In recruitment, as in numerous other industries, it can be challenging to distinguish between innovations and jargon. Recruitment marketing, recruitment automation, employer branding, and other concepts may appear appealing; however, how can recruiters and other HR personnel determine whether they are meaningful? In order to accurately assess a new trend or concept, it is necessary to establish a tangible benchmark, such as the potential impact of a specific business practice on your ROI.
Particularly in the context of recruitment marketing automation (RMA), numerous recruiters must be contemplating the precise manner in which it will result in quantifiable cost reductions. Nevertheless, recruitment marketing, which involves recruiters treating talent acquisition more like marketing, is still in its infancy, and automation could be criticized for adding an extra layer of complexity by utilizing social media and other content to convert passive job seekers into eligible applicants. What is the potential impact of automating routine duties, such as posting job advertisements on Reddit and Facebook, on your bottom line to help you maximize your budget?
Automation is a time-saving solution, and time is money. But, in reality, RMA’s potential to optimize talent acquisition and save money extends far beyond that.
Cost per recruit and employer brand
We should examine the most significant factors that contribute to the increase in recruiting costs. Initially, the time and labor required to compose and distribute job advertisements, screen and interview candidates, and ultimately extend offers and integrate new employees. Given these factors, it appears that the most direct path to cost savings and, consequently, an enhanced ROI is to expedite the hiring and filling processes. Nevertheless, this framework neglects to consider a significant number of external factors that can influence the other determinants of recruitment cost, including base salary and total compensation.
It may appear that these are, to a certain extent, influenced more by the market than by any other factor (with perhaps some consideration given to hiring managers who can strike a hard bargain), but in reality, employer branding can have a significant impact on the cost of hiring and retaining top talent. Research has demonstrated that employers with a subpar reputation (i.e., a poor employer brand) are likely to compensate by offering higher salaries. In the same vein, approximately two-thirds of candidates indicate that they are willing to accept a lower salary than they anticipated if the employer has an exceptional reputation.
The conclusion for recruiters should be obvious: employer branding should be the primary focus in order to optimize their return on investment. RMA is an essential instrument for mitigating the potential adverse consequences of a negative reputation, as recruitment marketing automation is centered on the expeditious and effective dissemination of your employer brand to the appropriate audience. This prevents you from paying salaries that exceed the market rate, thereby reducing your cost per employ.
Accelerating the filling process
Of course, there is a more direct method by which RMA can have a measurable impact on your ROI: by enhancing the time to fill. This may appear to be a paradox, as it does require time to establish employer brand gravity and attract qualified candidates to your talent pipeline. However, it is precisely this pipeline that renders recruitment marketing an effective instrument for expediting the hiring process. Consider this: By employing recruitment agencies and job boards to fill vacant positions as soon as they become available, you are essentially initiating your talent procurement efforts from the beginning each time you require an employee. This implies that you will be required to reacquaint active job seekers with your employer brand and to forgo the opportunity to attract the attention of individuals who are not presently in search of new employment.
Conversely, if you are conducting a comprehensive recruitment marketing campaign, you will be providing a consistent stream of employer-branded content, regardless of whether you have an immediate opening. This implies that you will not be required to begin from zero when a position becomes available. In contrast, you will have already established your business as a potential employment destination for a significant number of your optimal candidates. It is crucial to note that a significant number of these individuals will be passive job seekers, rather than active ones. Consequently, their interest in your company will not be motivated by a desire to secure employment as swiftly as possible, but by a genuine interest. In turn, this sincere interest may motivate them to expedite your procedure.
Methods for influencing others and saving time
In a sense, we have reserved the most apparent source of cost savings and savings for last. RMA can return countless hours to recruiters by saving them the time required to perform critical recruitment marketing activities, such as targeting, budgeting, scheduling, and posting job ad campaigns, as well as accumulating reporting data on those campaigns. Although this may be the most apparent source of value, it is also the most challenging to quantify. For what reason? The value of any time returned to recruiters is contingent upon their utilization.
If RMA saves a specific HR department 10 hours per week (a hypothetical and potentially extremely conservative estimate), and the department celebrates by spending an additional 10 hours on happy hours and lunches, then the ROI is not particularly impressive. Conversely, if they are capable of utilizing the additional time to develop and execute an innovative new employer branding campaign that enhances your brand’s visibility and attracts a succession of new employees, you are likely to achieve substantial positive value as a result of your RMA endeavors.
The issue of quantification becomes even more complex when we incorporate robotic process automation (RPA) into the equation. This technology has the potential to enhance the integration between recruitment marketing activities and niche advertising platforms, as well as the integration between those activities and the applicant tracking systems that they rely on. Simultaneously, the prospective upside becomes more significant. Perhaps your HR team is able to allocate a greater portion of their resources to attrition reduction as a result of the time they save. It is possible that they are capable of optimizing their interview process and completing interviews and resume evaluations at a faster pace than ever before. In either scenario, RMA has the capacity to increase the value and, as a result, the ROI that recruiters and recruiting managers were already contributing.