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Securing the budget for a new recruitment technology project can often be difficult as organisations face conflicting priorities to improve, grow and be profitable.
To have the best shot at getting senior approval for a technology and transformation project you will need to gather information, get a sponsor, define the project deliverables and illustrate how your project aligns with company strategy.
This insight looks at how you can present a credible business case and demonstrate the Return on Investment (ROI). Typical projects include replacing your existing ATS/Recruitment System or implementing new technology from scratch, all designed to improve and ‘level up’ your hiring processes.
Identify the business case
First, it’s vital to define the problem you’re trying to solve. Research the business need associated with the problem. Document what a potential solution would require and why. Think about the recruitment journey and the impact on the team, the candidate and your overall business contribution.
Areas you might want to review to uncover the need:
Approvals: Raising new roles, who is involved? How long do you spend on each one? Where are the delays and do they impact time to fill? What is your time to authorise?
Attraction: How you recruit, where you post roles, what your application to hire ratio is by source, what brand message you convey to prospective candidates and the mechanism/ease for them to apply.
Candidate screening: Do you review candidates manually? Are all of your candidates in one system? How long is spent screening each candidate?
Compliance – Do you have a robust and GDPR compliant process to manage the data and document collection process from registration and application through to onboarding?
Specify what your project needs
What resources will you need to carry out the project? Which departments and people will have to help? Make sure you consider how your project will affect other departments and get their buy-in. In specifying your needs, consider the bigger picture and how your project can support your company strategy. Look at each stage of the recruitment process and what is required, considering Systems, People & Process.
Assess your current capability, rate your risk to the business (0-1 or Red, Amber, Green) and priority to the business.
Know the process/procedures for the analysis and approval of projects to be well prepared.
Costs and ROI
You will need to present what costs are involved and how long it will take for your project to pay for itself. Make sure you calculate the ROI over a set time period.
When considering ROI, get a handle on each stage of your recruitment process and understand who is involved, how long manual processes take, any external costs (such as agency partners) and how many hours per week you spend preparing management reports. These are just some simple ways to build a credible business case detailing efficiency gains and ROI.
For example, if you are looking to automate manual processes, a task you spend a large amount of time on could be booking face to face interviews with candidates. Start with the number of vacancies x number of candidates interviewed per vacancy x by minutes spent arranging each interview. This will give you the number of hours spent.
If you then multiply the number of hours spent by the average hourly rate this would give you the cost-saving of that activity. However, think wider than just the cost-saving – what would you do with those hours back? What value add activity could you be doing instead?
You can then replicate the process for other manual activities such as vacancy requisition, vacancy advertising, creating longlists for hiring managers and so on.
Need some more food for thought?
Download this free Recruitment Metrics cookbook to inspire ideas on how to gain valuable insights on potential candidates during the recruitment process and how you can create benchmarks and report against them. It’s an excellent thought-provoker for areas that you might be looking to measure and improve upon.
