Permanent recruitment costs: What are you paying for?
Finding, attracting and engaging the best talent is critical to the success of your organisation.
Engaging a recruiter to help with this process is a smart move. Hiring the wrong person could cost you 30 to 150% of their salary. That’s a mistake worth avoiding.
What does permanent recruitment cost?
In Australia, permanent recruitment fees range between 14 and 25% of the employee’s salary
package. This fee encompasses all aspects of the process, including:
Time and labour: Consider the number of recruiters working and the hours they spend on your search.
Reach: Do you need a local, national or global talent search? How large will the talent pool be?
Recruitment marketing: This is an essential part for any effective recruitment process. After all, recruitment is marketing.
Advertising: This includes standard job board advertising as well social media campaigns and other advertising strategies.
Project delivery time: Will the urgency of your project require the recruitment team to work beyond standard hours and/or prioritise your project over others?
Testing: Do you require candidates to complete psychometric (or other) testing? What about a work sample activity?
Placement guarantee: What duration of replacement guarantee do you require? What do you need this to entail?
What are you paying for?
When you consider the recruitment placement fee, it might be tempting to opt for in-house recruitment. Before you go down the DIY route, let’s unpack what you’re paying a recruitment partner to do.
An effective recruitment process should be tailored to the specific requirements of each organisation and its hiring needs. Most people think of recruitment in terms of job descriptions, job ads, job applications and candidate interviews. In reality, the process is far more comprehensive than that.
Needs analysis and role assessment
Not getting this right is the leading reason why recruitment projects fail. A professional recruiter will start with a deep dive into your organisation, speaking with key stakeholders and understanding the ideal talent persona to help track down the perfect match.
Recruitment marketing
Recruitment is marketing. This is always true, not just because we’re currently in a talent-driven market. How your recruiter positions your role to the talent market and promotes your employer brand is critical to helping us appeal to the right people. (Hint: The job description is not the job ad.)
Talent search and mapping
Effective recruitment is a proactive process, which means going beyond job boards and tapping into passive talent. By engaging a recruiter, you’re instantly giving yourself access to a much wider range of talent than you’d find on your own.
Candidate care and engagement
This is the most common place where hiring teams get it wrong. We could fill a book with anecdotes about forgotten applications, unreturned phone calls and poorly written rejection letters. Creating a positive candidate experience is essential to protecting your employer brand. A good recruiter will manage this carefully for you, including offering feedback to unsuccessful candidates. Remember, candidates are consumers too.
Candidate testing
Candidate testing requirements will vary depending on the nature of the role on offer and your organisation at large. Regardless, your recruiter can facilitate a range of contemporary testing techniques through third-party providers that give would-be employees the chance to show off their skills.
Interview question design
We believe an interview is a conversation, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t plan for it. A well-designed interview will make sure you gain useful insights that you can use to make strategy, informed hiring decisions.
Reference checks
Some hiring managers want to skip references, usually based on the excitement of finding a unicorn, but this final piece of due diligence is important. Your recruitment partner can help you conduct effective conversations with referees that provide insight into talent suitability.
Onboarding support and a replacement guarantee
We’ll keep in touch with you and your new team member for the first few months to make sure everyone’s happy. If your new starter leaves within an agreed timeframe (usually 90 days) for a reason other than redundancy or restructure, we’ll find you a replacement. There are many benefits to working with a recruitment partner. This one takes the risk away completely.
Need recruitment support?
As you can see, we’re pretty passionate about recruitment done right. Hiring decisions are important decisions.
A good recruitment partner will take the legwork and the risk out of the process for you, allowing you to get on with your day job. If you’re ready to expect better from your recruitment partner, find out more about what Heart can offer.