How Much Does Hiring DevOps Cost?: Hidden Costs of Your Hiring Pipeline
Hiring is a Top Concern for CEOs
Despite recession expectations, hiring tops the list of CEOs’ internal concerns. According to the 2023 Conference Board Survey, talent ranks first among internal worries for CEOs worldwide.
Yet only about one-third of U.S. companies report that they monitor whether their hiring practices lead to good employees; few of them do so carefully, and only a minority even track cost per hire and time to hire.
Tracking Hiring Costs
Over our time in the hiring sphere, we’ve spoken to dozens of CTOs, CEOs, recruiters, tech hiring teams, and HR leaders, and we’ve found that most companies don’t have data on the amount of time and resources they spend on hiring.
When we calculate hiring costs for them, most C-suites and directors are surprised and left wondering why they haven’t tracked hiring costs better to begin with, especially when they track other spending, from sales and marketing expenses, to travel and equipment.
By tracking hiring spending, businesses are able to allocate their resources better, save on unnecessary costs, and prioritize initiatives – such as better retention and candidate qualification.
Hiring Sys Admins, DevOps, and Cloud Engineers
This is especially pertinent when it comes to high-value DevOps and Cloud system engineer hires - some of the most expensive hires in the IT world.
Great companies spend immense resources searching for talented DevOps engineers, and even more to bring them onto the team. These recruiting and sourcing costs add up quickly.
But how does a company track the amount of time and resources they put toward Hiring DevOps Engineers? Let’s take a look at our Savings Calculator.
How Much Does Hiring a DevOps Engineer Cost?
We’ve created an algorithm that calculates DevOps and Cloud hiring costs, taking into account many factors:
•The Cost per Technical Interview, based on the salary of Senior Engineers who conduct these interviews.
•The Average Cost Per Additional Interview, which is based on the salary of HR or Hiring Managers who conduct cultural fit or other additional interviews.
•The amount of time it takes to prepare for, conduct, and evaluate each interview.
•The number of candidates that are interviewed to fill each role.
The costs for the interviews are calculated based on the average salaries in the United States for the respective roles. These salaries are then converted into hourly rates to determine the interview costs.
Read More: DevOps Assessments Streamlined EclecticIQ's Hiring Process [Case Study]
The Hidden Costs of Hiring
We will explain how this process works using our standard calculations based on the median US salaries from Levels. It's important to note that each company has the flexibility to adjust these numbers based on its own pay rates and specific hiring dynamics.
For our calculations, we consider the average hourly costs for a DevOps Engineer and a Software Engineering Manager, which are conservative rates.
Typically, a senior DevOps engineer spends at least onehour discussing candidates' technical backgrounds and asking AWS DevOps questions, while an additional hour is needed from the Software Engineering Manager, hiring manager, or team to assess culture fit and role expectations.
To hire a DevOps engineer, you would likely conduct a 1-hour technical interview with a senior member of the DevOps team. This amounts to 1 hour of their average salary, or $69 on average.
Keep in mind that this cost is per candidate, and typically, anywhere from 20 to 50 candidates are interviewed before selecting a hire.
Let's say you had a pipeline of 100 candidates, 50 decided to take the test, and 20 passed the test.
In a typical hiring process, you'd have to interview all 100 candidates. By introducing an automated test, you save $6900 (100 candidates * $69).
Plus, your senior engineers will get an extra 100 productive work hours as they don't need to spend time interviewing those candidates.
Once the technical team qualifies a candidate, there is usually a second interview with a software engineering manager, costing approximately $139 for each hour of their time.
In our scenario, 80 candidates didn't pass to the next stage, so the hiring manager won't have to spend time conducting a second interview with those candidates.
This equates to an extra 80 productive work hours for your hiring manager and $11120 in savings (80 candidates * $139).
Based on the proposed rates, when hiring a single DevOps engineer, the hiring team would save an overall $18020 ($6900+$11120) as well as 180 hours of time.
This estimation does not include expenses such as HR and recruiting fees, onboarding, and other hiring costs. Here's a real dashboard from one of our clients:
How to Save Money on DevOps Hiring
By utilizing Brokee's technical evaluations, you can eliminate the initial technical interview for every candidate, resulting in time and cost savings for your DevOps hiring.
Furthermore, Brokee's tests have a 20% passing rate, guaranteeing that all engineers who pass the test will be highly qualified for the final interview with a software engineering manager.
By filtering out 80% of candidates who fail the technical screening, you significantly reduce the chances of low-quality engineers slipping through the cracks.
This saves valuable time for software engineering managers, CTOs, and other team members who are no longer required to interview these candidates.
Interested in saving money on DevOps hiring? Brokee has multiple DevOps, Cloud, and System engineering evaluations for popular IT systems, such as Linux, Kubernetes, and AWS.
Our tests are ‘Chat-GPT-proof’ and ‘ungoogleable’, ensuring we’ll qualify only the best talent. Get started with a free demo of Brokee and start saving money while hiring with confidence.