaving or has already left, or if a team is expanding, they’re already over-worked in terms of customer delivery, so the need is almost always business critical.

The average time to hire is 8-10 weeks, so businesses often find themselves in something of a crisis if they then have to re-start the hiring clock due to an unsuccessful attempt. The danger of that? Your existing team members get frustrated and burnt out and start looking for their own new job – this is exactly the kind of impact you want to avoid, and can do so by engaging a professional to get it right from the start.

Cost of hire

The cost to hire will include direct and indirect costs. The direct costs would be things like advertising, applicant tracking systems, psychometric testing etc. Also there’s the time spent by your internal administrators or managers in advertising, screening applicants, arranging interviews, attending interviews and so on.

Additionally there are the costs of having a vacant role; does this mean you’re paying overtime at a higher rate to other team members to fill the gap? Or are you at risk of losing customers or damaging your reputation with customers due to being under-resourced and not being able to deliver? These are all potential costs to the organisation.

The final cost to consider is the cost of hiring the wrong person. Imagine you hire the wrong candidate and they leave within 3 months – not only have you got to start all over again (and risk the consequences of an extended time to hire) but there’s all the time and money that’s been spent in onboarding and training a candidate who hasn’t been able to add any value to the business.

Quality of hire

We’ve all seen hiring decision that have been made because a bum is needed to fill a seat, as opposed to someone being a good fit for the role. This never ends well and usually will result in either the person leaving within a short period, or huge amounts of time being taken up by colleagues or managers to get the person up to the required standard. This is not effective hiring!

So, even though tackling your recruitment efforts yourself might feel like the best decision to save money, the impact of this can be huge in terms of:

• Prolonged time to hire
• Burn-out for existing team members who are covering the gap
• Risks to customer satisfaction
• Missed opportunities with new clients
• Making a knee-jerk hiring decision to fill a gap quickly, resulting in a bad hire
• Wasted money

At The HR Consultants, not only are we extremely price-competitive, but we only charge a fee once you make a job offer to a candidate, so this is a completely risk-free investment. And the best bit? We’re really nice to work with!

So if you’re ready to get started with your hiring, get in touch to see how we can help.