Get this: one company had an inconsistent hiring model led by hiring managers from different areas of the business and wasted close to $1 million in a single year on salaries of employees who weren't the right fit and eventually left. (Plus the costs of hiring, performance managing, and then re-hiring those positions? The financial impact becomes astronomical.)

The signs are often subtle. Your talent acquisition (TA) team seems stretched thin, but they're still delivering. Hiring timelines incrementally creep up, but nothing dramatic enough to raise alarm bells. The quality of hires starts to dip, but it's hard to pinpoint exactly why... By the time these early warning signs escalate into full-blown crisis mode, the damage is already done and the costs are staggering.

Internal TA burnout isn't just about overworked recruiters. It's a business-critical issue that ripples through every corner of your organisation, from company culture to your bottom line. The question isn't whether you can afford to invest in your TA function but whether you can afford not to.

The hidden costs of TA dysfunction

When talent acquisition teams are under-resourced or burning out, the consequences extend far beyond delayed hiring. The real cost lies in what happens when the wrong people slip through the cracks.

But it's not just about bad hires. When TA functions fail, other teams get pulled into the recruitment vacuum. One sales team was spending up to 35% of their time on recruitment activities instead of actual sales and resulted in millions of missed revenue.

Another company was losing the productivity equivalent of a full-time sales manager every year in hours wasted on recruitment processes, simply because they hadn't built a proper TA function.

The numbers are compelling in the other direction, too. One company saved more than $600,000 in direct costs by building a TA function and adding four TA experts, allowing them to dramatically reduce their spend on recruitment agencies.

The diversity and cultural toll

There's also a hidden cost to diversity that many organisations overlook. When there isn't a TA function guiding and managing fit-for-purpose recruitment processes, bias doesn't just creep in – it proliferates. Without a TA team skilled at both attracting diverse talent and coaching hiring managers to identify it, companies run the risk of hiring in the same image over and over again.

As Cameron Robinson, Head of Enterprise Solutions at Solve, explains: "An under-resourced TA function can have disastrous effects on a company's employer brand and candidate experience. A lack of capability and capacity can translate into candidates being ghosted, missed timeline commitments, underprepared interview experiences and communication delays. All of these can leave candidates feeling undervalued and the company appearing disorganised and unprofessional."

The ripple effects are profound. When hiring responsibility gets pushed back onto hiring managers because TA doesn't have bandwidth, you're opening the door to wildly inconsistent candidate experiences. The net result is almost certainly going to be great candidates choosing to go elsewhere.

The burnout spiral

The most insidious aspect of TA dysfunction is how it creates a vicious cycle. When TA professionals leave burnt-out teams, companies often choose not to backfill positions in an effort to save money. This pushes remaining team members to operate at unsustainable levels of sometimes nearly 200% of business-as-usual capacity.

One company's TA team was overburdened at more than double usual capacity for several months, resulting in hiring timelines that increased by 30 days. The cost? Up to 9,000 days in lost productivity over the year, with 100+ new hires each starting a month later than they could have if hiring had been on time.

This creates a downward spiral: overworked teams burn out and leave, which increases pressure on remaining staff, leads to longer hiring timelines, impacts business deliverables, creates more pressure to hire quickly, and overwhelms the depleted team further.

The success stories

The transformation is remarkable when companies invest properly in their TA functions. One client without a centralised TA function struggled to consistently hire the right people, but since investing in and building a proper TA function, 100% of their hires have passed probation.

Another client organisation scaling quickly into a new market needed local leadership and sales professionals to build their brand. Rather than leaving it to individual hiring managers, they invested in local TA support through Solve. The result was dozens of hires delivered 15% faster than industry average, including 30% of hires sourced through recruiter headhunting (candidates who wouldn't have been found through traditional job postings).

Beyond just adding bodies

Cameron emphasises that simply throwing more people at the problem isn't the solution: "If you haven't got the right TA structure and you're not attracting the very best available TA professionals to join you in the first place, then simply adding more of them isn't going to solve things."

The transformation requires a strategic approach:

• Implementing fit-for-purpose technology,

• Improving the quality of TA team members being hired

• Redesigning processes to remove barriers to efficiency

• Restructuring team delivery models, and

• Using reporting and analytics to identify roadblocks and skill gaps

"All this, of course, requires leaders to invest the time and expertise to challenge and change their status quo," Robinson notes.

The competitive advantage of great TA

When done right, a strong TA function becomes a competitive weapon. Cameron explains: "A great TA function uses their expertise to turn the entire company into brand ambassadors. They coach hiring managers on how to sell the company authentically during interviews. They guide hiring teams to move quickly and decisively to secure top candidates."

Great TA teams provide regular, meaningful updates to candidates and deliver positive experiences that turn even unsuccessful candidates into company promoters and potentially even customers.

Building for the future

The landscape of work continues to evolve rapidly. Many organisations are attempting to scale fast, shift workforce models post-pandemic, or navigate ongoing talent shortages, and often without adjusting their TA strategies accordingly. This is where investment in proper TA capabilities even more critical.

"The best companies are building flex into their TA functions and leaning on trusted service partners, tools, and technology to help them scale TA capability up and down without prohibitive cost and headcount challenges," Cameron observes. "The notion that it exclusively requires permanent employees in the TA team to manage recruitment is totally outdated."

The critical differentiator, according to Cameron, is clear: "The best TA functions have attached themselves to business outcomes. They're seen as a business enabler, not a cost centre."

The bottom line

The cost of TA burnout extends far beyond tired recruiters and delayed hires, and manifests in million-dollar hiring mistakes, lost revenue from distracted sales teams, damaged employer brands, reduced diversity, and a culture of reactive hiring that perpetuates the cycle. TA burnout can create problems that reach the boardroom if unchecked.

The organisations winning the talent war aren't necessarily spending more on recruitment but are investing strategically in TA capabilities that turn hiring into a competitive advantage. Companies like those who partner with Solve understand that in a world where talent is the ultimate differentiator, the cost of getting TA wrong is simply too high to ignore.

The question for leaders is straightforward: Are you investing in TA as a strategic business function, or are you treating it as a cost centre to be minimised? The companies that get this right won't just avoid the hidden costs of TA burnout but will transform their entire approach to talent into a sustainable competitive advantage.

No business leader wants to be responsible for an issue that makes its way onto the boardroom agenda. Get in touch with our team today to find out how Solve can support your TA function.

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