How this calculator works
Each hiring stage has a time per person and a number of people, so the stage cost in person-hours is the product of the two. Interviews multiply by the number of interviewers in the room, because a panel of three spends three people's time for every hour on the calendar. Adding the stages gives the total effort. Dividing the screening and offer work by the number of recruiters and the interview work by the number of interviewers shows how the load would spread if it were shared evenly. The result is effort, not elapsed calendar time: a panel can run several interviews in parallel, so the process can finish in fewer days than the person-hours suggest.
Formula
screening person-hours = (applicants x CV minutes + phone screened x phone minutes) / 60. interview person-hours = sum over rounds of (candidates x minutes per candidate x interviewers) / 60. offer person-hours = offers x minutes per offer / 60. total = the three sums. per recruiter = (screening + offer) / recruiters. per interviewer = interview / interviewers.
Worked example
Screening 100 applicants for 5 minutes each is 500 minutes, or 8.33 hours. Phone screening 20 of them for 15 minutes each is another 300 minutes, or 5 hours, for 13.33 screening hours in total. One interview round with 10 candidates, 60 minutes each and two interviewers on the panel is 1,200 minutes, or 20 hours. Two 30 minute offer discussions add 1 hour. The process needs 34.33 person-hours; with two recruiters the screening and offer work is about 7.17 hours each, and with two interviewers the interview work is 10 hours each.
Advertisement
Frequently asked questions
Does this include the candidate's time?
No. The figures count the hiring team's time. A candidate also spends time preparing, travelling and interviewing, and that cost matters for candidate experience, but it is not part of the recruiter or interviewer workload measured here.
Why multiply interviews by the number of interviewers?
A one hour interview with a panel of three consumes three person-hours even though it occupies one hour on the calendar. If you only want calendar time, divide the interview person-hours by the panel size and by the number of interviews that can run in parallel.
How do I add assessment centres or tests?
Use the offer discussion row or the phone screening row as a stand-in for another stage, or add the test time to the CV screening time per applicant. The page keeps the stages fixed, but the arithmetic is the same for any stage that has a time and a count.
Is a long process always more expensive?
Not automatically. More rounds can reduce the risk of a bad hire, which is often far more expensive than the extra interview hours. The point of the calculation is to make the effort visible so that you can decide whether an extra round earns its cost.