Your finance officer has resigned, you budget £8,000 for the agency fee, maybe another £500 for job ads. Three months later, the real cost is closer to £25,000. And you're still not entirely sure how that happened.
We’ve seen this play out many times for SMEs. Not because anyone's doing it badly, but because the actual cost and the visible cost are completely different things.
Where the money goes
The agency fee and the job board subscription are easy to track, but it’s everything else that isn't.
Your ops director spends six hours reviewing CVs on evenings and weekends. Your team runs at 80% capacity for twelve weeks while covering the gap. The new hire takes four months to reach full productivity. A senior person spends two days a week training them instead of doing the work you're actually paying them for.
None of this appears in the "recruitment budget" but it's all costing you money. Usually more than the original fee.
How £8,000 becomes £25,000
Most hiring starts the same way with someone leaving, the work needs covering, and you need to fill the role quickly.
That urgency creates problems. The brief expands - you need someone for purchase ledger, but credit control experience would help, and actually, payroll knowledge would be useful too. Within days, you're looking for someone who doesn't exist at the salary you've budgeted.
Here's where it gets expensive, that £40,000 finance officer leaves after twelve weeks. You've already spent £25,000 (salary, recruitment fees, management time on interviews and training) before you even restart the search. The role wasn't quite right, the person didn't quite fit, and now you're doing it all again.
How to actually reduce costs
Plan ahead, even roughly
You don't need a sophisticated workforce plan. A rough view of the next three to six months is enough. Who might leave? Where's the business growing? What roles might you need?
Just asking the question gives you time to shape roles properly instead of rushing them out under pressure.
Write tighter job specs
Focus on what the person needs to achieve in the first six months, not everything they might possibly bring. A finance officer who can manage accounts payable and handle month-end matters more than one who also knows payroll, advanced Excel, credit control, and has CIMA qualifications.
Tighter specs = faster hiring = fewer mismatches.
Know what the market looks like
What are people with these skills earning? Where are they working now? What makes them consider moving?
Make your decisions based on reality, this is where working with a recruitment agency that knows the market can save you time and money. At Jobwise, we can tell you what's realistic - what salaries are being offered, where the skills gaps are, and how long roles typically take to fill. That intelligence stops you wasting weeks chasing candidates who don't exist or budgeting salaries that won't attract anyone.
Test the fit properly
A decent interview process doesn't need to be complicated, but it should involve more than a chat and a gut feeling. Give people a task that reflects actual work. Let them meet the team. Check that expectations align before anyone signs anything.
An extra interview stage might feel like it's slowing things down, but it's faster than replacing someone in three months.
Here's the difference in practice:
Reactive hiring: Role goes live Monday. You need someone within six weeks. Brief is broad because you're not entirely sure what you need. First decent candidate gets an offer because time's running out. They start, struggle to settle, leave after four months. Total cost: £30,000+
Planned hiring: You know you'll need someone in Q2. Role is written in January, based on what actually needs doing. You have time to be selective. The person starts, fits well, and is productive within weeks. Total cost: £12,000.
How the right recruitment partner can help
A lot of SMEs only use recruitment agencies when they're desperate but treating recruitment agencies as partners, rather than emergency services tend to get better results at lower cost. When an agency understands your business, knows your standards, and has time to build a candidate pool, they work faster and more accurately.
At Jobwise, we understand local market conditions, salary expectations, and where the talent is. More importantly, we understand that a £40,000 hire who leaves after three months costs everyone more than doing it properly the first time.
Our average time to hire is 10 days, which means less disruption to your team and lower hidden costs. And because we're working across multiple sectors - engineering, manufacturing, office roles, public sector - we can give you realistic expectations rather than optimistic guesses.
If you're hiring in the next three months, answer these questions before you write the job ad:
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What does this person need to achieve in their first six months?
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What skills are non-negotiable, and what's nice to have?
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What's the actual market rate for someone like this?
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Who internally needs to be involved, and how much time will that take?
And if you're not confident about those answers, or if you're tired of recruitment feeling more expensive than it should be, talk to us.
We won't just send you CVs, we'll help you shape the role properly, give you honest market intelligence, and find people who actually fit.
Get in touch or call 0161 474 7888 to discuss your hiring plans.
