Now Hiring: Understanding the Cost of an Open Position at Your Company

Having an open position in your company can be exciting for everybody. For applicants, it’s a chance to secure a place within your company and impact the world. For your company, it means that you’re growing and expanding your labor force, which can mean you’re getting more successful.

Yet, it’s distressing to leave a position open for too long, without anyone to fill it. Having a vacant position for too long can sew chaos within your teams’ ranks. It can also indicate a deeper problem with your company if none of your applicants seem like quite the best match.

Not to mention, you lose valuable time and money that could be spent working while looking for someone to fill the role. With an open position, your company isn’t just vulnerable to its competition, but also to itself. Having open positions means you’re not operating as efficiently as possible, which can reflect poorly on your company’s performance.

And that’s the just start of your problems when you keep a position vacant for too long. Keep reading below to learn what it costs to have an open position in your company.

Filling Open Positions Costs More Than A Salary

The longer your position remains open, the more of a hole you’ll burn in your pocket. When you have an open position, you need to market it like you would with a new product. Otherwise, you’ll never reach the talent you need to fulfill the role.

And that’s not the beginning of your costs. You also need to factor in the price of the talent you need. Your company also needs to be an attractive place to work in the first place.

If people don’t believe in your company, they won’t be motivated to apply to work for it. If your company is suffering from public image issues, or if simply doesn’t connect with its employees, they won’t work as hard.

Filling a role won’t mean anything if the person you hire won’t give the company everything they have to perform well in it. It’ll just end up costing your company more, as less gets done for a higher price.

Keep reading below to learn some of the other ways why keeping a position open may cost you money.

Marketing It Costs As Much As Marketing Anything Else

You should be familiar with the costs that go into marketing your company, by now. You need to invest in a social media strategy to build your brand, a marketing campaign to generate leads, and so much else. It’s expensive to market something correctly, even if it does pay off in the end.

The same is true when you market an open position. You will have a large upfront cost as you hire people to seek out the right talent and attract it to your company. And if it does get you the right person, you’ll still have to pay for each minute you spend trying to find them.

Talent Is Costly

Your company deserves the best — that should be obvious. Yet, the best often isn’t the cheapest and you should expect talent to fetch a hefty price. It’s rare to find someone who doesn’t understand the value of their own skills.

A paycheck may not be enough for some people. You may need to also entice them with fringe benefits such as different kinds of insurance, company discounts, retirement plans, and paid time off. Talented people can go anywhere for a paycheck. Filling a position with the right person may take more than just money.

You Don’t Just Invest Money — You Invest Time

Every second you spend scouring the labor market for the right person is a second that could be spent on your projects. The opportunity cost for finding talent to fill your open position may end up being higher than the upfront cost of hiring them.

All the time you spend trying to find them may end up better spent on the work you actually want to do. And that’s not to mention the time you’ll have to spend going through the hiring process.

And while you may be able to recoup on your financial investment, you’ll never get the time you spend looking for talent back.

The Cost of An Open Position Goes Beyond Money

By having an open position, you spend more than just money. You open yourself up to your competition by revealing that you have a role that needs to be filled. An open position shows everyone that you’re not operating as efficiently as possible.

Competitors may seize on that to attract customers away from you, or your products. That’s on top of the obvious fact that less work will get done if you’re not actively trying to finish your projects.

You’ll also lose out on opportunities for your company to capitalize on new ideas if there aren’t people to have those ideas. The more open positions you have in your company, the fewer people are involved with it. And when fewer people are involved with your company, the creative it is.

That means it’s less innovative and less competitive.

Open Positions Will Make People Nervous

Being less creative isn’t the only thing that will make your company less competitive with an open position. The longer a position is open, the more your existing employees will wonder why you haven’t selected one of them to fill it. They’ll either start to doubt their own performance, or they will accuse others of scheming to get it.

You can only do so much to mitigate employee tensions.

That infighting will only interfere with normal company operations. It hinders your company’s ability to produce with the people it has on staff. And when your company is hobbled with so much infighting, it can hurt its public image, which will make it even harder to find the talent you need.

The Time To Hire Is As Soon As You Can

There’s no reason to keep an open position when you have the opportunity to fill. And right now is the time to hire people. The labor market is becoming more competitive as it fills with better and greater amounts of talent.

By leaving a position open, you’re losing out on the opportunity to capitalize on a labor market that’s in your benefit. People are searching for jobs, and most of them have the skills you need. All you need to do is find them.

For that, there’s us. Contact us about your open positions, and we will connect you applicants eager to show you what they can do!