And you thought HR was all about people till your dashboard had started reflecting ‘Bold’ ‘Red’ ‘High’ cost/hire. When debating between ‘Human’ and ‘Data’ oriented HR, numbers make things more measurable and thus contribute to better decision making for people’s good.

Talent Acquisition indeed is one of the most challenging aspect of an HR professional’s life for it directly impacts the business with a tinge of uncertainty. For a recruiter there is nothing called ‘Vanilla’ skill, for if not the skill then the circumstances to hire the candidate make it ‘Niche’. Such scenarios where we are ‘hunting’ the talent down cost associated is a never ending terror. Our dynamic and every changing economy has only made organizations more cost conscious now, so we start measuring from the first step itself.

Check your career site: Do you feel your career page is attractive as well as objective enough to pull talent. If not, then try to make your online face more user friendly and savvy. Job applicant applying through website is sold on the brand at least saving your pitch by half and definitely is a better than any job portal. Oh yes and some feature enhancement in an existing website will not cost as much as job portal usage year after year…

Go Social: We all have social media accounts and most of us would be found connected on Linkedin too. But do we use it for our hiring needs? Or have we explored other social media tools like twitter or Facebook pages for same purpose? Creating an account is not counted as social media presence infact its all about engaging your audience before you talks business. Acquiring Talent has never been so interesting for not only it keeps your talent well connected but also helps you explore his network for any future needs too. All this for FREE!!

Advertise only when needed: Keep a tab on internal referrals and keep it open for only specific hirings. Inviting referrals for what could have been closed by existing database makes no sense rather only adds to ones cost. If you have a competent recruitment team, then outsourcing the requirement should only be the last resort. For let’s not forget that time too has cost related to it and in today’s business quality of hire changes with time. So be Judicious!!

Manage Data effectively: For sure you are using savvy softwares but is it more to do with resume uploads only or the status ‘not interested’ has ever changed to ‘joined’ too. Don’t let the resume go in the black hole if there are even 50% chances of it coming back to life again. Saving the cost with what you have then wasting time for more is your choice…

Cost really can be the game changer for any recruitment strategy. So don’t ignore as it might let your ‘best laid plans’ go for a Toss.

Rakshita Dwivedi is Project Manager at plugHR. Follow her @raks_d