Talent Heads, what’s a right ROI from automation?

We talk/meet several Talent Acquisition Heads of mid to large sized enterprises every week. I always get asked one question “What’s the ROI from your product?” While we do have a well validated ROI to present, many a times we wonder whether the Talent Head we are speaking to is aware of what’s a good ROI, given their particular case?

These days several automation solutions are being presented to TA Heads; while an ideal solution for a TA Head is to have an end-to-end recruitment solution, it is hard to get one. Even if there would be one, it would be extremely expensive to afford/justify.

What is then a truly justifiable ROI metric to look from these isolated best-of-breed solutions? The answer lies in what’s your typical situation. For example, when we analyse the companies that we meet, we see two very distinct scenarios of the TA team composition. One where there are very few number of Recruiters and one where there are more than required number of them. Getting head-count approval is the most difficult thing. Excess head-count is also a result of slowed hiring or smaller teams look smaller because of increased hiring activity, without additional head-count coming in.

What we have then figured is the true ROI of automation for larger teams is where it would result into reduction of head-count, so that displaced head-count is allocated to more employer branding/ candidate engagement tasks. And for leaner teams, ROI should be in terms of ability to do it or more amount of work without adding additional head-count.

Platforms like Callify have been consistently showing productivity ROI of around 60% in the first year of deployment with reduction of about 40% head-count for a firm that was doing on an average 30 to 40 hiring calls per recruiter per day. For leaner teams, Callify has been able to ramp-up the capability of the teams to do 4 times more mandates than they otherwise would, freeing them up for other HR related tasks.

ROI is not only a financial metric but also how it makes human life simpler and less stressful.