The Hidden Cost of Interviewing: Talent Leaders Birmingham Takeaways

This February 2025 the Evidenced team gave a talk at Talent Leaders Birmingham, hosted by the Talent Labs, where we met with Talent Acquisition Leaders across industries to discuss the challenges they face. It was a great opportunity for us to learn from leaders in the hiring space, share our expertise, and discuss how Talent teams can do more with less.

Our Key Takeaways:

Throughout the day the Evidenced team were able to speak at roundtables with Talent Leaders from a variety of industries and collate some of the key takeaways from the event. These included:

1. Candidate Experience: A Growing Challenge

One of the most prominent themes of the event was the increasing difficulty of maintaining a great candidate experience due to rising applicant volumes.

While organisations recognise the importance of providing a positive interview process, they’re struggling to keep up with the sheer number of candidates. Delayed responses, long interview cycles, and unclear communication can damage an employer’s reputation and discourage talent from joining, and companies are looking for ways to streamline their processes while still ensuring a positive experience for candidates.

2. The Interview “Black Box” and the Data Gap

Many TA leaders expressed frustration over the lack of actionable data from interviews.

Despite investing in sourcing, ATS platforms, and employer branding, companies often struggle to measure the impact of their interview processes. Without clear insights, hiring teams are left guessing about what’s working and what isn’t.

Data-driven decision making is critical to improving hiring efficiency, reducing bias, and optimising talent pipelines. Implementing tools that capture structured feedback, track interviewer performance, and measure time-to-hire can help organisations make smarter, more strategic hiring decisions.

3. The Undervalued Role of Interviewer Training

Another surprising takeaway? Investment in interviewer training remains stagnant, despite clear evidence that well-trained interviewers significantly improve candidate experience and hiring outcomes.

Bad interviews don’t just lead to poor candidate experiences, they also result in costly hiring mistakes. Consistent interviewer training ensures that teams are aligned on assessing candidates effectively, reducing bias, and making more confident hiring decisions.

4. The Challenge of Rolling Out Skills-Based Hiring

Skills-based hiring can improve hiring accuracy and provides a wider pool of candidates, yet many companies struggle to implement it effectively.

It was discussed at the roundtables that rather than overhauling an entire hiring process at once, a more practical approach is to start small - one hiring manager at a time. By demonstrating success in individual departments, organisations can build momentum and gradually shift toward competency-based hiring across the company.

Skills-based hiring helps companies move beyond traditional credentials and focus on what truly matters: candidates’ ability to perform in the role.

5. Aligning TA Goals with Senior Leadership

Finally, one of the most impactful takeaways was the importance of aligning Talent Acquisition with business leadership.

When TA is positioned as a strategic business partner - not just a service provider - it becomes easier to secure executive buy-in, funding, and support. Ensuring that TA goals align with broader company objectives can help drive investment in hiring processes and technology, ultimately making recruiting a core function of business growth.

6. The Bottom Line: Small Changes, Big Savings

If there’s one thing we took away from this event, it’s that even small improvements in the interviewing process can lead to massive cost savings. Companies that optimise their hiring practices reduce turnover, speed up hiring timelines, and secure top talent more effectively - directly impacting revenue.

The Hidden Costs of Interviewing

At the event we gave a talk on the 'Hidden Costs of Interviewing', helping Talent Leaders to identify the hidden costs of inefficient interview practices that aren’t line items on budgets. We also provided actionable insight into how they could make data-driven process improvements in interviewing, in order to reduce costs whilst hiring more effectively.

As part of our presentation we provided data on various hidden costs of interviewing. This included the costs of vacancies that are left open too long:

We also provided data on the time costs of interviewing:

As well as the savings that could be made with a reduction of assessment errors:

At the end of our talk we directed Talent Leaders to our Hidden Cost of Interviewing Calculator, where they could fill in their company information and find out exactly how much interviewing is costing them per year.

Following our talk we also heard from experts, Debs Keogh at Wilson HR about how Talent Leaders can plan for the unplannable in hiring, and Mark Beavan from That Little Agency on the importance of having a good brand story. Talent Labs ran roundtables on skills based hiring, and we finished the day with an expert panel, taking questions directly from the audience.

A huge thank you to The Talent Labs for organising such an insightful and valuable day.