Midsize companies struggle to find the sweet spot in recruitment, according to the Recruitment Sweet Spot survey released today by Beyond and Red Branch Media.

Twenty-four percent of midsize companies reported they lack budgets for advertising, 28% said they lack budgets for compensation negotiation and 18% said they can’t afford a recruiting staff.

“We were surprised at what we found from the survey, particularly as it related to cost,” said Red Branch Media CEO Maren Hogan. “HR practitioners and recruiters are being squeezed by rising costs and are unhappy with the results they are getting from larger job boards — even though there appears to be very little movement away from these job boards. Even more shocking was the dissatisfaction the vast majority reported with everything from candidate quality to ease of use.”

According to the national survey of midsize businesses, midsize companies are becoming less reliant on job boards, with 92% of HR professionals reporting they rely upon social media recruitment to supplement traditional recruitment efforts. However, job boards continue to be a strong source of quality hires, second only to employee referrals.

Writing effective job descriptions was the biggest struggle midsize businesses face when recruiting talent, cited by 27% of respondents; keeping messaging consistent across all recruitment levels and accurately representing their employer brand followed, cited by 24% and 22% of respondents respectively.

The survey included 90 participants who hold HR/recruiting roles in midsize businesses and was conducted from Feb. 18 through March 18, 2016.