Did you know that growing your team can cost you money beyond a new employee’s salary? It might seem like just part of the process, but there are unique costs to hiring that you should consider, especially if you’re a small business. From paying job listing sites to put your advertisement up, to taking time out of your schedule (time is money after all), hiring costs can add up in unexpected ways.
While you can’t avoid hiring if you want to take your business to the next level, you can reduce your costs throughout the process. To help you make the most of limited resources and protect your bottom line , here are three ways to save money in the hiring process:
Use Free Resources
One of the best ways to save money is to use the free resources at your disposal. And fortunately, in the digital age, there are plenty of free resources online, including:
- Free background check
- Free interview question templates
- Free job posting platforms (you can even use your social media)
- Free job listing templates
You could also use internal resources through an employee referral process. Start a program where employees can recommend candidates from within their network, which could save you the expense of posting a job listing, meeting with multiple candidates, and more. There are also plenty of blogs and how-to’s to help you get oriented if you’re hiring your first employee and need more thorough guidance.
Limit Time Waste
As we mentioned, time is money, and this is especially true when you have limited resources. The hiring process can take up a lot of time when you consider all the different tasks involved. From creating the job listing and sorting through applications, to actually meeting with candidates, there’s a lot of room for wasted time.
To prevent you from investing too much time in your hiring process, you should focus on efficiency by refining each step. Investing the time up front can help you save a lot in the long run. Here are few things you should do in order to reduce the time costs of hiring new employees:
- Limit how long you leave open for each interview. While this won’t be an exact science—you can’t completely limit how long someone talks—you can set time expectations for yourself and keep an eye on the clock during interviews.
- Set up pre-screening questions on your online application. Qualifiers such as location, education level , and more can help you eliminate ineligible candidates without having to review their entire application.
- Do a phone interview first. Holding a five to 10-minute phone interview can help you ask a few telling questions to determine whether an applicant is worth bringing into the office and setting aside a longer period of time.
Only Involve Necessary Parties
In addition to limiting how much time you spend in interviews; you should also consider how many people really need to attend. It’s common practice for groups of managers or teams to interview candidates, however, this blows up your time cost.
Here are a few considerations to keep in mind when deciding how to conduct group interviews without unnecessary costs:
- Interview in levels. Don’t allow them to meet everyone at once, instead have a starting point and if they pass that interview, have the next group come in. If they don’t pass the bar, then send them on their way without wasting anyone else’s time.
- Have a few representatives from the team attend instead of the entire department meeting with them. This will help you get multiple perspectives and gather valuable feedback but reduce the expense of the interview process.
In addition to these money-saving tips , another important thing to keep in mind is to avoid hiring for hiring’s sake, meaning that you should only grow your team based on need. Time tracking , forecasting, and careful planning can help you build out projections for when you’ll need to hire for each department and how many people you’ll need to handle the workload.
With these recommendations in mind, you can work toward a more efficient, cost-effective hiring process that helps you grow your business without unnecessary spending. Not only will you be able to build your team more effectively, but you’ll be able to redirect these resources towards other expenses like developing new products and services, employee benefits, training, and more.