If you are a business owner in the current economic climate, you know how difficult it is to hire employees. With temp staff, you have the added issues of dependability, constant onboarding and high turnover, making hiring an ongoing and resource-heavy endeavour. It is therefore all the more important that your hiring process is quick and cost-efficient.

1 − Use Your Current Employees As a Resource

Cut costs on placing job ads, or even hiring a recruitment agency, by asking your current employees for references. Since they know the ins and outs of your business, they can relay this information to anyone they might have in mind as a potential hire. As they benefit from having a suitable candidate join them (especially if they are the one training or working directly with this new hire), they are also less likely to recommend someone who is not the right fit for the open position. In addition, the personal connection contributes to a smooth transition for the new employee.

2 − Define the Desired Skill Set Clearly

If you are looking for a large workforce of temporary workers at once, or your employee references have not proven successful, you may want to advertise the job. As you want only the most suitable candidates to apply, ensure that you define your job spec clearly. Avoid wordy phrasing and lead with what is most important:

• Job Title
• Time frame
• Salary
• Tasks 
• Requirements

Tip: Make sure your job ad is found through search machines by adding relevant keywords or phrases for your industry.

3 − Consider Temp Job Websites

Many employers looking for temp workers dream of having their own pool of available employees. This is certainly possible if you are able to retain your staff (see next tip) and have the right technology in place. However, in absence of having your own employee platform, you should consider browsing temp job websites. These sites cater to people looking for temporary work, so they are not only a great place to display your job ad, but also give you the chance to search for and write to available temp workers directly (though the latter might be chargeable). 

4 − Retain Your Staff

One of the best ways to cut hiring costs is to minimise staff turnover or to avoid it altogether. Although this is harder to achieve for temporary workers, it is important to keep in mind that many of those who are looking for long-term supplemental income only change employers when they find something better. In addition, job expectations now differ significantly to those in the past. It is important to keep up to date with changing mindsets around work, and to make sure your staff members are happy. If you can manage to keep job satisfaction high, this will have a huge impact on your hiring costs.

For a more in-depth look at this topic, we have compiled some tips in our article Staff Shortages - How to Retain Your Temp Staff. 

5 − Automate Your Hiring Process

Aside from ensuring that suitable candidates find you, you also want to reduce overhead in your hiring process. Sifting through numerous applications, many of which might be incomplete or unsuitable, is arduous and time-consuming. Automating this process can save a lot of time and resources for the staff planner, and is usually achieved through recruitment software tools. While their purchase means an investment up-front, they can help bring your hiring costs to a minimum, therefore saving you money in the long term.

Through several years of collaborating with employers, Staffcloud has developed a recruiting sheduling software which seamlessly integrates with employee management, giving you not only a hiring tool, but a comprehensive staff planning tool.

Conclusion

There are several ways to reduce hiring costs for temporary workers. You may need to invest first to reap the benefit of faster processes and fewer unsuitable candidates. However, if you are hiring a large number of employees several times a year, you will soon notice the reduced resource load, giving you and your admin staff more time to concentrate on your core business.

Want to know more about a recruitment approach that integrates seamlessly into your employee scheduling processes?

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio: https://www.pexels.com/photo/job-applicant-passing-her-documents-3760072/