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Save Time and Money: Reducing HR Costs Through Consolidated Tech Stacks

May 26, 2023

Hiring people and managing a competitive workforce is one of the biggest business expenses, especially for small companies. Having to cover the compensation, office facilities, training, hiring costs and much more can increase direct and indirect business costs.

How does it affect the business? 

On one hand, the business gets a competitive edge to innovate and provide exceptional solutions. On the other hand, these same people have complete control of business profitability. So, if the business fails to build a quality workforce, it will hamper business revenue and growth opportunities. 

Even though the employees and labour have such an impact on business, companies adopt layoffs and freeze hiring in case of recession. Recessions can harm business operations leading to shrinking margins and economic losses. However, is this enough reason to cut the hiring costs when adversities arise? 

In today's blog, we will understand recruitment costs in depth and see how cutting hiring costs can prove to be beneficial without impacting business capabilities. 

What are Recruitment Costs? 

Recruitment costs refer to expenses related to sourcing, engaging, vetting, and hiring new employees. Companies spend enormous amounts on recruitment to get their hands on top employees and gain a competitive advantage. 

  • Advertising costs 
  • Recruiters fees
  • Technology costs 
  • Opportunity cost
  • Training costs 

To hire top-qualified candidates, companies spend on a variety of activities. These comprise the types of recruitment costs, including: 

  • Advertising Cost- This includes the cost of posting job vacancies on portals and job boards, advertising the vacancies via Ads and social media, creating materials for job listings, etc. Companies generally adopt more than one platform to boost the efficiency of job advertisements. Moreover, they spend a lot of resources on creating perfect ads and job vacancy materials. 
  • Recruiter Fees- This includes the cost of third-party organizations and people that help in hiring qualified candidates. Companies often rely on headhunters and external recruiters to find the ideal candidate. Moreover, they might outsource the complete task to a third-party agency. All this comprises recruiters' fees. 
  • Technology Cost- This includes the cost of tools and other software HR teams use for automation and increase process efficiency. It involves tools such as an applicant tracking system (ATS), video conferencing platforms, analytics tools, and other automation tools for screening and vetting candidates. HR teams must spend on these tools to ensure operational efficiency and hire top candidates.
  • Opportunity Cost- This includes the cost of managers or recruiters, who spend their basic wage hours on finding the new candidate. For instance, a manager could have done other tasks, instead of spending those working hours finding a newly qualified candidate. Hence, this lost productivity accounts for opportunity costs. 
  • Training Costs- This includes the training cost of the new employees, critical for extracting true value from these employees. Every employee goes through a variety of training programmes throughout their life in the company. It costs a company to maintain and provide such modules. However, these costs are generally paid off with increased productivity and commitment.  

All these recruitment costs are taken together to find the cost per hire, a critical recruitment metric. Let us read in-depth about it to understand its importance and impact on business success and growth. 

How Do You Analyze Cost Per Hire? 

Cost per hire is a crucial hiring metric that enables recruiters to assess the hiring process efficiency. 

But, what is the cost per hire?

Cost per hire is the total cost of hiring a new employee, including all the expenses such as:

  • Equipment 
  • Travel costs
  • Administrative costs 
  • Recruitment process expenses
  • Perks and benefits offered as compensation

Cost per hire is a metric that reflects the average cost of hiring a new employee for a company over a specified period. The main aim is to get a comprehensive view of the budget spent on hiring. This includes the marketing cost of job vacancies, recruiters’ costs, and other related expenses. 

The company can assess recruitment efficiency with this single metric. For instance, in case of a bad hire, the company must know how much they spend on an employee which costs more than the ROI generated. Moreover, they will be able to distribute the expenses as good, bad, and best costs. 

How do you calculate the cost per hire? 

Cost per hire includes all the internal and external costs, which are divided among all the new hires. This helps in calculating how much each employee costs the company.

Why Do We Need Cost Per Hire?  

Recruiters emphasize cost-per-hire and dedicate hours to calculating and evaluating the cost per hire. They analyze its distribution and aim to reduce it via different strategies. But, why spend so much time on a single metric? 

  • Improved Decision Making- It shows a clear distribution of costs amongst various hiring channels. Moreover, recruiters get a comprehensive view of where each penny is being spent while hiring a new employee. This helps in making better decisions and identifying which channels are worth investing in. Moreover, recruiters can adopt specific strategies to exploit effective sourcing and hiring channels.

  • Optimal Resource Allocation- It reflects the inefficiencies in current methodologies and highlights the area of improvement. For instance, if the recruiter is getting 5X ROI from job boards and 10X ROI from social media hiring, where will they deploy the resources? So, cost per hire helps to identify effective channels which ensure optimal resource utilization. This minimizes expenses and maximises cost efficiency. 

  • Cost Reduction- It highlights the distribution of recruitment costs into different channels and areas. This helps to identify all the inefficiencies, which might increase the hiring cost enormously. Recruiters can identify the areas of overspending and minimize them with proper strategy. Proper plans or corrective measures can help to reduce the cost and hire new people within the cost constraints. 

Tech Stack Consolidation

HR managers and recruiters use tools to make hiring easy and efficient. It helps them to improve and expand their HR functions. With the help of automation and other technological advancements, HR tools can boost hiring operational efficiency. 

But, how do recruiters deal with so many tools to exploit them fully

Companies and HR managers generally aim to build a specific HR tech stack. These tech stacks include all the tools required to automate and improve the hiring process. Recruiters depend upon this tech stack for: 

  • Streamlining the recruitment process, i.e, all the parts of the hiring process are integrated and transition smoothly into each other. 
  • Managing the employee lifecycle, i.e., providing a career map and ensuring employee productivity and career growth.
  • Ensuring data accuracy with the help of the tools to eliminate any errors or biases and make sound decisions. 
  • Enhancing employee engagement by building proper career plans and tracking their efforts and performance. 

Recruiters spend on building a dedicated HR tech stack to bring together a variety of tools, which enhance productivity. Yet, one of the common issues with these tools is poor integration capabilities and the inability to function together smoothly. 

Solution? 

Tech Stack Consolidation

Tech stack consolidation is the process to simplify the existing tech stack. This involves adopting measures to eliminate complexities from the technological environment for boosting operational efficiency. It aims at reducing redundant tools and software and building a seamless HR tech stack. 

Potential ROI Of HR Tech Stack Consolidation

  • Reduced Recruitment Costs 
  • Improved Operational Efficiency
  • Enhanced Data Management
  • Increased Compliance 

Tech stack consolidation comes at a price! Maintaining a healthy technology environment for boosting hiring efficiency demands company resources. However, the benefits extracted go beyond its costs, making it a worthwhile investment. 

Why consolidate your tech stack?

  • Reduced Recruitment Costs- HR teams can cut hiring costs significantly by consolidating their tech stack. Consolidation helps in eliminating the overlap and removes any redundant tools or software. Moreover, recruiters need not get multiple licences to get all the applications running smoothly. Tech stack consolidation facilitates multiple applications and licenses at a minimal maintenance cost. Additionally, a healthy tech environment implies a reduction in training costs for onboarding new hires. 
  • Improved Operational Efficiency- Consolidation improves operational efficiency as it streamlines the entire hiring process. It eradicates all the redundancies to improve efficiency and boost productivity. The hiring process is optimized to ensure the seamless hiring of new employees. Moreover, with an easy-to-operate technology, recruiters can fully exploit all the software and applications. 
  • Enhanced Data Management- Data is critical for any business operation, including HR, to analyze the performance and efficiency of business processes. Consolidating the tech stack creates a single source of truth, where all the data comes together. Recruiters find it easier to analyze and exploit the data when present on a single platform. This enables sound decision-making and enhanced data management. Moreover, the reporting becomes easier, which boosts data accuracy to provide valuable insights. 
  • Increased Compliance- Tech stack consolidation ensures compliance with all the required regulatory requirements with an enhanced view of recruiting data- more comprehensive and accurate. This eliminates the risk of unnecessary penalties and fines due to non-compliance. With all the tools integrated, their maintenance becomes easy. 

What Are The Key Challenges In Consolidating HR Tech Stack? How Can You Overcome Them? 

IMAGE: “Key challenges in consolidating your HR tech stack”; a visual to cover the following pointers:

  • Identifying redundant tools
  • Integrating different tools
  • Resistance to change 
  • Data migration 
  • Managing transition 

Working with so many tools comes at a cost, which makes the hiring process inefficient and consolidation challenging. Below are the top 5 challenges that companies face while consolidating their tech stack. We have discussed ways to overcome these so that you can consolidate your tech stack effortlessly.

  • Identifying Redundant Tools- When your team uses multiple tools, with each person having a varied preferences, identifying the redundant tools is difficult. Teams must carefully analyze and eliminate the tools with overlapping functionality to save costs and boost productivity. Solution
  • Analyze the current tools to identify their strengths and weaknesses and uncover their functionality.
  • Evaluate the compatibility of different tools with others, which will help to eliminate tools that disrupt consolidation.
  • Integrating Different Tools- All the tools do not integrate since they come from different parent companies. Recruiters add tools based on their functionality and do not particularly focus on integration capabilities. This makes it difficult to streamline the process. Solution?
  • Evaluate the compatibility of different tools and software with each other.
  • Ensure that the tech stack is designed to embrace new technologies and integrate seamlessly.
  • Resistance To Change- The teams might be resistant to change and do not support the consolidation. It is common to experience resistance when the teams are taken away from their comfort zones. Solution?
  • Collaborate and communicate with all the stakeholders. Outline and map the entire consolidation process, while highlighting its importance at the core. 
  • Offer training and support to the employees in the transition period to ensure that they better understand and embrace the initiatives. 
  • Communicate the functionality and benefits of consolidation with the employees to ensure complete cooperation.
  • Data Migration- Tech stack consolidation demands capturing data from multiple sources and bringing it together to build a single source of information in the new system. However, each tool has its compliance requirements and consolidating data can be a big challenge. Solution?
  • Plan ahead of the data migration and identify all the data sources.
  • Involve all the stakeholders to ensure that all the data is secure and properly backed up before migration. 
  • Managing Transition- Tech stack consolidation completely flips the technology stack to create a positive environment. However, it can be difficult to plan and coordinate with so many stakeholders and bring together a variety of tools. Solution?
  • Develop a proper consolidation strategy with clear plans and timelines.
  • Communicate the plan with stakeholders and employees for complete support.
  • Monitor the transition to eliminate any inefficiencies for seamless consolidation.

Revolutionize Your Hiring Costs with NurtureBox 

Implementing the HR tech stack consolidation can be beneficial for the firm and has three simple steps: identify needs, select vendors, and train staff. 

Recruiters start by identifying the objectives behind the consolidation and aligning them with existing business needs. Then, they move forward to selecting specific vendors for consolidation. Finally, when all the things are in place, recruiters train the teams to understand and exploit the consolidated tech stack to its full potential. But does this ensure an effective consolidation?

What factors are necessary for effective consolidation?

  • Identify redundant tools 
  • Evaluate compatibility
  • Involve stakeholders
  • Assess implementation and training needs
  • Create a timeline

With all these considerations, teams can easily consolidate their HR tech stack and enjoy its benefits. 

We understand that finding the right tools for building a tech stack can be challenging. Hence, we ensured NurtureBox was easy to integrate and compatible with other essential hiring tools and platforms. 

But how does NurtureBox help HR teams?

Nurturebox is a talent engagement platform that helps HR teams to source and engage with qualified talent effectively. With a simple chrome extension download, you can start hiring seamlessly across different platforms without having to jump from one tab to another. Just integrate with the existing tech stack and start hiring. We make hiring your next desired candidate easier!

Amidst today’s noisy digital world, brands find it challenging to create meaningful connections with their customer base and target audience. Getting the target consumer’s attention and persuading them to buy from you gets even trickier. Hence, content marketing has become more crucial than ever for brands to attract, educate, and retain customers.

Content creation is a top priority for 80% of marketers, and there is no reason it shouldn’t be. Consistent, high-quality, and engaging content impacts your audience’s decisions through education and persuasion.

Depending on your business goals and requirements, the role of Content Marketers you hire will vary. The primary responsibilities revolve around forming consistent brand messaging and deciding upon a unique and identifiable voice, style, and pitch across various distribution channels.

From raising brand awareness to attracting a relevant audience to your website, boosting social media presence and engagement, generating leads, and building brand loyalty – content marketing drives all the growth efforts for your brand. When done effectively, it can help you:

  • Build positive brand awareness
  • Make your audience stick around for longer
  • Get better traction on social media
  • Gain more trust of your audience than ever
  • Generate qualified leads
  • Improve conversion rates
  • Boost business visibility with SEO
  • Position your brand as an authority
  • Cultivate loyal brand fans

While content marketing is a broad role with numerous areas of expertise involved, it’s vital to thoroughly understand your company’s current marketing goals and the related requirements. In this blog, we will dive deep into the step-by-step approach to hiring a Content Marketer.

What is The Role of a Content Marketer?

A Content Marketer must be deeply passionate about telling your brand’s story to the world. The objective is to educate and nurture the target audience to establish brand authority using thought-leadership and drive more people to buy from you.

As a candidate is expected to be a mediator between the brand and the target audience, they are primarily responsible for planning, creating, and sharing valuable content to grow their company’s awareness and engagement to bring more business.

To be more specific, the role of a Content Marketer requires a perfect blend of creativity and attention to detail in an individual. It’s a balancing role, as they need to ensure creating content that resonates and strengthens business relationships, using strategies that position your business as authentic and problem-solving.

Take a look at the core responsibilities of a Content Marketer that most businesses expect them to take over:

  • Research and Competitor Analysis: The first and foremost step to creating a content marketing strategy is effective initial research. It not only helps a Content Marketer understand the nuances of the industry through competitor analysis but also study and understand the target audience thoroughly.
  • Building Content Marketing Plans: Once the competitor research and target audience analysis is done, a Content Marketer needs to work on the different plans for all the business objectives, targeted channels, segments of the audience, and the bigger marketing strategy. A content marketing plan typically consists of:
  • Specific goals along with a pre-decided timeline
  • Various channels to be targeted for content distribution
  • Types of content to be created
  • Budget for the entire staff, outsourced services, and paid promotion (Collabs and Ads)
  • Creating Editorial Calendar: Creating, managing, and maintaining a content calendar is one of the most crucial responsibilities of a Content Marketer. It is a centralized visual document that enables effective collaboration among the marketing team and helps Content Marketers ensure on-time production and delivery.
  • Content Creation: Once the strategy and calendar have been approved by relevant stakeholders, Content Marketers need to do the on-ground work. This task usually depends on the scale of your company and content marketing strategy. Suppose an organization already has a set of writers, then the Content Marketer doesn’t need to create content by themselves.
  • Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Producing quality content that educates your target audience and resonates with them, isn’t enough. You need to optimize your content creation to make it search engine-friendly. While most companies need a dedicated SEO specialist for keyword research and planning, Content Marketers need to closely collaborate with them and should be well-versed in the basics of SEO.

While the practices discussed above are primary responsibilities of a Content Marketer, they also need to be proactive with

  • Content editing and ensuring adherence to a certain style guide    
  • Continous publishing and distributing content
  • Measuring and analyzing performance

How to Hire a Content Marketer: Step-By-Step?

Content marketing has become the key to driving growth for businesses. Unlike a few years ago, it’s not possible now to get away with a one-person team for content marketing. You need deeply trained individuals for specialist roles.

Let’s now dive into the step-by-step approach of hiring a Content Marketer. But before you even source your first candidate, you should have a clear expectation of the skillset and experience to look out for top content marketing candidates.

Top Must-Have Skills in a Content Marketer

Apart from having relevant industry experience, a good Content Marketer must possess the following skills.

  1. Excellent Writing Skills

A Content Marketer’s prior skillset should be writing excellent attention-grabbing content. From long-form blog posts to website copy, ad copies, social media content, video scripts, emails, newsletters, e-books, whitepapers, and more – a Content Marketer should be able to adapt to the business’s specific requirements and create quality content.

  1. Audience Research

Identifying user behavior is vital for framing the story in the right direction. So a Content Marketer must know how to identify and analyze the needs and pain points to develop a buyer persona. User research can be performed through social listening, relevant communities, in-person calls with customers, analyzing sales call recordings, and more.

  1. Keyword Research

Creating valuable thought-leadership content isn’t enough. Researching the right set of keywords is an essential skill to further educate your target audience on the Whys, Hows and Whats of your business, and have your website rank on Google.

  1. Data-oriented Content

Content that’s not backed by relevant data points does not build enough trust. Experienced content marketing professionals would always prefer data over hollow claims. No doubt that only data doesn’t help a content piece succeed, but it’s essential..

  1. Project Management, Planning, and Publishing –

A Content Marketer is also expected to break down and analyze the pain points to turn keyword research into content ideas. So a professional must be able to identify and solve content gaps.

Further, they must know how to create a content calendar, decide the different types of content, and choose relevant platforms to publish and schedule marketing campaigns.

  1. Content Promotion

Creating a valuable content piece, for example - an ebook, isn’t enough. Your content marketing team needs to promote it proactively for bringing enough attention and engagement.

  1. Performance Analysis

Setting up goals and plans is one thing, but continuously executing, measuring, and analyzing content performance is another. A Content Marketer should always be monitoring key performance parameters to figure out the upcoming plans with the necessary updates required.

Not to forget - stakeholders and marketing heads need the performance reports regularly. So Content Marketers must be able to collect and comprehend all the data to make it worth presenting.

Step 1: Create a Candidate Persona

Let’s sort out the priorities first, and decide the type of content marketing candidates you want to recruit. From exceptional research skills to storytelling, communication skills, relationship building, audience engagement, and more capabilities must be comprehensively considered. Identify and break down the skill requirements for Content Marketers:

  • What are the educational qualification criteria for the role?
  • How many years and what type of work experience do you want in candidates?
  • What are the specific skill sets you’re looking for?
  • Which industry experience would you primarily prefer?
  • Are there any tools your candidates should be hands-on with?
  • What are some personality traits that will fit your company?
  • Where do they look for a new job?
  • What are their career and life goals?

Forming a candidate persona by answering all these questions would ensure you are not shooting in the dark while sourcing candidates. Further, it helps you determine the traits of the ideal candidate, and plan your sourcing and recruitment strategy further.

Step 2: Document the Role Requirements and Decide on Your Recruiting Process

Next step is determining your role requirements suiting primarily to organizational needs and business goals. A content marketing professional is expected to own the entire content strategy, creation, and distribution. But what about your business’s unique requirements?

You might need someone comfortable with frequently creating long-form content pieces like blogs, ebooks, or whitepapers, or creating engaging video content based on your industry trends.

Talk to various relevant stakeholders for seeking the complete detailed company requirements for the role.

Before you enter the recruitment funnel, outline your talent acquisition process. Identify various strategies, channels, and other informational insights you would need – and maintain a collaborative document.

As you update the tactics and tweak your recruitment process for meeting hiring requirements optimally – keep your document up to date.

Step 3: Prepare a Content Marketing Job Description

Once you have finalized the role requirements with respect to your current content marketing goals and team, you can start sourcing candidates. Preparing the job description is the first task you’ll need to do.

Here are the necessary components you must have in your job description:

  • Job Title: The position you’re looking to fill. For example - Content Marketing Specialist or Content Marketing Manager.
  • Roles & Responsibilities: An outline of the candidate’s day-to-day activities. From ideation to implementation and the impact on the organization, everything should be covered.  
  • Skill Requirements: Skills and abilities a candidate must have to perform the job successfully.
  • Perks and Benefits: The compensation details, perks of the job, and any other benefits.
  • About the Company: Why should a candidate consider working with your company?

Content Marketer Job Description Template

Role

The job of a Content Marketer is to perform competitor research, create user persona, and write plagiarism-free content for blog articles, social media, and the company website. They need to stay updated on the latest SEO techniques.

Responsibilities

  • Develop, write and deliver persuasive copy for the website, email marketing campaigns, sales collateral, videos, and blogs
  • Build and manage an editorial calendar; coordinate with other content crafters to ensure standards
  • Measure impact and perform analysis to improve KPIs
  • Include and optimize all content for SEO
  • Contribute to the localization of processes and content to ensure consistency across regions
  • Review and implement process changes to drive operational excellence

Requirements

  • Proven content marketing, copywriting, or SEO experience
  • Working knowledge of content management systems like WordPress
  • A well-maintained portfolio of published articles, blogs, copy, etc
  • Proven experience of working under pressure to deliver high quality output in a short span of time
  • Proficiency in all Microsoft Office applications, Google Suite
  • Fluency in English or any other required language

Soft Skills

  • Excellent verbal and written communication skills
  • Excellent writing and editing skills
  • The ability to work in a fast-paced environment
  • The ability to handle multiple projects concurrently
  • Strong attention to detail and the ability to multi-task projects and deliverables

Step 4: Source Candidates

Once you have the tailored job description in hand, it’s now time to do the groundwork and source candidates. Create an attractive job post to promote your job across job boards and social channels.

  • Begin with what to expect from the role at your company?
  • Why should candidates apply for the position?
  • Highlight the growth opportunities
  • State the company vision and mission
  • Briefly describe the recruitment process

Prepare an impactful job post and also execute paid job ad campaigns if required. The next step would be promoting your jobs on various job boards and hiring platforms. You can leverage the following platforms for hiring Content Marketers:

  • LinkedIn
  • Indeed
  • Instahyre
  • ZipRecruiter
  • Monster
  • GlassDoor
  • CareerBuilder

Not to forget - almost 3/4th of the workforce includes passive candidates, so you cannot miss out on passive talent sourcing as well. Reach out to qualified candidates on communities, LinkedIn, Twitter, and even Facebook to offer them suitable opportunities.

Step 5: Evaluate Candidates and Interview Shortlisted Ones

Once you have filtered candidates based on their experience and skills listed on their profile, it’s time to evaluate them deeply. Ask them to create a content strategy for your website, along with a value-adding content piece like a small blog. The topic of the article must fall within the scope of the strategy.

Interview the candidates whose profiles got shortlisted. Keep in mind the parameters covering skills, relevant experience, and personality traits of candidates.

Step 5: Make the Hire

Reach out to selected Content Marketers and communicate about the compensation.

Further, extend your offer letter to all the candidates who have been selected. In the case of passive sourcing, extend to only those who were aligned with you on the compensation and are willing to move forward.

Ensure having a deadline for the joining date and mention the necessary documents required by your recruiting team.

  • Get the required documents and set up the offer agreements with candidates
  • Organize an orientation session for the onboarded candidates
  • Introduce them to the entire team and the marketing teams they will be working with
  • Guide the new candidates about your company management tools and communication channels
  • Provide candidates with forms for benefits and perks like Health Insurance.

Supercharge Your Hiring for Content Marketer with Nurturebox

Inbound candidate sourcing doesn’t work effectively anymore. Do you also find challenges in closing quality candidates through job posts even after spending on ads?

Don’t worry, passive candidate sourcing can be an optimal solution for hiring top content marketing candidates.

Nurturebox is a one-stop talent sourcing and engagement platform which is powered by automation. Here’s how you can source product managers from LinkedIn using Nurturebox:

  • Install the Nurturebox Chrome plugin and sign up.
  • On your LinkedIn profile, start sourcing Content Marketers with boolean searches stating the required experience from targeted locations and including other criteria
  • Add the qualified candidates to your sourcing campaign pipeline with just a click
  • Automate the candidate engagement through email, Whatsapp and LinkedIn direct messages for reaching out and nurturing candidates at scale.

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