1.How much did you spend on recruitment last year?
2.How much less have you got to spend this year?
3.How are you going to make the savings?

If the answers to the above are clear and actionable then you’ve cracked it. My guess is that 2 of them are very clear yet one, probably the last one, has some good ideas attached to it but nothing that is actionable in the form of a plan.

Last year the UK recruitment market was worth £25.7 billion and if you contributed to that market then did you feel that you were getting the service you required? Do you even know what services are out there?

If you’re still reading then here is the bit that could help drive your recruitment strategy for the new financial year. If you view recruitment as a series of campaigns, just like advertising, where the drive is to pick up employees rather than customers then you’ll probably agree that depending on where you want to get those employees from you will need to adopt a slightly different approach. The channels available are fairly straight forward and the running of each campaign can be done in house or external depending on capability and/or capacity.

Understanding exactly what is available has become a little more confusing as there are many different solutions and providers out there but essentially there is a tried and tested solution for each problem and the purpose of this blog is to highlight them. The age old “cost vs value” debate comes into force here and squeezing everything out of suppliers in a highly competitive market place is a risky strategy. Getting the best return on your investment should be the driver here and understanding and using your suppliers will ensure you can do exactly this. I’ll blog about this another time but to get back to the essence of this blog, I would suggest that the solutions available would fall into the following headings:

• Interns
• School leavers
• Graduates
• Direct attraction – advertising, social media, careers site, internal referral programmes
• Agency – PSL – preferred supplier list
• Agency – ASL – approved supplier list
• Search and Selection/Headhunt
• Contract/project resource

Most of these are self- explanatory and in the coming weeks I’m going to write blogs on all of them but the purpose of this blog was to highlight that in order to manage your campaigns in the most cost effective manner then you need to know your options. Advice is out there, on the internet, from existing suppliers or from your peer group but if you are interested in discussing anything to do with recruitment then I am more than happy to talk.

Dan

Dan.molloy@colstonconsulting.co.uk