Corporate recruiters often complain that they lack the resources to try new and better recruitment techniques. The fact that they have small budgets is not, however, because companies consider recruitment to be an unimportant function. Recruitment has proved to have the greatest impact on business results of all HR functions. The problem is that recruiters can't sell this fact enough when applying for their budget.
"The first and most important lesson for recruiting leaders to learn is that most recruiting business cases don't fail because of what’s in them, they fail because what is not in them," writes John Sullivan, renowned consultant in the field of human resources management from Silicon Valley and professor of management at San Francisco State University, in an article on LinkedIn.
He compiled a list of twenty factors that should be included in the business case you submit to your company's top management when applying for the recruiting budget.
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Quantify the overall impact of your project on the company's revenue growth.
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Quantify the impact of your project on other strategic objectives of the company.
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Emphasize that your project does not solve recruitment problems, but the company's business problems.
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Convert recruitment results into money and compare them with sales, production, and the company's total revenue.
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Speak the language of business which consists mainly of hard facts and figures.
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Introduce the consequences that will occur when your project is delayed or discarded.
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Demonstrate that all major decisions in the context of your project will be based on data collection and measurement.
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Make sure that your project contains at least two things that will really impress your top management.
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Highlight what your company will be the first at if your project is approved.
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Show the competitive advantage involved in your project.
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Find out and include information your CFO requires to approve the budget.
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Find out and include information your CEO requires to approve the budget.
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Stress the speed of positive changes which will occur after your project is approved.
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Include innovations in your project based on the latest developments in your field.
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Include a forecast on the future development of your company and its competition.
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Ensure the project is scalable and can be easily applied throughout the company.
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Introduce the expected reaction the competition will have to the activities involved in your project.
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Take external factors in your environment into account that could affect the project's success.
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Go out on a limb - include planned sanctions to punish your team if the project fails.
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Calculate the ROI of your project.
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