This post is about a specific claim we make on the Proofglint homepage: that you can replace 60% of your phone screens with a 15-minute async verification flow and save meaningful recruiter time per hire. I want to show the math, acknowledge where the assumptions are and what happens when they do not hold, and give you a realistic sense of what the ceiling looks like for teams hiring at different volumes.
The short version: we ran this calculation with four design-partner companies over their first three months on Proofglint. The median time saving was 7.2 hours of recruiter time per filled role. The range was 4.1 hours at the low end (a team with a relatively short existing phone screen) to 11.3 hours at the high end (a team running 60-minute screens with a large funnel). The methodology is straightforward and you can apply it to your own numbers.
How the Baseline Gets Established
The most important number in this calculation is the one that is hardest to track: how many hours a recruiter actually spends on phone screens per open role. Not how long each screen is scheduled for, but total time — scheduling, the screen itself, notes, and the debrief with the hiring manager.
In our experience, teams consistently underestimate this number when asked directly. Ask a recruiter how long their phone screens take and they say "30 minutes." Track their calendar and notes activity for a full recruiting cycle and the true number is closer to 45 to 55 minutes per candidate screened, including prep and post-call documentation. For a role that runs 12 phone screens before an advance decision, that is 9 to 11 hours of recruiter time — before any live interview is scheduled.
The four design-partner companies we tracked had the following baselines:
| Company profile | Phone screens per role | Avg. time per screen (incl. admin) | Total screen hours per role |
|---|---|---|---|
| Series A, 80 employees, 6 open roles | 10 | 41 min | 6.8 hrs |
| Series B, 200 employees, 14 open roles | 14 | 52 min | 12.1 hrs |
| Bootstrapped, 55 employees, 3 open roles | 9 | 37 min | 5.6 hrs |
| Series B, 300 employees, 20 open roles | 15 | 58 min | 14.5 hrs |
What 60% Replacement Actually Means
Not every phone screen is a candidate for async replacement. Some phone screens are substantive conversations — a senior engineering manager screen for a technical lead role, a preliminary conversation with a candidate who comes with a referral and genuinely needs a two-way dialogue. Those are not the screens we are talking about replacing.
The screens that async replaces are the qualifying screens: the conversations whose purpose is to answer three to five predictable questions. Does this person have the baseline skills listed in the JD? Is their availability compatible with the role? Can they communicate clearly enough to be in the interview loop? Does their seniority match what the JD describes?
In a well-managed funnel, roughly 60% of phone screens are qualifying screens of this type. In a less structured funnel, the number is higher because more screens happen before meaningful filtering has occurred. In a very selective sourcing process, the number is lower because candidates arrive pre-qualified from the sourcing channel.
For the four companies we tracked, the proportion of screens that converted to async ranged from 52% to 71%. The median was 61% — close to the 60% claim. The variation was mostly explained by how structured their existing sourcing was, not by role type or company size.
The Time Savings Calculation
The calculation itself is simple:
- Take your total recruiter time per role on phone screens (from the baseline table above or your own tracking).
- Multiply by the replacement rate (60% is a reasonable default for most teams; adjust based on your sourcing structure).
- Subtract the time for async review — reviewing a completed Proofglint flow takes roughly 8 to 12 minutes per candidate versus 41 to 58 minutes for a full phone screen cycle.
For the Series B team with 14 screens per role at 52 minutes each:
- Baseline: 12.1 hours per role
- Screens converted to async: 14 × 0.60 = 8.4 screens
- Time saved on those screens: 8.4 × 52 min = 436 minutes = 7.3 hours
- Time added for async review: 8.4 × 10 min = 84 minutes = 1.4 hours
- Net saving per role: 7.3 − 1.4 = 5.9 hours
Across 14 open roles simultaneously, that is 82.6 hours of recruiter time per recruiting cycle. That is roughly two full weeks of a recruiter's time freed up, per quarter, without a headcount change.
What the Numbers Do Not Capture
The time saving is real, but it understates the full impact of the process change in two directions — one positive, one that you need to account for.
On the positive side: async verification also surfaces information that phone screens routinely miss. Consistency flags on resume claims, structured scoring across candidates in a comparable format, and a documented rationale for advance/hold decisions. When you replace a phone screen with an async flow, you do not just save time — you get more comparable data. Teams that previously advanced candidates based on a phone screen impression had no way to compare the candidate who interviewed on a Tuesday to the one who interviewed two weeks later. Structured async scoring makes those comparisons possible.
The candidate who does poorly in live phone conversations but would genuinely thrive in the role tends to surface through async. The candidate who is charming on the phone but lacks the specific skills listed now gets flagged rather than advanced. Both adjustments improve hire quality over time.
On the accounting side: async screening adds a step to the candidate's funnel. For candidates who have never completed an async screen before, there is some dropout — typically between 20% and 30% of candidates who receive an async link do not complete it. Some of that dropout is candidates who were never seriously interested. Some of it is candidates who would have advanced to a phone screen but found the async format unfamiliar or off-putting.
This matters for roles where qualified candidates are scarce. If you are hiring for a niche technical skill with a small candidate pool, losing even one qualified candidate to async dropout is a meaningful cost. For those roles, we recommend keeping the phone screen and using async as a supplementary tool rather than a replacement.
The Ceiling at Scale
For a 200-person company hiring 50 roles per year, the upper bound on time savings from a 60% async replacement rate is substantial. At the median values from our design-partner data:
- 50 roles × 12 screens per role = 600 screens per year
- 360 screens converted to async (60%)
- 360 × 38 minutes saved per screen (net of review time) = 13,680 minutes = 228 hours
That is 228 hours of recruiter time redirected from scheduling and conducting qualifying screens to deeper interview involvement, candidate experience work, or additional sourcing. At a fully-loaded recruiter cost of $90 per hour, that is roughly $20,500 in labor cost per year at that hiring volume.
Those numbers will not be the same for every team. But the direction is consistent: replacing qualifying screens with structured async verification reduces recruiter time per hire, and the savings compound as hiring volume increases. The ceiling depends on your funnel structure, your candidate pool characteristics, and how structured your existing sourcing is. The floor is meaningful for any team running more than 10 open roles per quarter.
