Recruiting new employees is one of the most important investments you make – and budgeting effectively for it is a critical aspect of your business strategy. To hit the ground running in 2023, how can you develop a plan that will be your road map to smart hiring and spending decisions?
Be Data Driven
As you hammer out your 2023 recruitment budget, look closely at all relevant data and variable factors. Consider:
- How many new hires do you anticipate during the year?
- Will some roles be harder to fill than others?
- What about seasonal and/or high-volume hires?
- What do you expect your staff turnover to look like?
- Is business growth in the works for next year? If so, by how much: 5 percent? 10 percent? Or more?
These are all moving targets, of course. So use your best judgment, but again, be sure it’s supported by thorough, thoughtful data analysis.
Common Expense Categories
Lines on your 2023 recruitment budget spreadsheet will typically include:
- Job boards and advertising: Any expenses associated with posting your open jobs.
- Candidate assessments: This cost is usually calculated per candidate.
- Employer branding events: This is separate from general marketing efforts, as it zeroes in on costs directly associated with recruiting. Examples are career fairs, conferences, networking functions – and all the collateral items that go along with them, such as company branded items that you use or hand out.
- Your website and careers page: Include any development, maintenance or redesign costs.
- Partnerships: With universities or other organizations that you utilize as a means of sourcing candidates.
- Salaries: This is not limited to HR professionals, but should include everyone involved in your hiring process including managers and others on your interview and hiring teams.
- Miscellaneous items: Employee referral bonuses, travel expenses for out-of-town candidates, background check services, and ATS fees, to name a few.
Steps you can take to create your budget include:
- Calculating your average monthly expenses. Do this by adding up the costs for a full year and dividing that number by 12. (Or dividing your quarterly total by four.)
- Comparing your actual recruitment expenses with your budgeted amounts.
- Considering your key hiring metrics. For instance, you may have spent 40 percent of your budget on certain job boards, but only netted about 20 percent of your qualified candidates from them. Or, perhaps an external recruiting budget cut negatively impacted your time-to-fill or time-to-hire numbers.
You can glean a lot of valuable knowledge from this analysis.
It’s a lot to think about – and it’s not something you can afford to procrastinate on for much longer. If you need a lifeline to create a 2023 recruitment budget that will keep your business on track, contact Haley Marketing today. We’ll help ensure you get the New Year off on the right foot when it comes to your hiring success.
