Finding a new hire is a long process. First, you have to decide if you can even afford the extra help. A new employee costs a lot more than just their salary—there are things to consider that differ from company-to-company such as insurance, parking spaces, key cards, and in-house extras like coffee or snacks being consumed. Staffing calculators are a great way to figure out all of the hidden costs of hiring a new employee, but here are a few quick tips for being as cost effective as possible when posting jobs:

Once you’ve decided that, yes, the company definitely needs this person, it’s time to get to work! While it may seem easy to get someone to fill an open position, if you want the best and most qualified people, you’re probably going to have to do a little work. Here are a few hiring tips:

Be Ready to Spend

You get what you pay for—and if you don’t want to pay to list the available job and instead opt to only post on free sites, you may not get the best quality applicants. Now, this doesn’t mean spending big bucks. Studies show companies tend to spend around $170 on advertising an open job position. This will vary based on the skill level of the job, the size of your company, and your hiring budget, of course. Some websites that employers can pay to list jobs on include:

• Glassdoor
• Indeed
• LinkedIn

Many of these sites—and similar sites—offer both paid and free options for employers.

Small companies do tend to have to spend more money when it comes to advertising jobs, since potential applicants aren’t really seeking you out on their own unless they’re prompted by a friend, family member or, leading into the next top, your company name shows up high in internet searches.

SEO Drives More Than Just Customer Traffic

People can’t apply for a job if they can’t find it—and one of the best ways to get people to see your posting is to optimize it for search engines. HubSpot has tons of blogs on SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and how to use it to drive more traffic to your website. A few important things to note are:

• Always add keywords to the most important places on your website (such as headings, image alt text, or links)
• Don’t hinder user experience by trying to cram a keyword into every sentence—if you use keywords naturally, search engines are smart enough to recognize that and help bump you up
• Choose keywords that won’t be impossible to raise your list rating for—for example, “Staffing” will be nearly impossible to get to the first page for, but “Hiring IT staffing for my awesome start-up company,” probably will be easier to break through!

Getting your website to show up higher in search engines means when people are job-searching online—which is how the majority of people look for jobs—they will stumble across your posting from your website, rather than a bigger company’s job listing.

At the end of the day, what you spend on a job listing depends on what you’re looking for in a new employee, and how much time and money your company has to spend on the search. While most companies end up spending around $200, if your search requires a higher volume of candidates, you may want to spend more. And, alternatively, if your search is very selective, perhaps you don’t need to spend anything and instead reach out to candidates you’re interested in on your own. There’s no right or wrong amount of money to spend—though by using SEO and paying for a couple of job listings, you can get a lot of bang for your buck!