Journal of College & University Student Housing Vol. 47 No. 3 - 87

The Price of Hiring Resident Assistants

$859 in wages. On the other hand, replacing
the entry-level staff member with a second
RA in the structured interview team yielded
no change in allocated time, but the overall
cost of wages decreased $223.

Structured Interviews
We next explored the benefit of only conducting structured interviews, which yields a substantial change in required time and human
capital. With 125 candidates, the total cost
was $1,940 with 62.5 hours for one FTEL
and one RA. Thus, this saved 126.5 hours
and $2,560. Perhaps a department felt they
gained more information about candidates
during the structured interview component
and decided to eliminate everything else
while increasing the number of structured
interviews to two, each with an entry-level
staff and RA. The result would still yield a
savings of 49 total hours and $620 in wages.

Candidate Pool Size Reductions
Although our initial parameters assumed
any reductions in candidate pool size occurred prior to facilitating any interview
components, we explored the effect of cutting the candidate pool further while leaving
all other baseline variables consistent. By
reducing the candidate pool by 20% (from
125 to 100), the necessary time required for
entry-level and RA staff decreased by 18.5
($320) and 30.5 hours ($419), respectively.

LIMITATIONS
The analysis is presented with recognition
of certain limitations. Due to the lack of existing scholarship studying college housing

time-markets, this study was exploratory in
nature. The stated parameters and assumptions under which the baseline process was
developed and altered limits the ability for
direct application of the findings to a localized departmental setting (i.e., campuses
interviewing substantially more or fewer
candidates than the baseline 125). The same
is true of specific staffing structures (e.g.,
involvement of graduate-level staff) and variation in the value of staff benefit packages.
However, the stated parameters were established to produce conservative estimates so
any effects on time and wages would likewise
be conservative. We also did not include the
time involved in participating in other recruitment practices such as the planning and
application review process prior to the interviewing period, which necessarily consumes
additional personnel time.

This analysis did not consider variation
in time quality so practitioners should be
cautioned about assuming the quality of every hour is equal. For instance, at least anecdotally, it is a fallacy to assume an interviewer provides an equal level of attention,
focus, and care to the first and last candidate
of an eight-hour interview day. Therefore, adjusting resources involved in hiring RAs may
also alter the candidate experience.

DISCUSSION
Instead of producing physical " widgets, "
multi-faceted RA recruitment processes generate candidate assessment profiles which
serve as artifacts for advancing departmental
staffing structures. Thus, housing recruit-

The highest proportion of monetized human capital in the baseline process
is invested in structured interviews (43.12%, or $1,940); closely followed by group
process (40.96%, or $1,843); and finally, interest sessions (15.92%, or $717).

The Journal of College and University Student Housing

Journal of College & University Student Housing Vol. 47 No. 3

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