Navigating the Hiring Funnel with Yeliz & Thomas

Thomas Kohler:
Hey, Liz. Another day, another episode, right?

Yeliz Castillo:
Yes, hello.

Thomas Kohler:
I just had an interview with Katrin Holzfortner. It went live in the past podcast episode and there was so much things that we could still talk about. Funnels. I love this topic.

Yeliz Castillo:
I know.

Thomas Kohler:
So I thought that we just spontaneously continue and see. How could you plan to hire 50 sellers in Germany in half a year? And the organization did 25 in the past six months. So the task is to double the amount of hires, but not necessarily double the amount of capacity. I just share this. We discussed so far. So we have some mock data, which is realistic data. So I saw similar data with our customers, with also other companies. So let’s say this is just a real example. Yeah.

5,000 candidates for 25 hires. That’s 200 candidates processed in order to make one hire. 26 interviews from a recruiter in order to make one hire. 11 hiring manager calls. Then let’s say a case study and then a final interview. One offer, one hire. Yeah.

For five hires per month. Let’s say it would be 1,000 application a month or candidates, 130 recruiter screens and so on and so forth. And I think what is important and what you can really grab and then imagine is 150 candidates processed in a week. 32 interviews from a recruiter, 14 interviews from a hiring manager, 10 case studies and role plays, and six final interviews in order to make 1.3 offers and one hire. Roughly. Right. So that’s the data we currently have. And now our task is in six months, how can we make 50 hires? So what would you do first?

Yeliz Castillo:
I think obviously first of all look at the capacity that I have currently already and then see what the hiring plan is and the priorities of the different roles. Because obviously making 50 hires doesn’t mean that all 50 are in the same priority. So I think that’s the plan. And organize the capacity and then start allocating to the…

Thomas Kohler:
I love it. Let’s start with that. Right. So how we can look at the current capacity? Let’s say we have let’s say past six month data and let’s say it stays the same. I would always start with one higher. Right. I think it’s easy. Then we say, okay, how do we do this by 25? Then we have the funnel from top.

And then this was done in six months, past six months total. And then we would just start with month one, month two. And we just map it out for six months. Right. Oops. Not 15 months. We go to six months and then we see what we can do there is usually a ramp up and so on what we should consider. But just out of simplicity, what I do now is I just divide this number by six that we know when everything is ramped up and going.

So we don’t consider the onboarding and ramp up time here. We just say we need to continue what we do. It was already running before and we take the snapshot of a fully ramped productive talent acquisition organization that is just continuing to do their work. Right. So this is what we are assuming here. And then we see we need okay, 850. So we have the data and now we make it a bit more pretty. Okay, this is what we have.

So what do we see here? What I see, okay, four hires a month with five accepted offers. That’s what they currently have. I don’t know what the capacities they’re currently having. But we can calculate it. What KPIs in terms of assumptions do we take? So what do you think A fully ramped recruiter in that organization, what KPIs would you, would you read out or give them?

Yeliz Castillo:
I think definitely screening numbers. And these are like per week, right? Like I would break it down as we did it here. So how many stores per week? How many screen per week? Because those are things that are in your control. And then ideally also like the, like how many hiring manager conversations you have. They really enter the funnel and get into the conversations and then final like case studies obviously depending on what the process is, then the number of case studies you have or finals in a month maybe rather than in a week. Because I think that’s a bit more realistic due to planning or availability of candidates or hiring team. Yeah.

Thomas Kohler:
Okay, then let’s do it exactly like this. I like it. You can go down different routes, but I’m pretty much on your end. So first we start with quantifying. What do you say? Okay, that’s 850amonth. When we divide 850 by four, it’s 212. Let’s just do it like this. So it would be 212. And this is just a pure number.

Yeliz Castillo:
But I think it’s also important just for the sake of this example now also to mention that obviously if you start building up your funnels that these number can change because you know, we don’t have to consistently do 213 candidates. Maybe if the quality of your source candidates obviously goes through just you know, like I think also for, for the people who will be doing this, it’s also important to know that the source number can obviously change the more people you have in the pipeline. Right.

Thomas Kohler:
What I would do here, we now just assumed what was happening here. But what is really realistic when we say realistic for one person? Yeah, let’s say sourced is done by a sourcer, a dedicated sourcer. What would a source? Or let’s do it like this. Realistic data sourcer. Recruiter from one fte. Yeah, by a sourcer, a recruiter, let’s say a hiring manager. Yeah. That is also having a regular day job.

I would just break it down because I think being granular here is maybe too complex for many of the organizations, for many of the people that just do the planning. But that’s where at the end the bottlenecks also come. Right. So a full time source could deliver how much source candidates weekly in sales hiring Germany.

Yeliz Castillo:
Yeah. I mean if they’re slowly solely doing sourcing, nothing else, then I think they can absolutely do like way more like I think even up to like 500 a week.

Thomas Kohler:
If it’s a full time recruiter that also needs to do interviewing, let’s assume it’s easy. A full time recruiter could do 250. Not, sorry, 250. 25 screens. But I would always go for 20 per week.

Yeliz Castillo:
Yeah.

Thomas Kohler:
But when doing 20 screens, how much you can still source?

Yeliz Castillo:
Yeah, it’s. It is quite time consuming also obviously depending on the length of the interview. Right. And then you have internal interviews and you know, debriefs and also. So I think putting this all into consideration, I think maybe like 50 to 70. Realistically.

Thomas Kohler:
Realistically, right.

Yeliz Castillo:
Yeah, realistically if you qualitative. So yeah, right. Like this is also important because you have to take the time to go through the profiles, really look okay, what’s relevant, you can always add numbers. But we’re talking about qualitative sourcing.

Thomas Kohler:
Let’s assume now a recruiter that is doing 20 interviews needs to also manage market. So displaying what the market gives you versus the expectations you have. So setting up expectations, focusing really on stakeholder management with an excellent perspective. I would maybe not say let the recruiter source as well. When we have a sourcer full time assumed that the sourcer can deliver 500 candidates. Right. So I would say they should not source. They should focus on interviewing and really managing the hiring team.

I think that is way more important when you have a setup like this than also just going down on top of funnel volume. Because we don’t want to increase the volume. We want to increase the quality and the conversion rates and lower the Volume by doing more with same capacity. Right. So that’s actually the goal here. So what could we expect from a full time hiring manager that already last year.

Yeliz Castillo:
Yeah.

Thomas Kohler:
Hire 25 sellers. So the organization might be big. Let’s assume the organization is bigger than 25 because otherwise you would not add 25. Let’s say it’s already 50 and you need to add another 50 to go to 100. Let’s say how many interviews a week can a hiring manager do? What can we expect?

Yeliz Castillo:
Well, I mean this is where the first bottlenecks start for me to be honest, because it’s really different in different organizations. Like the way hiring managers are involved. And again, I’m just mentioning this because this is important and we don’t want to just neglect that. But I think they could do. They could try five, I guess or like three. Three to five, depending on how urgent the role is and how much they take hiring seriously as well.

Thomas Kohler:
Let’s say they need to really double hiring is a priority.

Yeliz Castillo:
Yeah. Then I think they should really try to aim for five a week.

Thomas Kohler:
Okay. And we need 12. So we need two hiring managers or even 2.5. Or let’s make it simple. Let’s say six. Because six is exactly 12 divided by two.

Yeliz Castillo:
Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I mean ideally you would also have like a hiring like an interview panel. Right. Where it’s ideally not just on one person and there would be some 100% it up. Yeah. That’s also important for this number to reach. Right.

Thomas Kohler:
What I would do. I’m fully with you on the monthly, but let’s for now go on weekly because then it’s just more comparable when you be. When we do the capacity planning initially. So then we would say final cases. Okay. VP sales. Let’s say, let’s say there is a VP sales that does the final. How many can a VP sales do?

Yeliz Castillo:
Whoa. Do you want the realistic number here as well?

Thomas Kohler:
Yes, yes. We are talking realistic numbers.

Yeliz Castillo:
Yeah. I think they do maximum two, to be honest. Realistically, from my experience, in a week. But this is obviously not what we’re supposed to do.

Thomas Kohler:
In cases?

Yeliz Castillo:
Yes. Um, I have done four cases a week.

Thomas Kohler:
Okay. I like the numbers, the resources, they do zero. So let’s just fill this up right. That we know what is happening here because we could even say that the VP sales or not the VP sales. But maybe some hiring managers also need to source. Right. This could also happen sometimes when you really need to go down. It’s critical.

But let’s say we don’t assume this here. So this is actually the activities. KPIs in activities. Yeah. What we want to see weekly, let’s say weekly. Okay, Liz, I see a problem. We need 20 finals. Per week? No, per month, sorry. We divided that by four. Now we need to make it more realistic. So okay, we need per week eight cases, five finals. So we need two VPs doing the final interviews. Do you think the organization has two VPs?

Yeliz Castillo:
No, not two VPs, but I think. And this is where you can kind of overcome the first bottleneck is really getting more interviewers into the hiring, you know, so it’s not just one hiring manager or it’s not just one vp, but it could be a director, you know, that can also just assess someone like a vp or they’re like three different hiring managers from the same area. Let’s say if we’re talking about sales and you know there is sales, banking, sales, I don’t know, real estate or whatever it is that they all get involved and help and support. They all have the same work and the workload. So I think this is how you overcome this issue which is very realistic in the organizations today.

Thomas Kohler:
So what I would do now, I would look at the FTEs needed. So what do we need? We need, let’s say FTEs needed. Yeah, we need. For that we need 0.5 sourcers. Right. Because we need to do 200 a week and the goal for a full time sourcer would be 500.

Yeliz Castillo:
Yeah.

Thomas Kohler:
So we need 0.5 sources. Recruiters, we need let’s say 1.5. Then hiring manager calls 6, 12. So we need two hiring managers or sales managers. We also need to. Now the question is, Liz, can the same hiring managers that do the hiring manager calls also do the case studies?

Yeliz Castillo:
So usually how I would suggest this is that you get one of the hiring managers in it and then either like a peer from the team or like a senior from the team and if any, if, if whatever the constellation is from the stakeholder team, for example, that you have like two to three people in the case ideally. So then you have a variety of evaluation, but then also a variety of availability.

Thomas Kohler:
So what you’re saying…

Yeliz Castillo:
So that you create basically an interview panel. So it’s not just…

Thomas Kohler:
We need a interviewer pool of at least four people, let’s say performing hiring manager calls and cases because then we can plan for also two hiring managers. So we need two hiring managers capacity and here two hiring manager capacity. But this cannot be the same hiring manager capacity. So we need the capacity for two hiring managers. But we need four people doing this work because if they do the harimager calls, they don’t have capacity to fit in the cases.

Yeliz Castillo:
Yeah, I mean, yeah. And then we need an awareness obviously that if you have a high number like this for six months of hiring, then that needs to be more involvement of the hiring teams.

Thomas Kohler:
Okay. And we have two VP sales interviews but we can do per week and five finals. So we would need two VP sales.

Yeliz Castillo:
VP sales, but I also think it can be like the director, you know?

Thomas Kohler:
Yeah. If they exist. So but what we need actually two to five or it’s two to three here. Let’s say we take three here, we are good in negotiation and get a better commitment and then we have room for just two VP sales or directors. Because maybe what we can do, we can train up one hiring manager who is the senior hiring manager doing also a VP sales interview. So a bit of creativity is always needed. Right. But let’s go with this assumption then we maybe need one VP sales or one director, let’s say the top decision maker in this organization with the scope, plus maybe one deputy or whatever it is.

Okay. If it’s better, maybe even more people or we can get rid of the final call because this is already good enough. But who knows? Let’s go with this assumption. So what we need is actually. Yeah, two people here, four people here, two people here that delivered 25 hires across six months. So four hires per week.

Yeliz Castillo:
Yeah. Also maybe as another suggestion for the finance could be also like a founder. Right. Like if we’re talking about a startup. So they could also get involved. So I guess there’s like also variety. So you don’t need to necessarily just keep it on that level. It could also be higher because they’re just as involved or just as keen on hiring people. Right, so.

Thomas Kohler:
Okay, Liz, now that the work starts, we just now know what happened, right? Or let’s go with the assumption, but let’s say this, this really happened and then it’s already a really good running organization. If they can manage to get these hires with resources. Right. They’re then well calibrated. They’re just productive running. There are no major changes. Like somebody is getting fired, somebody’s changing jobs, somebody’s leaving the organization, somebody’s disrupting something. This is really just all stable for six months.

So we now assume to dapper. So let’s say we take, we make a forecast, forecast 50 hires and we need to double that. I make it different. So but we cannot double the capacity. So this is just doubling and doubling the capacity. That’s not what we want. Let’s say the hiring process for now stays the same because I think you also don’t really have time in that short period to just change everything. And now what I would look at now is first the conversion rates to see what is healthy, what not.

Okay, so we have a 13% interview rate. Right. So from 10,000 people, 13% gets interviewed. This looks for me like applications. This doesn’t look for me like sourcing because usually a sourcing conversion rate is maybe. I always see a healthy interview booking rate between 7 and 12% for sales hiring in Germany. And let’s go with a number. Let’s go with thousand.

We say Source thousand interviews. 7% is. Let’s go with the middle of the benchmark with 9%. Then you get 90 interviews out of thousand candidates. So out of 100 you get nine interviews. I think that they should really do a lot of way more sourcing because.

Yeliz Castillo:
But are we talking about the sourcers now or the tag?

Thomas Kohler:
So for me this looks like that there are a lot of applications just processed. Right. Because I don’t know if you can source 850 candidates and get 100 calls. I think that’s a bit high.

Yeliz Castillo:
Yeah. These are the numbers, the mock numbers that you’ve chosen. Right? From.

Thomas Kohler:
Yeah. But it’s also quite realistic. So I would really try to go down here with the conversion. So let’s say optimized funnel, I would try to go down maybe with half of the candidates that you can double the amount of hires, but just also increase the number of candidates that are sourced and reached out to versus processing applications. But you also then need more candidates. So it’s not so easy. I would not start in the beginning, to be honest. So maybe let’s start at the bottom. Because backwards planning is always better than just forward planning, in my opinion. So when we look at the offer acceptance rate, I think that’s a healthy ratio. What do you think?

Yeliz Castillo:
Yeah, ideally. Yeah.

Thomas Kohler:
Then let’s keep it by 93%. When we now go to the offer extended rate from the final interviews. That’s quite low. Right. So I think this should be 80% plus, to be honest. Because the lower the funnel and the lower the conversion rate, the more candidates you should filter out early on and the more expensive in terms of time, resources and then ultimately money is it to have low conversion rates at the bottom of the funnel. So let’s say we need to get this to 80%. I think a lot of calibration needs to happen before in order to do that.

And maybe we can even eliminate the interview free step when the hiring panel is really, really calibrated well. So we could for this run now, maybe remove the final call with the vp. Just making sure that the hiring manager team is really trained well. And when we know that the previous hires of the 25 hires would perform well. It’s a short period of time to judge this. But this would be one thing what I could just. What you could just do. Because then you need way less candidates.

Right. Removing this step and you could just be way more extensive in the hiring manager screening. Then don’t need the interview. Three, you don’t need another VP for interviewing. And you can still be very rigorous in the case.

Yeliz Castillo:
Yeah.

Thomas Kohler:
So let’s try to do it. Hiram manager call. And this is then the case. And afterwards you get an offer because. Yeah. So this would then be really low. We need to go to 80% after the case study. Then we can maybe even keep it at 70 roughly. Or 66. So two out of three candidates that go through the case study need to get an offer.

Yeliz Castillo:
Okay.

Thomas Kohler:
We can also go down to 50.

Yeliz Castillo:
I was just about to say I think my realistic number is more of a between 50 and 60, to be honest. Yeah.

Thomas Kohler:
How many people should enter the case study from the hiring manager call?

Yeliz Castillo:
Are we basing this again on the weekly. Well, ideally you would have each week like minimum three case studies that go to. Well, sorry, are we talking about case study to offer extended.

Thomas Kohler:
No, no hiring manager calls that convert into a case study.

Yeliz Castillo:
Oh yeah, that would be. Obviously, if we’re talking about the quality I think it should be. Ideally I’m just playing all the realistic scenarios in my head. So how many really do go through like four.

Thomas Kohler:
Out of?

Yeliz Castillo:
What was the number again that we had put up at the six. Right?

Thomas Kohler:
Six, yeah.

Yeliz Castillo:
Yeah, I think so.

Thomas Kohler:
Four out of six. So it’s a bit more than 60%.

Yeliz Castillo:
Yeah.

Thomas Kohler:
I would take a different logic and say we rather have just 50%. But then also we have a higher case study to offer ratio because let’s be way more rigorous in who putting fruit to the case study and maybe making the hiring manager call way more intense. And also the recruiter screening. So 43% pass here. Maybe we can keep it like this. I think it’s okay number. And I would lower this rate that you just talk to 7% of the candidates. And when we now multiply this up, let’s see what we could optimize.

In an… Oops, so just divide it by that. Okay, so we now need way more candidates because we have. We have lower conversion rates on the recruiter side. So that doesn’t really help us. Right. So we still have. I think that’s not a good optimization.

If we stay with 13%, we still need 10,000. If we prove 25% or if we interview 25% of the candidates, I think that’s way too high. You would have the similar amount, amount of data. So to be honest, what I see here, I don’t think it’s really realistic to double the amount of hires with the same capacity. Right. Because this is what we try to do here. We had here roughly the same numbers, way less case studies, a bit more hiring manager calls. So we would need to move a lot of capacity towards the hiring manager calls and have a similar amount of recruiter screens.

And let’s say we keep this constant, then we would still need 10,000 candidates. So out of the same amount of candidates, we would get the same amount of recruiter screens, more hiring manager calls, less case studies, but more offers accepted. So what would happen here in this scenario? So in my opinion, you would maybe draft out different roles and ease up the requirements on certain roles. And maybe instead of hiring full time, so end to end AE sellers, you may make a split and say, okay, you build an organization that has maybe simpler roles. But I think it’s not necessarily easier to hire an SDR versus an AE to be honest. So that’s also not so easy. You would need the same amount of recruiters here, more hiring manager call capacity. So you maybe need not just two, but maybe three for doing performing the hiring manager calls. And then you need a third of the case studies, which is good because case studies take longer and take more people. But this is, I think the optimization you should look for and then offer stays constant because this is a great example. So I don’t… Yeah.

Yeliz Castillo:
I would also like to make a point here with the increased hiring manager calls that would also lead to longer time to hire. I think because the availability of hiring managers is usually way more limited than the availability of a talent partner or recruiter. Right. So I think this is also then to consider for the six months period that we have given as a.

Thomas Kohler:
Yes. So what I would say here, I would still go down here maybe to 9% and 15,000 candidates that should be needed. I think that’s. It’s just not. You don’t really find that. So we did an analysis. For instance, if you just want to hire a generic salespeople into Berlin. 10,000 profiles exist. And of course Germany and Berlin is definitely not the same.

Yeliz Castillo:
The requirements, right, that they were stuck in certain cities with the highest.

Thomas Kohler:
Yes, sometimes. Exactly. So you maybe not even have a choice. Right. So you need to see what you get out of your funnel. So I think you either really need more resources there and you get them temporarily approved, for instance, or you find a really smart sharp way in order to increase it. And just with generic data, I think it’s not possible to really judge it. But of course, what you could do, you could say you hire out of a pool, if you have a pool.

But that’s also tricky, right? It’s maybe after a layoff, you hire back past employees. This is what I could imagine where a conversion rate could look like 25%. But find so many people that already have been part of your organization, laid off, and are now boomerang hires. It’s all a bit tricky. So let’s say you would really need to go with the same amount, 10,000 people. You’re just better in converting and interviewing. And you have to write 10,000 people with a volume. I think it’s really tricky.

Over six months. Hmm, let’s calculate it. What would this look like? It would look like this divided by six again. So in theory, we now have the same input of candidates with the double output of hires by removing one stage and being way more critical at the top of the funnel. The bottleneck, what I still see is there candidates accessible in that short period of time in order to just double the productivity within, let’s say a certain. A short period of time of six months. You could also argue and say, okay, in six months of hiring 25 people, we had the following free learnings and we implement these free learnings. And this is why we can double the amount with the same input.

Right. Could be an option. I did not see this really in reality, unless the company is really realistically changing a lot of things and are willing to change a lot of things. But usually what is happening here, they just say, hey, we need now more recruiters. We cannot hire for the full year. So people wise, please come in and add two or three more people. This is actually what’s realistically happening. And then you can really get close to this number.

But often it’s then also a delay because it takes time that the organization can really learn. And then you would would maybe plan for nine months. And the adaption and change usually takes three months. Right. So let’s maybe plan for this that we say, okay, we either we just say we plan them out and divide everything by nine or I would say we start in the beginning by six and then we go up to nine at some point and see how much we need in total. So if we go, oh, sorry, we need first the nine. This M was a mistake. First three months is on nine and then we are down to six months.

So in order to get to 50, when do we have the 50 hires? We have it in month seven then. So when we just plan for in the beginning, it’s a bit similar to what we already did. Or it’s just a small step. And the change takes two months. And after two months of the change or after three months of the change, you are way more productive. And for four months you have higher productivity. For three months you already get a bit more productive. But this takes time.

And then we would just calculate as well what needs to be done each week by the recruiter or by each person. This is an exercise that takes time and you never really can make it. Right. It’s always about constraints and asking yourself what constraints do you believe?

Yeliz Castillo:
Like one of the constraints is also the time in the year, right? Like when you hire candidate availability, promotion cycles, summer period, like all those things also do end Christmas time also adds to the fact then on how many people are on the market or available sickness. There’s always a time where everyone is sick. So those things also obviously needs to be considered too. But we’re just talking about assumptions.

Thomas Kohler:
Yeah, okay. But let’s say this is what we need to deliver then every week. Or this needs to be delivered every week. A full time sourcer. So what you would need sourcer, recruiter, hiring manager. And we removed the vp, right? We don’t need that anymore. Because the hiring managers are trained to do better work after six months of interviewing already, let’s say and there is not a big change. So this is what they need to do on a weekly basis.

Not divided by four. This is what they need to achieve. Then the recruiters divided by let’s say 20. Sorry, this is by 500. So you need one divided by 25. Now 20 we said in the plan. Or how much did we say they can deliver? 20. Yeah. So you would actually need then three recruiters and hiring managers could do five. You said six. No, from hiring manager calls.

Yeliz Castillo:
Five. But then we change it to six. I think. But I do think this is more realistic, to be honest.

Thomas Kohler:
5. We planned with 6, so we need 5 hiring managers, but they also need to do the case studies. And I would then say, plus this divided by six per week, that’s then eight. I would not mix it up. Hiring manager call and hiring manager for the case. And then you have it a bit simpler. You could say, we have cases, 4, what one person can do. No, two per week.

Yeliz Castillo:
We said two hiring managers we need for the case. We said, yeah.

Thomas Kohler:
But then they need to do four per week and six of these. Okay, let’s go with these assumptions. Okay, so we need in total hiring manager needed. The question is, do you have that right?

Yeliz Castillo:
I was, yeah, just thinking, like, how realistic is it to have five hiring managers?

Thomas Kohler:
My take would be really challenging the plan and prioritize and just maybe do the most critical first and then fade out the rest over the year and try to do this with the same capacity, maybe over a longer period of time. So then you would just go back to the business. No, we can do maybe slightly better, maybe by 20, 30%, but definitely not by 100% better. Let’s prioritize better and make sure that we are realistically getting there. Right. But when I just see these numbers, I think it’s really just not 100% realistic. But it’s important to do these exercises to also look at it and just say, okay, how can we get the double amount of hires with the same level of recruiters? It’s nice on theory, but are there even enough candidates on the market and are we able to talk to them? Are they willing to talk to us? And so on. And that’s capacity need then.

Yeliz Castillo:
So. Because the other thing is I think that hiring teams or companies also underestimate is okay, yeah, there are. Maybe then there is talent in the market. But that doesn’t mean that they will all want to work for your company either. Right. That they’re all available to change. And then you have to look at things also like, okay, how competitive, like competitive are you? Or how is your salary package? And especially in sales, because those things really do matter. It’s not just about having the talent there.

And yeah, you can message them left, right, center, but that doesn’t mean that they will be open or keen for your company, for your brand, or, you know, for the job. So those things are also to consider when making these, hiring them.

Thomas Kohler:
So let’s, let’s summarize it. What we did, we optimized the funnel with assumptions, which we don’t think is really realistic, what we optimized there. But it’s just a first plan to just See, okay, let’s say we get the best out of it. What can we do? What we did, we optimized the bottom of the funnel conversion rate. We removed one step as an interview process, and the rest stayed roughly the same. Right. So these are the two things we just changed. And then in theory, we needed with the same amount of candidates and the same amount of first screens, we get to the double amount of hires.

No, it’s actually not true. Also, we doubled the number. This was the forecast of the 50 hires. So we doubled also the number of hires and we doubled the number of recruiter screens. So we didn’t really optimize there because we just did not see it’s realistic. That’s a mistake. And it’s not possible to get to the double amount of outcomes in the same period of time with the same input. So it’s really unrealistic.

Yeliz Castillo:
Increased hiring manager.

Thomas Kohler:
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. But what we just saw, maybe we just put the data next to each other past months and this is our optimized funnel. And then we have.

Yeliz Castillo:
It’s Six, One.

Thomas Kohler:
Yes, this was the interview. Three, final interview. And here we said we skipped that. So 50, 25. And let’s say what’s the factor? Two. So same amount here or double the amount. Double the amount. Triple the amount. But same amount of case studies. Roughly. Or even lower. Let’s do it with percent. Yes. Okay. So double amount of the applications, double amount of recruiter screens, more than double of the amount in terms of harem major calls. So this needs to be more and more rigorous.

But then we just need half of the case studies for more hires, no final interviews. And here we are quite similar. Right. So we stayed constant in terms of we doubled and then we also wanted to double. So we optimized here, we optimized here, and we removed this. Yeah, I think it’s not really realistic to achieve this without adding capacity. Right. So I think you really need to.

What we said instead of one recruiter, what we needed. So here we needed two FTEs on this hiring site. And in total, six on the management side. We still need six on the management side, but they are not doing different things, they’re doing more the same things, but better. And we needed to double the recruiter capacity, which is actually a nice achievement that you say, okay, you just need to double the recruiter capacity, but you can optimize the hiring process. And then with the same hiring manager capacity, you can get to the double outcome. Right. So this is what we actually landed at.

And it was all Free flow. There was no real prepping. This usually takes longer. Now that is in 50 minutes. And we also just used mock up data. But I think it’s important to just see here what’s the learning. You need certain frameworks, you need to work with concepts, you need to work with a certain planning approach and then always just question, is this realistic? Is this not realistic? It’s way easier with actuals when you can ask actual questions, when you look at actual data and so on and really see what’s the situation there and what’s the storyline behind it. But it’s important for this as a learning to see it as a framework that can be used and there are a lot of more ways how you can plan for that.

We did not even consider SLA days and the time in stage and we just looked at a monthly activity. I’m always looking at a weekly activity, always. Because weekly is way more representative on what is possible within a week. Because you can look at what’s done in a week way easier than what’s done in a month. Yeah. Then on a monthly plan, but on a high level perspective to just start doing a bit of, let’s say data crunching. This is often totally enough. Right.

And I would never sign this off what we planned for here. It’s just important to do an interpretation exercise, a hypothesis exercise and see where you landed and see, okay, what is actually possible. What not then really have an actual discussion with the people involved. Because if you don’t really discuss this with the people involved, then somebody is maybe signing something off or designing or planning for something that other people don’t commit to, then the problem gets even worse.

Yeliz Castillo:
Honestly, I don’t think a lot of companies actually do it thoroughly like this. Right. Like I think this is an example on how you really should approach a hiring plan and not just go, okay, you know, when, when, when teams like request requisitions and support. Yes, of course that’s important. But it’s also important to be realistic about the time to hire. You know, the timeframe that you want to achieve the goal of hiring and then also the capacity that you have. Because this all becomes in a cycle of stress and pressure and not reaching and demotivated employees left by center. You know, teams that get promised we get more support and then they don’t get it on time and all those things. Right. Like this is like not just one, like an issue of one area. I think it’s an overall issue that you can really solve by doing a proper analysis of your capacity planning and hiring plan by just looking at things that we just did. So.

Thomas Kohler:
And this needs to be unregularly.

Yeliz Castillo:
Yeah. Oh, yeah. Not just once a year.

Thomas Kohler:
Yes. Thanks, Liz. Let’s close it off. We are already 50 minutes in. Thanks for doing it.

Yeliz Castillo:
Thank you.