How have you helped reduce costs?
This is a question that you will be faced with when you apply for a traditionally commercial role within a business. The place to start is with your profit and loss sheet – prepared before your interview and even included on your CV.
One of the main costs for a company is payroll with some operating on 30% wage costs versus sales. If you have managed to make a saving on payroll versus budget or the previous year you should highlight how and where.
Things to consider are:
• Moving around shift patterns to reflect busy and quiet periods
• Cutting down on sickness and therefore cover staff costs
• Reducing part time shifts and replacing with full time staff
But as we all know, every little helps. If you have reduced costs with things such as stationary, or waste if you’re in hospitality; talk about how you have trained your teams to understand the importance of procedures to improve overall performance. Review your profit and loss sheet and where ever you have made the biggest saving focus on that area and be specific in how you achieved it.
