When we talk about recruitment costs, most people think of job boards, agency fees, employer branding campaigns, or ATS subscriptions. But behind all these obvious numbers is a hidden cost that most companies overlook—the cost of interviews themselves.
Every time an internal recruiter or engineer takes an hour or two away from their core work to interview candidates, it quietly eats into productivity and payroll budgets. Multiply that across dozens or hundreds of hires a year, and you are looking at thousands of hours and tens (sometimes hundreds) of thousands of dollars.
Yet, despite this heavy time commitment, hiring processes are often rushed, inconsistent, and candidate experiences can be mixed at best. This raises an important question: Is there a way to hire faster, cheaper, and better without burning out your teams?
This is where Interview-as-a-Service (IaaS) comes in.
The Often-Ignored Cost of Interviews
Hiring is complex. It isn’t just about getting resumes and running them through ATS filters. There is an entire layer of time-consuming work: recruiter screenings, scheduling, technical interviews, and multiple stakeholder discussions.
Two big cost sinks emerge clearly in most organizations:
Engineering Bandwidth Isn’t Free
A senior software engineer in India today earns anywhere between ₹25 LPA and ₹48 LPA, depending on the city and company tier. That works out to roughly ₹1,200–₹2,300 per hour.
Let’s say you plan to hire 100 engineers this year. If each role needs 5 technical rounds and every round, including note‑taking and context switching, consumes 2 hours, that’s 1,000 engineering hours. Even at a conservative ₹1,440 per hour, you just spent ₹14.4 lakh of pure engineering time without writing a single line of production code.
Table 1
Role
Annual CTC (₹)
Approx. Hourly Cost (₹)
Interview Hours per Hire
Cost per Hire (₹)
Total Cost – 100 Hires (₹)
Senior Engineer
30 LPA
1,440
10
14,400
14.4 L
That’s ₹14.40 lakh worth of interviews before a single offer letter is signed.
Recruiters Feel the Squeeze Too
An average recruiter call lasts 30–40 minutes. For 100 hires, first‑round calls alone can eat up 600+ hours of TA bandwidth—another ₹2.9 lakh if your recruiter is on a ₹10 LPA package.
The Bottleneck in the Traditional Model
Even companies with robust internal hiring teams and experienced recruitment agencies often face the same challenges:
Interviews stretch timelines. Sourcing might be fast, but scheduling and running interviews create bottlenecks, especially for specialized roles.
Inconsistent assessments. Different interviewers have different criteria, leading to subjective decisions and sometimes poor hiring quality.
Candidate frustration. Longer processes mean delayed feedback, duplicate interviews, and poor candidate experience—which affects employer brand.
These issues are not just operational pain points—they are financial leaks. When teams spend too much time interviewing, productivity slows, hiring quality can dip, and costs quietly escalate.
Interview-As-A-Service: A Smarter Solution
Interview-as-a-Service (IaaS) flips the model. Rather than internal teams conducting every screening and technical interview, firms engage professional interviewers who are domain experts and utilize structured, AI-facilitated assessment tools.
How It Works:
Your TA team sources the pipeline.
Candidates book real‑time slots with domain specialists on the IaaS platform.
You receive a structured report with skill scores, code replays and interviewer comments—ready for final‑round calibration.
4 Ways IaaS Delivers ROI
Outcome
Impact
Engineering focus
Internal teams meet candidates only in the final round, reclaiming ~80 % of their interview hours.
TA bandwidth
Recruiters shift from scheduling hell to proactive sourcing and employer branding.
Speed
Companies report 60–80 % shorter interview cycles, cutting typical closures from 45 days to under 20.
Candidate love
Same‑day feedback and question‑bank parity mean no duplicate grilling. Offer‑accept ratios rise.
Real‑World Wins
Case 1 — Bengaluru SaaS Scale‑Up
Mandate: 50 engineers in 90 days post‑Series B. Pain: 300+ hours of engineering time lost in interviews; release deadlines slipping. Solution: FloCareer ran all first‑round tech screens. Result:
Time‑to‑fill compressed by 65 % (20 days vs 45).
₹7.2 lakhs worth of engineering hours re‑invested in product.
New features shipped 2 months earlier.
Case 2 — Mumbai FinTech Hiring Data Scientists
Pain: Niche ML skillsets; high drop‑off after multiple technical rounds. Solution: FloCareer’s data‑science interview panel + behavioural rubric. Result:
40 % lower interview cost per hire.
Offer‑to‑join ratio jumped to 85 %.
The TA team reclaimed 300+ hours per quarter for talent mapping.
Counting the Rupees: A Quick ROI Snapshot
Function
Annual Interview Hours
Annual Interview Spend (₹)
Engineering
1,000
14.4 L
Talent Acquisition
600
2.9 L
Total
1,600
17.3 L
Switching just the first two interview stages to IaaS can chop that number by one‑third to one‑half—money that can fund a new headcount, skill or your next hackathon.
The Bottom Line
Vacant roles stall growth. Over-burdened interview panels stall innovation. Interview‑as‑a‑Service turns hiring from a chore into a competitive advantage, letting your best people stay focused on customers, code and culture.
Why FloCareer?
FloCareer isn’t just an interviewing service; it’s an extension of your hiring team.
AI‑assisted, structured interviews for consistency and fairness
Detailed rubrics and analytics you can trust
Seamless ATS integrations for one‑click scheduling and feedback loops
In a market where top talent moves fast and hiring mistakes are expensive, FloCareer keeps your teams focused on what matters, building and shipping great products while we handle the interviews.
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