Top Tips to Maximize Your Talent Acquisition Budget 

HR costs increased significantly in 2023, and show few signs of slowing down. Small wonder, then, that many recruiting leaders and departments are looking to make the best use of their spending to ensure they’re getting as much ROI as possible on their recruiting budget. Here’s what HR professionals and leaders need to know about making the most of your recruitment budget. 

What a Typical Recruitment Budget Looks Like 

A typical talent acquisition budget consists of many different line items: 

• Job boards and other external recruiting methods, including virtual and in-person career fairs
• Recruiting technology platforms, from your ATS to task-specific platforms that handle things like assessing candidates and conducting video interviews 
• The cost of your recruiting team’s salaries and benefits 
• An employee referral program, if you have one 

In many companies, the HR department is fully responsible for the recruiting budget, and hiring managers are allocated a certain amount to fill each open role. If your company is very small and doesn’t have a dedicated HR team, your finance or accounting team might be in charge of tracking and managing your HR budget. 

Measuring and tracking your recruiting budget is essential to make sure you’re devoting your resources to the most effective activities and spaces. You can’t improve what you can’t measure, after all, so tracking some key metrics like cost-per-hire and quality of hire is a great place to start. Then you can focus on improving how you spend your talent acquisition budget. 

How to Maximize Your Recruiting Budget 

Your recruitment budget is likely determined at the beginning of each fiscal year, and it’s your job as an HR leader to get the most out of it for your company. Here are the three most important and effective ways to maximize it. 

1. Carefully Check Your Tech Stack 

With the explosion of recruiting technologies in the past few years, you may have signed up for multiple platforms that perform overlapping functions, or ones that don’t deliver a great ROI for your team anymore. Carefully evaluate each platform you’re currently using to see if it’s contributing maximum value, and narrow down what you’re paying for to the best-fit technologies. 

2. Evaluate Your HR and TA Processes 

Your recruiting processes themselves might also be costing you money and hitting your budget hard. If you have roadblocks in place that slow down hiring, or waste the valuable time of your recruiters, those must be addressed so you can use their time, and your budget, efficiently. Also, any issues in your TA processes that are driving away top talent will end up costing you money in poor hiring fit over the long term as well. 

3. Integrate Automation and AI to Save Time 

To save time on the most manual, least value-added tasks for your recruiters and hiring managers, consider adding in automation and AI where possible and practical. This doesn’t mean replacing the human touch in your recruiting processes with machines, but instead taking off tasks like scheduling interviews and evaluating initial assessments so your recruiters can focus on improving the candidate experience and hiring the best people. 

Just be sure you’re using ethical AI that’s certified bias-free, like Cangrade’s comprehensive talent acquisition and management platform, to avoid hurting your DEI efforts.

With these tips, you’ll be well on your way to a more efficient and cost-effective hiring strategy, without hurting your candidate experience.