Hiring diagnostics for executive teams
25 years Practitioner-led
You know what hiring costs.
We show you what it returns.
Every hire is an investment, from the headcount request to first-year performance. Yet most companies cannot see what it returns.
Vantage shows you in dollars where your hiring system creates value, where it falls short, and what to fix first. The result is better hires, faster, at lower cost.
No preparation. No obligation. Peer benchmark included.
Hiring is a disconnected system. That is why the full return is hard to see.
Hiring happens in stages across the business. Since no one owns it in full, the stages are rarely measured together.
Finance
Sets the headcount budget.
Rarely sees what
an empty seat costs.HR
Builds the workforce plan.
Rarely sees whether
hiring can deliver it.Recruiting
Fills the roles.
Rarely sees if
the hires stay.Hiring managers
Onboard and lead new hires.
Rarely see the full
cost of a slow start.
Hiring problems do not stay in hiring. They grow into business problems.
Small hiring issues can feed business problems like these. Since no single team owns hiring in full, the cause is rarely traced back to hiring.
Stretched teams.
Roles stay open too long and everyone else picks up the slack.
Rising costs.
Overtime, temp, and contractors cover roles the plan did not see coming.
Repeat hires.
New hires leave in the first year and the roles reopen.
Missed targets.
Key seats sit empty when the plan needs them.
Seeing any of these? That is what the briefing is for.
One diagnostic. Every hiring stage, measured together.
The Hiring Economics Diagnostic reviews every stage of your hiring process, from the headcount request to first-year performance, through five lenses. It reveals where in the process you lose money and what to change to bring in better hires, faster, at lower cost.
The hiring stages
- 01Plan
- 02Attract
- 03Select
- 04Hire
- 05Train
- 06Perform
The five lenses
The Executive Decision Report.
Your diagnostic results are delivered in one report with three sections. You will know what your hiring returns, where to invest, and how to act in the next 90 days.
Return assessment
- What each source, agency, and tool returns
- What open roles, repeat hires, and temp and contractor labor cost
- Where in the process each cost starts
Investment case
- Where to build, change, or shift spend
- Estimated costs and benefits for each
- What the evidence does and does not support
90-day roadmap
- Actions ranked by impact
- An owner and a measure for each
- Milestones to track progress
We review your Decision Report first with your executive sponsor, then walk your leadership team through it. Your team runs the roadmap, or we stay on to support it.
Fixed scope. Fixed fee. No hourly billing. Each diagnostic is priced to the sites and roles in scope. Most run three to six weeks once your records arrive. Scope can be one company, or a single site, division, or business unit.
Start with a free 30-minute briefing. If a diagnostic makes sense, we agree on terms before you commit.
One practitioner. Start to finish.
Jen Smith
Founder, Vantage Workforce Strategies
DHL Supply Chain
Raytheon Technologies
Lockheed Martin
Newmont Mining
Realtor.com
Google
For 25 years I led workforce planning and hiring inside global companies, from frontline roles to the executive suite. Every team did its part of hiring well and knew its own numbers, yet no one could see what hiring returned as a whole. I founded Vantage to close that gap.
You work with me directly, from the briefing to the final report. I connect the evidence across finance, HR, recruiting, and your managers, so leadership sees where hiring works, where value is lost, and what to fix first.
Career results
$2.5M
Workforce Spend Saved
Hiring, agency, and search-firm spend cut through workforce planning.
High-growth technology company
$120K/mo
Vacancy Cost Eliminated
Within five weeks.
16-location logistics operator
48%
Recruitment Ad Spend Reduced
While the candidate pipeline doubled.
Fortune Global 500 3PL
Before you invest the next hiring dollar.
Some moments make the next hiring decision too expensive to get wrong. Here is when a diagnostic is worth the most.
- New ownership or funding has raised the hiring stakes.
- Leadership is deciding which roles AI will change.
- A sale or exit is on the horizon.
- A merger is combining two hiring operations.
- A bid, new site, or expansion depends on a staffing plan.
- A new HR or finance leader needs a fast read on hiring.
- Leadership needs to take cost out, and hiring is in scope.
- Budget season is here, and next year’s hiring plan has to be right.
Facing something else? Bring it to the briefing.
The questions that come up.
Does the briefing commit us to anything?
No. It is a free 30-minute conversation for us to learn about your business and your hiring. We tell you plainly whether a diagnostic would help and how. There is no obligation, and you leave with a one-page peer benchmark of your hiring.
What do you mean by hiring return?
What the business gets back for what it spends to hire, measured in speed, quality, retention, and first-year performance.
Why not have our HR team do this?
HR, finance, recruiting, and hiring managers each see one piece of hiring. No one sees the whole. The diagnostic puts all four into one set of numbers, built by an outsider with nothing to defend. We work alongside every team that touches hiring from day one, and the findings are about the process, not the people in it.
Can AI do this for us?
Not the part that matters. The numbers do not live in one place. They sit across HR, finance, recruiting, and hiring managers in different formats, and someone has to pull them together, decide what each one means for your business, and get leadership to act. We use AI to speed the analysis. The interviews, the judgment, and the accountability for the findings stay human.
How are you different from agencies or outsourced recruiting?
Agencies and outsourced recruiters fill roles and are paid for placements. The diagnostic fills no roles and earns no vendor commissions. It measures what your hiring returns, including what you spend with firms like them.
How long does the diagnostic take?
Three to six weeks from the day we receive your records, depending on how complex your hiring is. From your side, it takes an executive sponsor, standard data exports, and short interviews with recruiting, finance, HR, and a few hiring managers, plus a short survey of recent hires.
What data do you need, and who sees it?
Standard exports, not system access, and just the fields the analysis needs. An NDA and a data processing agreement are signed before any data moves. One person handles your data, and individual records are deleted within 30 days of close. Full commitments are on the data handling page.
What if our data is incomplete?
No problem. Most companies’ data is. The report separates what is measured, what is estimated, and what cannot yet be established, so you can see how solid each finding is.
What if you find nothing material?
Then the report says so and shows the evidence. You receive a measured baseline to track against in future years, evidence of where your hiring investment is working, and the confidence to direct attention elsewhere. We do not invent problems to fill a roadmap.
Do you review our recruiting technology and AI tools?
Yes. Each tool is assessed on what it costs and what it returns. The diagnostic does not audit tools for bias or legal compliance.
Find out what your hiring returns.
Thirty minutes, no obligation. You tell us what you are seeing, and we tell you plainly whether a diagnostic would help. Either way, you leave with a one-page peer benchmark of your hiring.
Book a 30-minute briefingOr email Jen directly at [email protected], or find her on LinkedIn.