The Hidden Cost of Manual CV Review
Manual CV screening seems free, but the true cost in time, opportunity, and quality adds up fast. Here's what you're really paying.
When evaluating recruitment tools, many teams focus on the direct cost: software subscriptions, implementation time, training. But the real comparison should include what you're already paying for manual screening—even if it doesn't show up on an invoice.
The Time Cost
Let's do the maths for a typical high-volume role:
- Applications received: 200
- Time per CV review: 6 minutes (industry average)
- Total screening time: 20 hours
If a recruiter's fully-loaded cost is £40/hour, that's £800 per role just for initial screening. For a team hiring 10 roles per month, that's £8,000 monthly—£96,000 annually.
The Opportunity Cost
Those 20 hours aren't free time that appears from nowhere. They're displaced from:
- Candidate engagement: Top candidates who don't hear back quickly move on
- Strategic planning: No time left to improve job descriptions, optimise channels, or build talent pipelines
- Quality conversations: Less time for meaningful interviews when screening eats the calendar
The Quality Cost
Manual screening under time pressure leads to shortcuts:
- Quick scans instead of thorough reads
- Over-indexing on keywords rather than context
- Unconscious bias influencing decisions
The result? Good candidates get missed, and some who advance shouldn't have.
The Consistency Cost
Different reviewers—or the same reviewer at different times—apply criteria differently. This creates:
- Legal risk from inconsistent decision-making
- Confusion when hiring managers see variable candidate quality
- Difficulty improving the process when there's no baseline
Calculating Your True Cost
Here's a quick formula:
Monthly cost = (Avg. applications/role × Minutes per review × Roles/month × Hourly rate) ÷ 60
For most teams, this number is surprisingly high—often higher than the cost of automation tools that could do the same work faster and better.
The ROI of Automation
AI screening doesn't eliminate human judgment—it amplifies it. Your team still makes final decisions, but with:
- 90%+ time savings on initial screening
- Consistent criteria application
- Documented reasoning for compliance
- Faster time-to-hire
Even modest automation can reclaim hundreds of hours per year, letting your team focus on what humans do best: building relationships and making nuanced decisions.
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