The True Costs of Hiring

Bolt Craigslist Career Builder
Posting Costs $0 $75 $419
Resume Sort Costs $0 $160 $160
Interview 3 & Reference Check $0 $320 $320
Testing costs $0 $100 $100
Cost to Walk in Door on Day 1 $0 $655 $999
1/2 Day Working Interview $100 $80 $80
Cost to Get to Noon on Day 1 $100 $735 $1079
Cost to Replace $0 $655 $999
Hours to Break Even 131 199.8

How Perfect is Your World?

If you’re thinking of adding to your staff, congratulations!  You are in a market glutted with qualified, skilled people.  This is the best buyer’s market for employers in living memory.  It’s natural to look at this fact and assume that an ad on Craigslist or one of the popular commercial job boards is the most efficient way to find what you’re looking for.
While that’s true, it is a great way to get that resume you’re looking for, however, it will probably come with 97 others that you don’t want.  Sifting through the paper mountain is a daunting and wearying task.  In some circumstances you may get such a huge response that you could actually find yourself discarding the one you’re looking for simply because you overlooked it on your way through the mountain.
When comparing the costs of hiring it’s worth comparing the traditional “post and pile” method to using an agency to get you to the same place.
Looking at the above chart, we compare the costs to you, the employer, to get your new employee through the front door on his first day.  We’ll assume that the staff person you assign to sort through the resumes earns $15 an hour and costs you $20 with payroll taxes and benefits.  As you can see there is a large range for on-line job posting costs.  You can have far more exposure using our free resources than a single ad on Craigslist ($75) or Careerbuilder ($419).  With Bolt your job will be posted on Careerbuilder in addition to Simply Hired, and Indeed.  You will also have access to our extensive database of local people as well as our own word of mouth grapevine.
A 100-resume response is not unusual for typical office or industrial positions.  Your trusty staff person will probably get through the resumes in an hour and then spend another 7 hours emailing, calling, and coordinating with the three top candidates for interviews ($160).  You can plan on another two days interviewing and reference checking them ($320).  Let’s assume you will test your top candidate successfully ($100).
Congratulations!  Your new person will be starting Monday.  If you were thrifty and used Craigslist it only cost you $655 to get to this point.  On the other hand, if you splurged with Careerbuilder it’s $999.  Of course you could have called Bolt and have your new person ready to go free of charge!  Hmmmm.
For most positions we recommend a 4 hour working interview rather than tying up your staff interviewing people we’ve already qualified.  It works like this:  instead of spending the time and money to find someone who interviewed well and tested fine, why not pick up the phone, dial us and bring in a qualified, tested, drug and background checked person for $0?  Rather than take all the paper and charm of pretty resumes and good interviews at face value, bring someone in today and see how they actually do in your company, at the job you want them to do, working with your own employees.
Let’s say you’re paying Bolt $25 an hour for your new $15 an hour employee.  The four hour working interview would cost you $100.  If everything works out, you just saved yourself $555 to $899 to get to the same place in the hiring process.
What happens if things don’t go well?  With Bolt you pick up the phone and get a replacement.  The other way you can plan on spending another $500 to $999 to do it all over again.  Don’t forget the impact of the lost time on your business’ productivity.
Keep in mind you’re paying Bolt an additional $5 an hour for your Bolt assigned employee.  That means he will be working for you for 131 to almost 200 hours before the cost of a Bolt employee catches the cost of your own hire.  Usually you can hire our employees for little or nothing after 3 months.  In other words, in three months, you’ll pay us about what it would cost you if your first choice didn’t work out and you had to repeat the hiring process.
For that premium you get to know your prospective employee and the quality of his work.  You also benefit from the fact that he is Bolt’s employee as you become comfortable with his work ethic, trustworthiness, and the ups and downs of your own business cycle.
Sure in a perfect world, someone from Craigs or Careerbuilder may be less costly than hiring through Bolt, but really, how perfect is your world?
Joanne Sanders

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