Why Cost is your Friend not your Enemy

One of our favourite customers says,

“Cost is the enemy”.  

But I beg to differ … but by only a single word.

I’d prefer to say,

“Unnecessary cost is the enemy”.  

Whilst cost-avoidance is guaranteed to get the attention of business owners, the CEO and the CFO, the company that spends nothing accomplishes nothing.   I’m thinking omelettes and eggs here.

All this got me thinking.  So, since we are specialists in staff selection systems, I did a little analysis of the costs for a couple of representative customers.  And, I confess, I was also very  interested in the impact of the new kid on the block, Indeed.com.au

If you are still unfamiliar with Indeed.com.au think “Google for Jobs”… a one-stop destination to find every job in Australia (and the rest of the World through other country-based sites).  More detail here and here

I chose larger over smaller employers because they publish jobs more frequently, improving the quality and significance of the statistics.   I  looked at a retailer in the fashion industry (800 staff) and a supermarket chain (6,000 staff).

Each of these customers has documented very significant cost and quality improvements savings since implementing Expr3ss!  So I wanted to develop an estimate of what their per-applicant and per-appointment costs might be.

The results?… they surprised even me.

“The Supermarket”

Over a few years, this customer has developed its Expr3ss! website as “the go-to place” to find Jobs.   So it has a very high percentage of “organic” applicants who come directly to it.  In addition it has built a talent pool of over 100,000 applicants, which it mines using the Expr3ss! Advanced Search.   As a result it placed only a few Job Board Ads  (all on Seek) during the 12 months to January this year.

Applicants sourced from all Job Boards:  4%

Cost per Applicant:  $ 0.10

Cost per Quality^* Applicant: $ 0.15

Cost per Appointed Applicant: $ 56.75   ( 13% of this cost is Ad Spend)

“The Retailer” – Spend-less Shoes [spendless.com.au]

This customer has 87%  fewer employees and a talent bank 48% the size of “The Supermarket”.  Regardless, it has preferred to advertise more heavily across all the major job boards until recently.

Applicants sourced from all Job Boards:  88%

Cost per Applicant:  $ 2.63

Cost per Quality* Applicant: $ 5.62

Cost per Appointed Applicant: $ 81.95  (46% of this cost is Ad Spend)

Since Indeed.com.au

There has been a startling 32% reduction in the cost of acquisition of quality applicants since Expr3ss! has partnered with Indeed.com.au

Applicants sourced from all Job Boards:  5.2%

Cost per Applicant:  $ 1.93

Cost per Quality^* Applicant: $ 3.82

Cost per Appointed Applicant: $ 55.58 (8.9% of this cost is Ad Spend)

 

The Conclusions

Thinking relativities, we’ve established that the cost of quality eggs for our omelette is falling as a result of new technologies and new business models in job advertising.

Thinking absolutes, we’ve seen that the actual cost of the necessary technologies for the rapid and reliable acquisition of quality applicants and appointees is extremely low… lower even than I had imagined.

But what about the quality of the omelette?  For that I turn to the amazing results our valued customers speak about.   Have you checked out the Expr3ss! Vimeo Channel at http://vimeo.com/channels/expr3ss

Proven improvements in time spent on hiring, time-to-hire,  staff retention and quality are all there to view.

UPDATE 20th Feb:

David Evans (GM of Spend-less Shoes, “The Retailer”) was kind enough to say this of the contribution Expr3ss! makes to his business’ success…

” … savings could easily exceed $150k per annum” .

 

Enjoy!

 

Thanks for dropping by…

 

* A quality Applicant is one who met the threshold Expr3ss! “can-do”, “will-do” and “fit-to” criteria for the job applied to