You’re probably knee-deep in 2025 budgeting right now, which means you’re trying to solve the seemingly impossible challenge of doing more with less. More hires. More initiatives. Less budget.
How do you run a more efficient operation than last year with less money? How do you consolidate resources and improve processes? This sort of thing can be challenging for even the best of CFOs, let alone a fiscally-minded TA leader. But in my career I’ve found that you can’t go wrong by focusing on the numbers. Because with a better understanding of the numbers behind the decisions, you can be proactive with your budget.
And start doing more with less.
Recently, we partnered with Aptitude Research to better understand the challenges talent leaders face when it comes to budgeting. The results were pretty fascinating:
- Only 38% of TA leaders feel confident building a business case — typically a critical step in securing more funding.
- Under 50% of TA leaders can demonstrate ROI on their tech investments, a critical step in building credibility on past investments to ensure you get green-lit for new ones.
- Almost two-thirds of TA leaders fear their budget will be reduced. Which, by the way, will likely end up being true. Flat or shrinking companies have only so many levers to gain efficiencies — and cost cutting is certainly one of them. Even growing companies are looking for ways to optimize costs to fuel their growth. So, the odds are good that your budget will go down, not up.
So as we all start focusing more on the numbers, I wanted to dig into this report and talk about how TA leaders can better align with their CFO’s priorities for investment.
Showcasing ROI that your CFO can’t ignore.
This shouldn’t come as a surprise: CFOs are becoming more involved in TA business decisions (don’t take it personally, we are digging into just about every line item from every department). One-third of all surveyed leaders said as much. And I’m sure the other ⅔ aren’t getting any significant investments or major budget increases approved without a CFO’s thumbs up. Now more than ever, proposals must be tailored to showcase clear ROI. Here’s the issue: Less than half of TA leaders feel confident demonstrating ROI in their tech investments.
Is that the fault of the TA leader? No, that’s not how I see it. Building business case confidence takes practice and repetition; you won’t tell the best story on your first go. That's why I advise talent leaders to lean on investments that have clear-cut ROI.
Even growing companies are looking for ways to optimize costs to fuel their growth. So, the odds are good that your budget will go down, not up.
I look at new budget requests as investments. As a CFO, I have limited dollars to invest across all company functions, so your initiative needs to shine through as an impactful way to save or make money for the business. Importantly, for approval, it also needs to have a relatively better ROI (measured by dollars and certainty) than other ideas crossing my desk.
To help your business case cut through, focus primarily on the savings you will drive from a hard cost perspective before sharing any operational benefits. Those hard costs are typically line items in your current budget — job advertising costs, tech costs, contractor costs — and are immediately quantifiable and measurable.
An operational benefit like improved customer experience or time saved matters, sure, but often hides the “so what?” that will improve your case. For example, what will we do with the time saved? Will we get more done?
This isn’t a “talent acquisition case” — it’s a business case. To be effective, you have to speak to the business results.
Take AI automation. Sure, I’m biased here — but the ROI is easy to demonstrate. General Motors, for example, has an AI assistant named Ev-e, who texts qualified candidates open interview times to automate the scheduling process. Ev-e is scheduling 50,000 job interviews per year for GM, and the value they got back from investing in the tech was almost instantaneous.
With AI automating scheduling, GM was able to repurpose their recruiting contractor headcount and save $2,000,000 within one year. Two million dollars — clearly attributable to interview scheduling automation. That’s quick, easy, and CFO-friendly ROI. The added benefit of improved candidate experience and faster time to higher is a cherry on top of the savings sundae. (I couldn’t resist a dessert reference!)
You don’t need more headcount, you need the right tech, right now.
A CFO can project revenue for the coming year, but our projections aren’t infallible. Unforeseen factors, be it the economy or otherwise, will always rear its ugly head. What we can control is costs. If we can shave x% of our costs, it is not only the right thing to do for shareholders, it also gives the business some flexibility if top-line revenue doesn’t end up as projected.
I always try to look ahead at least a few years when I’m making projections. Let’s say we model a five-year hiring curve with a growing hiring demand of 5% per year alongside a 3% yearly cost cut, you see why change now is much better than change later.
The longer you wait to make a change to make your TA organization more efficient, the harder it is to be successful — the inefficiencies catch up to you. And you end up at a point where you’re just doing less with less - and the department will be scrutinized as a result.
Which is why it wasn’t surprising to see that a majority of TA leaders (56%) were looking to invest in new technology this year, up from the 52% who increased tech investment last year. Because the right tech won’t just help you be more efficient in the present. It lays down a groundwork for your business to improve its efficiencies year after year as budgets go down.
The top goal: Improving efficiency.
Let’s go back to balancing the more with the less.
There’s a lot of more right now in HR: On average, the function has the second-highest number of solutions across a given company. And TA leaders can sense what’s coming next — 64% of them fear looming budget cuts.
Again, budget cuts don’t necessarily mean you’re doing a bad job. As a CFO, I have a responsibility to get long-term value out of an organization. And besides growth, one thing I look at is ways to be more efficient in capital allocation. I am always pressuring all parts of the organization to do more with less, and TA is not immune to that.
So in that reality filled with more less, TA will need to lean into more efficient practices. Granted, a lot of that will come naturally over time as your team’s experience grows and your processes improve. But new tech can certainly be an avenue for improvement as well — 72% of leaders see efficiency as the top driver for evaluating a new tech solution.
Efficiency alone won't make me sign any contracts, though. Remember, CFO’s expect a natural increase in efficiency every year. To secure funds, you need to showcase how new tech can impact sales, costs, or customers.
There’s many levers you can pull to do that. And my favorite strategy is finding the most valuable work your humans are doing and having them focus on that. Because when your humans are occupied with valuable work, it’s easier to see the other areas you can make more efficient with tech.
Wendy’s New Zealand, for example, automates 90%+ of their hiring process with Paradox’s Conversational ATS. Candidate capture, screening, scheduling, and onboarding — all automated. The pattern there? None of that stuff requires a human touch; it just needs to be done fast and right. And when it’s done fast and right, Wendy’s managers are able to spend more time with the actual candidates, determining the right people for the job. Oh yeah, and spend time in their restaurants, improving the customer experience.
“In the old days, we used to spend a whole day on scheduling,” said Danielle Lendich, the CEO of Wendy’s NZ. “With AI, we can get people employed before our competitors even pick up their application.”
Wendy’s NZ used AI to bring their time to hire down from 14 days to under three. Because locations hired faster, their customers got to interact with fully-staffed, operational restaurants more often. Customer orders were fulfilled faster, leading to shorter wait times and more revenue during peak hours. Across 21 locations, that's thousands of dollars recouped every day.
That’s doing more with less.
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With budgets going down and hiring needs going up, you’re not going to be able to solve your problems by adding more recruiters or increasing job advertising spend in perpetuity. Sure, it might help in the short term, but three years down the road, the root of your problem will be the same. Case in point: Solve your processes’ inefficiencies and you can sustain long-term growth.
And with AI, you can pinpoint the exact inefficiencies you want to improve. Because even by adding just one point of automation to the process — say, interview scheduling — you’re solving for multiple problems. You're hiring faster, you're saving time, and you're reducing costs. And you’re making your humans more efficient.
Plus, your CFO will love it (I know I do).
You can check out Aptitude’s full report for more numbers here:
