Recruiting capacity worksheet: estimate screening time savings

Use this recruiting capacity worksheet to estimate how much screening time a change could actually save at different hiring volumes.

It compares the staff time in your current process with the work that remains after the change, including setup, report review, follow-ups and administration. Test quiet, expected and busy months before relying on one average-volume estimate, then replace assumptions with measured timings after a pilot.

What screening work should you count?

Choose one role and one period, such as a month. Count applications separately from first interviews. A vacancy with 300 applications does not necessarily require 300 phone screens.

For each task, include the staff work needed to finish it. A CV-review time should cover reading the application and recording the result if those are both part of the task. A first-screen time should include preparation, coordination, the call and notes, or show those items separately. Use the same approach for the proposed process so one side of the comparison does not quietly omit administration.

Leave unchanged work outside both totals. Sourcing, offer discussions or a later technical assessment do not become savings unless the new process actually changes them.

If several people attend an interview, count their combined staff time. A 30-minute panel with two interviewers uses an hour of staff capacity, even though the candidate spends half an hour in the meeting.

Copy the blank worksheet

Use counts and minutes for a consistent period. Enter zero only when a task genuinely does not occur, not when its cost is unknown.

Multiply each count by its staff minutes, sum each side and divide by 60. Add any fixed monthly work once. Subtract proposed recurring hours from current recurring hours to find capacity released, or additional work if the answer is negative. Then show one-off setup on its own line.

Where a task is easiest to time as a whole batch, enter a count of one and the batch’s total minutes. Do not count that batch time again in the per-application rows.

300 CV reviews and 60 first screens

Start with 300 CV reviews and 60 first screens a month. The current process uses four minutes per CV and 30 staff minutes per first screen, including its associated preparation and administration.

The proposed process keeps human review of every CV assessment. It adds AI interview reports for the 60 first screens and retains focused human follow-ups where needed. The plan allows for 15 such follow-ups; that is an estimate to test, not a target interviewers should force themselves to meet.

The estimated recurring difference is 50 − 21.5 = 28.5 staff hours a month. That is the capacity the example process could release if the assumptions hold and the team still completes an appropriate assessment.

It is not a measured Screened result. In your pilot, count the work actually done, including interrupted interviews, corrections and calls that turn out to be necessary. If the team repeats every original phone screen, keep those calls in the new total rather than assuming they disappeared.

Show setup separately

Suppose configuring the role, testing the integration and preparing the team takes eight staff hours. The first month’s proposed work becomes 29.5 hours: 21.5 recurring hours plus eight hours of setup.

That leaves an estimated first-month difference of 20.5 hours, compared with 28.5 hours in a later comparable month without that setup work.

Keep maintenance separate from one-off setup. Changing questions for a new role or checking a revised integration may recur. It should not vanish from the estimate because the original account setup happened only once.

Check a quiet month before committing

The expected workload is only one possibility. Repeat the calculation at volumes your team might realistically see.

For this example, keep the same task timings and assume first screens for one in five applications, with a focused human follow-up for one in four completed first screens. Split additional administration into two fixed hours a month plus 0.2 minutes per application. That reproduces the 180-minute allowance at 300 applications.

CurrentProposed, before setup

The quiet month releases just two minutes. Including eight hours of setup, the first month adds 7 hours 58 minutes of work.

The example assumes the same interview and follow-up proportions at every volume. Your role may behave differently. Enter counts that reflect the process you intend to run; do not adopt these proportions as screening targets.

Capacity is not the same as cash saved

Releasing 28.5 hours does not automatically reduce the payroll bill. It may let the same recruiter spend more time on sourcing, candidate communication or manager support.

An internal hourly cost can help value that capacity, but actual cash savings require an expense to change: for example, overtime or an external service the organisation no longer needs. Keep subscription and integration costs in a separate financial comparison.

Before approving a pilot, identify what the team would do with the released time. Then check both sides of the result: did the work fall, and did the hiring process still collect and review the evidence it needed? A capacity estimate is useful only when the proposed process is one your team can actually run.