The other day, I had a vacancy for .net programmer, as usual I went to a Job site, Searched for the keywords, filtered it further and got 15 resume which I found good. It took me couple of hours through this process.
I decided to call these 15 candidates to see if they are interested in the position.
This is the result of the telephone calls
Ø 5 numbers not in use
Ø 3 persons did not pick up the phone for the 10th time
Ø 2 profiles did not match the requirement – in fact they had put wrong info in their resume
Ø 4 people yelled at me – how many times will you call me
Ø 1 person was INTERESTED!
When I checked up my old excels, I found that I have in-fact called the 4 candidates who yelled at me. Though I am fuming being yelled at, I accept the fact that it will be as irritating receiving unsolicited calls as it was for me.
I started calculating the cost spent through out this exercise…
2 hour for Search
3 hours for Calling these candidates
2 hour preparation time etc
My entire day!
Now my salary is 15000/- a month & I work 20 days a month
That is Rs.750 per day
Over heads for my workstation, EB, welfare etc adds to another Rs.1000
The telephone cost – Rs.75/-
Well it actually cost me Rs.1825/-
That is Rs. 250 approximately per call which went through
& Rs.1825 is the cost of reaching out to one Candidate.
This is the cost of my telephone call friends! A recruitment call isn’t just the amount we pay to our telephone service. It is much more. The worst of all is that by calling a Candidate many times, our image and the Companies value will be down.
Even if I had, say 5 people through out the day, with an average of 1:50 getting placed with my client, the recruiting cost seems to be Rs. 18250/- + job site subscription + management cost + etc + etc almost amounting to Rs. 25000/-
Don’t believe me… just ask your boss (if you are in a small consulting firm) the total expense & the total number of candidates placed last year. Divide the Expense by number of Candidate placed – You will know the cost per hire.
