Media Buzz

Hiring Online Saves Money and Produces Better Candidates

by Monica Barron

December 18, 2003 - During the hiring slump of the past couple of years, recruiting vendors have continued to improve their products beyond process automation to help companies like yours get good returns on their investments from recruiting application implementations.

The Bottom Line: Moving more recruiting processes online, including front-end sourcing activities, helps to cut costs and improve the quality and availability of your candidate pool, potentially leading to new employees who are a better fit for your open positions and your company.

What It Means: The slow economy has forced many companies to cut staff and freeze new hiring, except for vital positions. Along with the reduction in hiring came the temptation to slow or halt recruiting processes and improvements. But with an upswing in the economy and in hiring imminent, companies without good recruiting technology and processes are going to be at a disadvantage and are likely to repeat their hiring mistakes of the past.

Companies that have implemented recruiting technology report significant savings not just from process automation, but also from improving front-end sourcing and eliminating the middleman. For example:

A large chemical company cut costs per hire by 26%, and reduced in-house recruiting head count from 100 to 60 worldwide, by accepting applications for professional positions online only via a Website and candidate self-service from Recruitsoft.
A large healthcare company uses BrassRing to help cut costs while improving the quality of candidates; in the first nine months of use, the company slashed hiring expenses more than $700K while increasing the ratio of candidates interviewed to candidates hired by 33%.

Companies using Hire.com and Peopleclick report similar results. The Takeaway: Recruiting technology not only helps streamline and automate your hiring process - an important enough step - but it also helps you source and hire higher quality candidates.

The next step is to link the success of the hiring process and candidate quality to improved time-to-productivity, long-term job performance, and retention. Unicru has launched a version of its recruiting product that aims to use selection science and closed-loop analytics to help companies pick candidates who are more likely to become top performers.

Conclusion: Moving internal and external recruiting processes online helps users save money from the start by reducing or eliminating third-party expenses, such as staffing agencies and advertising. And while these applications are saving you money, they are also helping to bring a higher caliber of candidates to your company. With an economic recovery and increased competition for hiring potentially around the corner, now is the time to move hiring online.