0 to 100 in 2 months

Obviously, I'm not talking about motorcycles or cars :-)

I was having a chat last week about setting up a new office, and I was asked if a software services firm could go from 0 to 100 in 2 months in Chandigarh. I said no, and that 4 months was possible, adding that it might be possible in Delhi.

This was all on a hunch. Later, I started thinking about what would it take. Let's see. First, let's start on the less ambitious goal of making 100 offers in 2 months. I'll make the following assumptions:

• We pay at the 60th percentile
  
• We do at most 2 rounds of tech interviews, and most people who get to the 2nd round are selected.
• We work only weekdays.
• 1 in 5 candidates who get to round 1 get selected.
• 1 in 5 candidates the recruiters talk to get to round 1.
• 1 in 5 resumes recruiters look at are called up.
  

Here are some numbers:

• 100 offers in 2 months mean 2.5 offers a day.
• 2.5 offers a day = 3+ 2.5*5 = 16 interviews a day = 80 screenings a day
• 16 interviews daily mean at least 7 interviewers
• 80 screenings mean at least 7 recruiters
• In all, over 2 months, talking to 3200 candidates, and sourcing 16000 resumes!
  

If the recruiters can generate this sort of number, it doesn't look so bad.

Now let's see how this converts to offers accepted and joinings.

• Not more than two thirds of the people you make an offer to will join. This includes people who reject the offer and people who accept but do not turn up.
• To end up with a pipeline of 100 joinings, you need to therefore do about half as many interviews more than you needed to for 100 offers.
• That takes the total interviewers to 11, and recruiters to 11 as well.

If you're starting from zero, it gets worse, because it takes a while to recruit your interviewers! But let's say you already have 100 employees. It would be a scramble, but you just might be able to make 11 interviewers out of them.

Take the target to 4 months, and things start to look a little easier: you need only 6 interviewers and recruiters, with the time lag also providing bandwidth to do other stuff, like running the business, training people, building the brand, etc.

Do the numbers sound feasible ?