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Quality of Hire vs. Cost-per-Hire

Everyone wants the perfect employee. That elusive individual who both loves what they do and gets along with those they work with. It doesn’t hurt if they also know what they’re doing. But let’s face it, finding that perfect individual isn’t always easy. It takes time, patience and money. Job boards aren’t free, recruiters don’t pay themselves and interviewing each applicant that comes close to a set of basic criteria takes time. But to keep employees and avoid going through the interview loop over and over again you need to balance cost and quality.

The Hiring Matrix was designed to calculate the cost of every hire. This formula takes into consideration the cost of a recruiter, the time the position remains vacant, the cost to post the job opening on job boards and in newspapers, and many other costs variables directly associated with any one particular job. This number is not constant. You cannot predict how long it will take to fill any one position. What the hiring matrix can tell you is how long you can afford to keep looking for the “right” employee before you start cutting corners and re-evaluating your search criteria.

Finding the right employee should be more about matching abilities and personalities than about money, but sadly that is not always a possibility. If you want to keep you quality standards high, have a solid set of criteria for each position. This set of “criteria” that the new employee will have to know and deal with in order to function effectively. Understand that these “criteria” are different for each and every position. There are no cookie cutter jobs anymore. By having your ducks in a row you can more easily narrow the field of candidates and cut your recruiting time without cutting corners or sacrificing quality. Will it take time to develop this list of “criteria?” Of course it will. Can you effectively find perfection without knowing what perfect is? No. The choice is yours.