Another perspective would be to try to model the costs of the hiring process, and how the overall cost per hire might change if you could adjust the survival rates for each stage of the funnel (or other parameters, such as what the budget is for the role, or flexible working conditions, or how long you're willing to train people, or whatever)
e.g. i imagine the largest cost is going to be onboarding the people that you've decided to hire, not the stages in the preceeding application/scheduleinterview/interview/techinterview/offer steps, so however you fiddle with the funnel it's probably not going to make the process 2x as cost efficient, but there is some risk that the funnel is perhaps selecting for the wrong people .
Agree, the post-hire costs seem easier to quantify.
One of the things I struggle with is what you mentioned above -- what's the opportunity cost of losing people who have a higher ceiling / learning velocity but less immediately applicable experience.
I don't know how to measure that before hiring someone though. Is there a good way to assess that?
That's a different budget category though. I was only referring to the cost of the time used in the interview process. If you've budgeted a month to hire four people and only got two, then you're way behind. But I agree that this may be a small thing compared to the six months you might be expecting a new hire to take before they've become fully productive.
e.g. i imagine the largest cost is going to be onboarding the people that you've decided to hire, not the stages in the preceeding application/scheduleinterview/interview/techinterview/offer steps, so however you fiddle with the funnel it's probably not going to make the process 2x as cost efficient, but there is some risk that the funnel is perhaps selecting for the wrong people .