A saving that does not exist
The logic of "while we search, we save on salary" works in only one case: if the position is not needed at all. If it is needed, one of two things happens: either the work does not get done, or it is shared among other employees. Both options cost more than the salary.
When the work is not done, you lose results: deals, shipments, reports. When it is shared, quality drops elsewhere, workload grows, and within a couple of months the company risks losing the people who were covering for two.
Calculating the cost of an empty seat
The formula depends on whether the position generates money directly.
A revenue-generating role
Loss per day = (monthly target × margin) ÷ 22 working days
A sales manager with a target of 3,000,000 ₸ and a 20% margin: 3,000,000 × 0.2 ÷ 22 ≈ 27,000 ₸ per day. Over a month that is around 600,000 ₸. Over two months, 1.2 million — and that is for one position alone.
A support role
Here you calculate the cost of whatever is filling the gap:
Loss per day = hours others spend on this work × their hourly rate + the cost of errors and delays
Take an accountant: if their duties temporarily fall to the manager, and that is 3 hours a day at a rate of 9,000 ₸, the loss is 27,000 ₸ per day — the same as for the salesperson. Plus the risk of reporting errors that can turn into sanctions.
| Position | Loss per day | Per month empty |
|---|---|---|
| Sales manager | ~27,000 ₸ | ~600,000 ₸ |
| Head of sales | ~60,000 ₸ and above | ~1,300,000 ₸ |
| Accountant | ~27,000 ₸ + risk of sanctions | ~600,000 ₸ |
| Production worker | depends on line downtime | often the highest of all |
| Retail frontline staff | ~10,000 – 15,000 ₸ | ~250,000 ₸ |
The hidden part: what breaks during the search
Direct losses are only half the picture. Then come the things that surface later.
- Burnout among those covering the gap. In the first weeks employees carry the extra load out of loyalty. After a month and a half or two, loyalty runs out, and you risk ending up with a second open vacancy next to the first
- Lowered standards. The longer a position stays open, the stronger the temptation to take the first available person. That is how a hiring mistake is born, costing even more than the empty seat
- Losing clients. If the role deals with clients, some of them will move within two months to whoever answers faster
- The reputation of the vacancy. An advert that has been running for three months reads to candidates as a warning sign: either the place is bad, or nobody knows who they are looking for
Why a vacancy stays open for months
If a position has been open longer than two months, the reason is almost always one of five things — and almost never that "there is nobody on the market".
| Symptom | What lies behind it | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Few applications | Terms below market, or the advert does not explain the work | Check the salary range against the market, rewrite the advert in terms of results |
| Applications come but none are right | Requirements are vague or set too high | Separate essential from desirable, shorten the first list |
| Candidates reach the final stage and decline | At interview they learn things the advert did not mention | Check whether reality matches the advert |
| Decisions take weeks | Too many people approving | Cut the number of stages, appoint one decision maker |
| They accepted but did not start | Counter-offer or loss of contact | Stay in touch with the candidate until their first day |
How to explain urgency inside the company
Often it is not the market that slows hiring but internal processes: the manager is busy, approvals drag on, the final meeting moves to next week. The argument "we need it faster" does not work because it sounds abstract.
A number works. Calculate the cost of a day of delay and bring it into the discussion: "every day without this person costs us 27,000 tenge; moving the meeting by a week is 135,000." After that conversation, interviews usually find a place in the calendar far more quickly.
A company was looking for a sales manager and ran a four-stage process: phone interview, meeting with HR, meeting with the manager, final meeting with the director. A week passed between stages — the full cycle took a month.
Two strong candidates left the process at the third stage: both received offers from other employers who made a decision within a week. After the process was cut to two stages within a single week, the vacancy was filled in nine days.
How to shorten time to fill
What genuinely speeds up hiring
- Shorten the approval chain. Four interview stages a week apart is the main reason strong candidates go to competitors. Two stages within one week works better
- Decide quickly. If you think for five days after the final meeting, the candidate will receive and accept another offer in that time
- Start the search early, when an employee has just given notice, not after their last day
- Decide in advance what you can compromise on. Perfect candidates do not exist; knowing which requirements are essential and which are desirable saves weeks
- Say the cost of delay out loud. When the team sees that every day of searching costs 27,000 ₸, approvals speed up on their own
What to do while the position is unfilled
Reducing losses during the search
- Set priorities: which tasks in this role are critical and which can wait until someone starts
- Distribute the load explicitly and for a limited period, rather than "everyone pitch in" — otherwise burnout is inevitable
- Compensate those taking on extra work: additional pay, time off, or at minimum explicit recognition
- Tell the team by when you plan to fill the vacancy — uncertainty demotivates more than workload
- Consider a temporary solution: part-time work, outsourcing the function, reduced hours
A simple check for a manager
Take your open vacancy and answer three questions:
- How many days has it been open?
- How much does the company lose per day using the formula above?
- Multiply these two numbers
The resulting sum is the price of delay. As a rule it exceeds any spending on speeding up recruitment, including engaging an agency, by several times.
In brief
An open vacancy is not a saving but a daily expense. For a sales manager it comes to around 27,000 ₸ per day, for a head of department twice that. To the direct losses you add team burnout, lowered selection standards and lost clients. The main lever here is not budget but the speed of decision making.