The cost of recruiting a marketing specialist

Recruitment in marketing – direct and indirect costs

It is essential to first recognize that recruitment in marketing is a process that generates expenses on at least three levels. 

Direct recruitment costs

Some employers see only direct costs, such as:

• fees for creating, publishing, and promoting job offers;
• compensation for recruiters' work time;
• amounts due to employees of recruitment agencies, if you use the services of such agencies;
• payment for tools to verify candidates' competence, such as tests.

Indirect recruitment costs

While direct costs can be controlled on an ongoing basis and expenses can be modified depending on the effects, indirect costs are sometimes not even realized by anyone. However, they can also represent quite a large share of the expenses incurred. Indirect costs, also sometimes called hidden costs, include all side activities that support the recruitment process. These include expenses:

• in the area of employer branding;
• related to recruitment marketing, such as the cost of presenting the company at career fairs and developing promotional materials;
• related to the management of the company's social media profiles;
• incurred due to protracted recruitment processes generating personnel costs.

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Recruitment in marketing – the cost of inducting a new employee

When the actual recruitment is over and you sign the contract with the new marketer, the only additional cost you will incur, at best, is the cost of employee induction, that is:

• workplace equipment,
• medical examinations required for the position,
• necessary training,
• onboarding and meetings between the new team member and other employees, who will have to spend some of their time familiarizing the newcomer with the organization and work culture instead of performing their ongoing duties.

However, there is still no assurance that these are all the expenses and from now on you will only pay for the provision of work. We'll come back to that in a moment.

What is the cost of recruitment in marketing? The formula for calculating the budget

If you are expecting someone to give you a one-size-fits-all answer to the question of how much does it cost to recruit a marketer, I'm sorry to disappoint you. The cost of every single hiring process depends, among other factors, on your industry, preferred cooperation model or marketer's specialization. Fortunately, you can use a formula that will help you estimate the budget for a specific recruitment.

Calculate the cost of recruitment in marketing, step by step, by adding up the following:

1. The recruiter's working time to be spent on the project. Their tasks include the preparation of the job offer, agreeing on its content with the manager of the relevant department and publishing the advertisement, followed by the verification of submitted applications or meetings with candidates. Find out how many man-hours your HR person needs to spend to accomplish the above activities.
2. Expenses related to dissemination of the job offer, including the development of the graphic design of the ad, posting it on various sites and the options used to promote it.
3. Remuneration for intermediaries, such as employment agencies, or bonuses for those who participated in the employee referral program.
4. Access to tools for verifying competencies, such as online tests.
5. Indirect costs if you have invested in the aforementioned employer branding and recruitment marketing.

The amount you get is the cost of the recruitment alone. If you want to have a complete picture of how much you will pay for hiring a marketer, you should also consider the employee induction budget. Sadly, there are occasions when you must bear the expense of unsuccessful hiring.

How much does a failed recruitment cost your company?

Wrong recruitment decisions result in losing an employee soon after hiring. In practice, in addition to manpower and expenses previously incurred, you also lose:

• another amount of money, spending it on a new recruitment process and onboarding the next employee;
• time and energy to repeat the same steps and re-engage other team members;
• potential fruits of labor that could be achieved by the hired employee, not to mention the risk of delays in the company's operations.

What is the potential cost to you? Estimates range from a dozen to even tens of thousands.

What to consider when recruiting in marketing?

In 2021, researchers from the Polish HR Forum asked representatives of small, medium and large enterprises what factors will have the greatest impact on changes in hiring practices within their companies over the next year. The second most important factor identified by the respondents was precisely the difficulty of recruiting candidates. This response was chosen by 41% of those surveyed. This demonstrates how difficult the hiring process can be for businesses. So what can be done to ensure that recruitment in marketing does not end in disaster?

First, make sure that the recruiter is adequately qualified. Apart from being conversant with hiring procedures, your HR specialist ought to be well versed in the particulars of a marketer's job.

Secondly, in order to more thoroughly assess candidates' abilities, it can occasionally be desirable to extend the hiring process a little. Unfortunately, time is money, so such a solution involves additional costs.

Thirdly, involve other company employees in the recruitment process, including those from related departments, such as sales or customer service. The point is not so much to prepare offers, but to interview candidates. Each perspective can help verify a candidate's competence in various fields.

Fourthly, seek assistance from outside experts. These can be marketers from a partner company or experts – consultants and employees of professional recruitment agencies. Their unbiased viewpoint and expert assistance will come in handy at every stage of the recruitment process, such as when conducting tests. You must, however, be ready to incur extra expenses again. 

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Recruitment in marketing – best ways to save money

Many employers may be surprised by how much it costs to recruit a new employee in marketing. Thus, there is a risk that they will look for savings where they should not. For example, abandoning employer branding activities or reducing the budget allocated to onboarding are not appropriate ways to optimize the cost of hiring processes. 

Instead, it is better to choose a different model of cooperation with a marketer, for example. The Human Intelligence on Demand platform is a compromise between hiring a full-time employee, using agency support and working with a freelancer. Top marketing experts of various specialties are ready to proceed with your project on demand.

The HI model allows you to:

• reduce almost all direct recruiting costs to zero – you don't prepare offers, publish ads, hire recruiters and worry about the level of competence of professionals;
• leave all the paperwork to us as your partner – one invoice instead of a stack of paperwork;
• assign recruitment tasks to experienced industry professionals – we will entrust your project to a marketer who is one of the top professionals in the country;
• save time – top experts are ready to work on demand, it takes a maximum of 48 hours to find the best professional for you, and you get a guarantee that deadlines will be strictly observed;
• skip the implementation processes, such as equipping the workplace, onboarding, conducting training or testing – well, unless you really want to do so!
• work with a top marketing expert on an exclusive basis – you can engage a particular expert to work only on your project.

Sounds good? Say HI, if you want to find out that recruiting in marketing can be completely effortless.