One of our top clients came into the office this week to talk about a major project we are undertaking to set up a new business unit for their organisation. Chatting away, he told us the story of his best friend who insists on doing all of his recruitment himself to save money.

He talked about how proud his friend is of placing job adverts in lots of different media, then taking all of the CV’s from “applicants” that he receives, all the phone-calls he gets from interested people who just “want to have a chat” about the job, etc. He then spends the next few evenings & weekends going through the CV’s, calling up the 15 or so interesting candidates and chatting to them about their background, experience, etc.

Next stage, he’ll block out 2-3 days of his diary to interview at least 10 candidates -so that he’s able to get a shortlist of 4-5 to bring through to 2nd stage.

As he wants to get the best people he can – he then interviews each one for 4-5hrs (half a day) at a time, so blocks out 2.5 days to get all the interviews completed in one block.

The following week, he’s then into final interview territory with the best 2 candidates, each one gets a full-day at the office, out for lunch, presentation & meetings with the other company directors before a decision is made.

At the end of this process he’s able to then offer the job and recruit the best person from the original 125 CV’s.

He’s so pleased that he’s managed to save the £9,000 recruitment fee – now he can get back on with the job of running his company.

But – the irony is this. What about the 60-70 hours he’s actually invested in this process? He can’t get them back and they are lost both to him and his organisation.

Try putting a “cost” on you to your business per day; it could be £1,000 or even £2,000 per day that you are not doing your primary job. Many of our clients in senior positions are running £20-50m businesses; so their time and expertise doing their “real job” can be often much more in terms of lost revenue and management leadership if days at a time are taken up recruiting.

In our world the time we save our clients is critical, coupled with the fact that we are able to find people that recruitment agencies, CV Websites & Advertising cannot find; the 95% of “passive” individuals who aren’t actively looking for a job.

Saving a client 50 wasted hours trying to recruit in exchange for a placement fee payable to us is usually very good business. We are the experts in finding and recruiting the best people in your market so as in most professional services environments, paying for the right advice is ultimately the cheapest, lowest risk way of solving your problem and minimizing your cost of recruitment.

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