69M lost to poor recruitment decisions every year

Paul Burgess, Managing Director of eploy, responds to the research published last month by jobsite.co.uk*, which revealed that the UKís small and medium businesses are wasting an estimated 69m a year on poor recruitment decisions.

This research highlights the importance for more SMEís to start investing in recruitment systems and applicant tracking software. These technologies will help them make informed choices during the selection process, which will ultimately save time and money. By adopting an online recruitment system which is able to fully integrate with their current website, SMEís will be able to easily broaden their candidate searches through job boards which are now used by an estimated 80% of jobseekers this research states.

Broadly speaking, SMEís have viewed recruitment software as an unnecessary or a costly expense - but this is a big misconception. According to this research, SMEís invest 300m annually on recruiting 250,000 employees, and more than a fifth of these appointments have to be made twice within a year – so can these businesses afford to be without recruitment software?

Traditional recruitment methods have often led to quite a high cost per hire, with modern job boards often producing an overwhelming response, which can be difficult for SMEs to manage. Utilising job boards to reach a larger population and sending responses to your applicant tracking software however, is a more cost-effective recruitment solution. The high number of enquiries, which are generally received via the web, can be easily administered as the system will quickly sift through CVís, and automatically identify and match the skills required. This allows the recruiter to focus on the ìbest matchî candidates first, and importantly helps him/her broaden their candidate search in the first instance, and then find, engage and recruit the right calibre of staff as efficiently as possible, without wasting time looking through unsuitable CVs. Quality candidates that didnít make it are also there for the future, often eliminating the need to re-advertise positions.

More fundamentally, the issue of ëbigí costs or fixed long term contracts that may have been traditionally associated with recruitment software, no longer applies. eployís recruiting software, for example, is used by many SMEs because it has been designed to provide access via a standard internet web browser, as opposed to installing traditional software which can have large upfront costs and can be difficult and expensive to access remotely. Ultimately this leads to a much more efficient, flexible and accessible system with significantly reduced costs.

Many of our SME clients have cited that the low setup cost, monthly charge, no long term contract and the flexible nature of the eploy system made the decision a low risk and straightforward service to implement.

To take a look at the latest advances in recruitment technology with a free online trial, please telephone eploy on 0800 073 4243 or email info@eploy.co.uk. Alternatively visit www.itssystems.co.uk.