A Case-Study How One Client Saved Over $200,000 in Recruiting Fees

I’m often asked – “Why should we choose Ridgeback Recruiting to be one of our third party recruiting vendors? “

That’s a fair question and my answer is quite simple – “because we can find your company the best talent while saving you tens of thousands of dollars.”

Now seeing that’s such a bold statement, I figured I should provide a case study to show how we did it for one client.

 

 

Background

Back in 2018, I received a call from a company CEO (name of company available upon request) who shared with me their need to bring talent onboard to meet some pretty aggressive strategic objectives. At that point, I’d known the CEO for roughly five years and he knew of our dependability in getting the job done in a timely fashion – so he reached out.

The CEO explained to me how they wanted to bring on between five to eight project managers with certain skills and experience. He also didn’t want to pay the normal fees found in the recruiting industry. (contingency and retained fees averaging 20% or higher of the new employees first year salary) and asked if we could work something out.

I told him about Ridgeback’s SMART recruiting program where our clients bring us on not as a 3rd party vendor, but as a true strategic partner who will help them achieve their goals.

The SMART program is similar to outsourcing but as in this case study there is a minimum period of engagement for a set monthly fee and if the client is happy, we can extend the contract (as happened in this case).

What initially started as a 3 month engagement to recruit 5-8 project managers, has resulted in a 2 1/2 year (at the time of this post) engagement that has produced the hiring of 21 full time employees, four part time employees, with another three to four full time employees expecting offers within the next two weeks.

 

 

 

 

So, Let’s do the Math on the Case Study

24 FT Hires (assuming the offers are accepted) x Avg Salary $100,000 (probably higher) x 20%fees = $480,000 in potential recruiting success fees. The hires included Project Managers, Directors, Sr BD Manager, Financial Analysts, QAQC Manager, and other SME’s.

The Actual Cost to our client? Roughly $195,000 over the course of 2 1/2 years.

How much did this one client save? Easily over 250,000 in 2 1/2 years.

Is the client happy with Ridgeback’s performance? I’d say so, stayed with us for 2 1/2 years!

 

 

 

 

Why Not Hire their Own Recruiter?

Could the client have performed the same results with a full time recruiter? Maybe but many of these positions were mid to senior level. Those roles really require a senior recruiter or a true executive recruiter, so let’s look at some of those numbers.

The average salary for a senior recruiter is roughly $83,000. That number doesn’t include employee costs beyond salary. These costs include benefits, bonuses, retirement plan matching, taxes, and PTO to name a few. It’s estimated that the true cost of an employee is roughly 1.4 to 1.5 times the annual salary.

 

 

 

The True Cost an Employed Recruiter

If you multiply the
Average salary of $83,000 x 30 months ($6982 monthly salary) = $209,460
or
Avg Monthly Salary $6982 x 1.4 fringe = $9,774 true cost x 30 months = $293,244

Now those are a bunch of numbers but either way you look at it, the cost becoming Ridgeback SMART is less than that of hiring a full time employee.

 

 

Does Your Organization Need Cost Effective Talent Support?

Hiring new employees is always a daunting task and you’re never sure what the new employee will be like until after they become a team member. So why take the chance in hiring a new recruiter? Making the wrong hire can quickly lead to low productivity, increased costs and maybe even bring down other members of the team.

Learn from this case study and don’t be like the many businesses that make the mistake of just looking at the direct costs associated in maintaining employees.

The truth is employees are expensive to maintain; the salary you pay them is only one cost so contact us now to learn how you can recruit smarter.

Phone: (646) 883-2927

or Email: [email protected]