Journal of College & University Student Housing Vol. 47 No. 3 - 88

ment process production queues and human
capital efficiencies deserve consideration as
if they were manufacturing physical goods.
This study aimed to begin the conversation
about the various human capital investments, opportunity costs, and personnel
wages associated with hiring RAs.

Anecdotally, full-time entry-level professionals have more responsibilities and thus
less flexibility surrounding their involvement
in hiring compared to paraprofessionals RAs,
usually participating for multiple days. RAs,
who represent a substantially higher proportion of overall staff by headcount, have
more collective time resulting in limited individual involvement (i.e., rotating through
shifts). Therefore, while the analysis explored
the various time and wage costs associated
with RA involvement in hiring processes, we
primarily discuss the results specific to fulltime, entry-level employee involvement.

Direct time exchanges and their associated monetary wages present the exchange
of time as equal (i.e., 30-minutes for 30-minutes), which fails to fully capture the economic impact. The critical follow-up is how regular job duties cannot be exchanged without
consequence. Unfortunately, when the narrative is " work until the job is done, " most entry-level staff return to their long to-do lists after a full day of interviews. While conducting
RA interviews, entry-level staff still have conduct cases to process, students with whom to
meet, and programs to approve, among many
other responsibilities. If RA recruitment requires days of additional work, the necessary
time required to complete those routine responsibilities typically occurs outside of regularly dedicated office hours.

For non-exempt, entry-level staff who
qualify for overtime pay, the actual cost of
completing those same regular duties increases due to the elevated overtime wage

rate. For exempt employees who do not qualify for overtime, the cost instead may be more
difficult to quantify but no less important,
manifesting in ways such as elevated personal exhaustion (Golden & Wiens-Tuers, 2008),
increased anxiety (Kleppa et al., 2008), lost
leisure time (Posnett & Jan, 1996), lower
quality of work (Luther et al., 2017), and
decreased morale (Hanna et al., 2005). Designing recruitment processes purposeful of
employee time may therefore yield benefits
extending beyond budgetary savings.

Quantifying the personnel time invested in an existing hiring process provides
interesting and alternative ways to discuss
staff involvement. For instance, altering the
presented baseline process by reducing the
candidate pool by five candidates (or 4% of
the existing pool) yields an approximate total
time savings of four entry-level hours. Put
another way, cutting five additional candidates prior to the interview process allows
time for eight 30-minute conduct cases to be
held during standard business hours.

Similarly, using opportunity costs and
studying wages also allows for alternative
ways to consider staffing patterns and infrastructure configurations in RA hiring
process components. The existing wage gap
between entry-level and RA staff allows for
increased numbers of participating staff
while still reducing the associated wages
given certain circumstances. For example,
as demonstrated when altering the size
of group process groups, we were able to
increase the number of total personnel involved by adding an additional RA while still
reducing the total time necessary based on
the number of required groups because of
less entry-level involvement.

The duration of time spent in different
components of multi-faceted hiring processes should not be considered equal. Some
Volume 47, No. 3 * 2021

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

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Journal of College & University Student Housing Vol. 47 No. 3