An open requisition is not a line on a tracker. It is lost shifts, overtime on the people who stayed, delayed projects, and — for sales and warehouse seats — revenue that does not get made.
The numbers employers already know
- SHRM 2025: average cost-per-hire $5,475 for non-executive roles; $35,879 for executive roles.
- Median time-to-fill sits near six weeks (about 39–44 days depending on the year’s cut).
- A 30-day vacancy on an $80,000 role is commonly estimated at $9,000–$15,000 in direct drag, before recruiting fees.
- U.S. Department of Labor: a bad hire can cost about 30% of first-year earnings. Filling fast with the wrong person is not cheaper.
Those figures are U.S. benchmarks. Gulf hospitals, German logistics firms and Indian retailers see the same shape: empty seat, expensive seat, then a mis-hire that has to be reversed. The remedy is not a cheaper CV dump. It is a screened shortlist from a market that actually has the people.
Where India changes the math
Kerala and the wider South Indian labour market still produce nurses, HGV drivers, technicians, hospitality crew, field sales and junior-to-senior IT at volumes most destination countries cannot match locally. A licensed agent in Kochi is useful when your destination HR team cannot recruit those volumes on a six-week clock.
J&A’s domestic desk also runs high-volume FSE and warehouse mandates inside India — 500 field-sales seats is a different problem from six senior engineers, and it should be briefed as such.
What to do this week
If a role has been open more than a month, treat it as a finance issue. Send J&A the job, the location and the number of seats. Screening before joining is how you avoid paying the 30% mis-hire twice.
Brief the desk
Role, seats, location, joining window. J&A will tell you if the corridor is live.