When it's time to recruit how do you reach your ideal candidate?

Most businesses use job board advertising and/or recruitment agencies to help them hire. In some cases, agencies can be very useful. If you're in a niche industry or require a board level employee a specialist agency can help you hire a 'unicorn employee' (albeit at a hefty price tag).

However, for the majority of vacancies online recruitment is the perfect way to hire talent faster at a much lower cost than traditional recruitment methods. In this article we highlight the top 5 benefits associated with online recruitment.

Top 5 Benefits of Online Recruitment

1. Maximum reach 

If you're a business that only uses recruitment agencies you may be limiting your adverts reach. If an agency doesn't have any candidates registered that match your job specification they will often use job boards to attract new talent. Most agencies will typically use free job boards such as indeed to advertise the role to limit their costs with no guarantee of placing a candidates. 

By recruiting in-house and utilising several job boards you're far more likely to attract a diverse range of talent. Job board advertising also gives you the flexibility to chop and change your advertising sources based on performance.

One misconception that comes with posting to multiple job boards is that the more channels used, the more candidates out of geographical location you will receive. This is not the case, job boards help you hone in on and attract local talent. Job seekers search for roles based on three main criteria, job title, salary and location. Job boards provide a radius search to help candidates find vacancies local to them to help employers reach the best local talent. 

2. More cost effective

When compared to traditional recruitment, online recruitment is far more cost effective. The typical recruitment agency charge businesses a percentage of the new employees starting salary for their services. This can equate to thousands of pounds depending on the role. Job boards vary in price from free to a couple of hundred pounds. Utilising a flat fee recruitment provider such as Talentvine can help you advertise on multiple job boards for just £199.

A good online recruitment provider will also supply you with an Applicant Tracking Systems to help hiring managers save time on the hiring process. 

3. Save advertising budget through reporting

No one likes paying for recruitment, especially hefty agency fees. By recruiting online and utilising an intelligent Applicant Tracking System hiring managers can multi-post vacancies to job boards instantly. A quality ATS will give you the ability to see which advertising sources are performing in terms of quantity and quality of applications. By having data to learn from it becomes much easier to make decisions on which sources to invest your budget and can save you hundreds if not thousands in the long run. 

4. Reduce time to hire

Time to hire is of course one of the most critical metrics when it comes to recruitment. Failing to hire the right candidate quickly can cost the businesses in productivity and impact growth. 

By utilising job boards and recruiting in-house, hiring managers are able to stay in full control of the process and hire talent as quickly as they require.

However, most of us don't have the luxury of being able to offer market leading salaries and employee benefits to attract bucket loads of quality candidates to our vacancies. That's why it's critical to write a great advert to stand out from competitors to attract quality applications quicker.  Take a look at our guide to writing a top performing job advert for tips and tricks to attracting talent through your job advert. 

5. Easy to set up and use

Advertising your vacancy online is pretty straightforward. Simply select the job boards you wish to use, create an account and upload your advert. Typically, the job boards will have your advert live within just a few hours. 

By utilising an ATS that has a multi-posting function you can further simplify posting and reduce admin time. An ATS with this handy feature allows you to upload your vacancy, pick and chose your favourite job boards and post instantly. ATS' also compile all applications from various sources in one location making it easy to manage applications.  

The beauty with online recruitment is that the whole process is trackable and you'll never be left in the dark.