For smaller shops, there are some easy ways to bring the cost down. 1) Make sure you are networking and social, budget time for this. It's good for team moral

For smaller shops, there are some easy ways to bring the cost down. 1) Make sure you are networking and social, budget time for this. It's good for team moral to get people out of the office anyway. Sponsor some talks / Meetup groups, host some public lunch and learns, get booths at career fairs... just get your folks out to meet people. Is there a cost? Yes, but as being proactively social becomes part of company culture you get a ton of benefits... more applicants, more partnership opportunities, better informed and educated staff, more confident staff if you give them more opportunities for showing their knowledge / public speaking / leadership... 2) Get better screening questions. I've hired a ton of developers for clients, I have 4-5 questions on my screen. I use a web form (you can even use a Google Form) that takes maybe 5 minutes for the person to write a few paragraphs for the responses. A fast no is good at this stage -- it's more about getting to a reason to ding the candidate at this point than a reason to hire them. Don't waste the candidates time asking them to re-type their resume, those systems are really stupid and turn off qualified candidates. 3) Get better at phone screens. I jump right in, I don't normally budget more than 5-10 minutes for a phone screen. Either they've got the skills, have confidence, and communication ability -- or they don't. If an employee sent them in as a referral, they always get to skip the phone screen and I just do a scheduling call to set up a time for them to come in. Always a good idea to respect your employee referrals. (Make sure you are paying a generous bonus for referrals.) 4) Given it takes ~20k to hire another dev, when you get the right candidate don't fret on salary. If they said they were looking for $125k, offer them $127k... easy easy way to come off strong out the gate with them. Understand that if you have a shitty health plan, people with kids and families aren't going to want to work for you -- the cost of skimping on your dental plan in terms what it does to employee turnover is staggering. "Stitch in time to save nine" type stuff right there. Understand that if you don't have 401k matching... you aren't a real company and your offers won't be competitive just because you have sodas and a foosball table in the break room. Get all your shit in order to reduce on-boarding speed-bumps, your employees can work other places and showing you care about them is a great way to retain them. 5) Spend money educating your staff. Do you need to hire for the position, or can someone you have cover it with a bit more training? Make sure employees have a training budget, make sure they are discouraged from not using it, make sure they are getting value from the training they take -- having them do summary lunch and learns for the company is a great way to spread the knowledge. And you never know who's going to be interested and what that will lead to... had an accountant show up for a talk on SEO... a year later she was running the analytics department at the agency. People can pivot, and you can benefit from that if your structure allows for personal growth.