Cost per hire calculator
Add what you spend on job boards, agencies, and software, plus the hours your team puts in, and divide by hires. Your real cost per hire, from your numbers. Free, no sign-up.
What does one hire cost you?
Add what you spend and the hours your team puts in. The formula updates with your numbers as you type.
Your cost per hire
$2,000
($6,000 external + $6,000 internal) ÷ 6 hires = $2,000
External $6,000 (50%) Internal $6,000 (50%)
- Job boards and ads $3,600
- Agency fees $0
- Software and assessments $1,800
- Other external $600
- External subtotal $6,000
- Recruiter time (12h × $50 × 6 hires) $3,600
- Manager and team time (8h × $50 × 6 hires) $2,400
- Other internal $0
- Internal subtotal $6,000
Internal time is the cost per hire line nobody invoices you for. Truffle combines resume screening, one-way interviews, and talent assessments in one workflow, so you review candidates in minutes instead of hours. AI surfaces the evidence. You decide.
How to calculate cost per hire
The formula is the one SHRM standardized: add your internal and external recruiting costs for a period, then divide by the hires you made in that same period.
Cost per hire = (external costs + internal costs) ÷ total hires
Here's the default example in the calculator. You made 6 hires last quarter. You spent $3,600 on job boards and ads, $1,800 on software and assessments, and $600 on background checks. That's $6,000 external. Your recruiters put about 12 hours into each hire and hiring managers another 8. At a $50 blended rate, that's $1,000 of time per hire, or $6,000 across the quarter. Total: $12,000 for 6 hires, which is $2,000 per hire.
Match your periods. Quarterly costs divided by quarterly hires. Mixing an annual software bill with one month of hires will wreck the number. For benchmarks, statistics, and ways to bring your number down, read the full cost per hire guide.
What to include, and what people forget
External costs are the easy half because they come with invoices: job board fees, ads, agency fees, recruiting software, assessments, background checks, recruiting events, and candidate travel.
Internal costs are where most calculations fall apart. Recruiter time, hiring manager time, and interview panels rarely show up as line items, so they get skipped. They shouldn't be. Twenty hours of screening and interviews per hire is real money at any blended rate. In the calculator's default example, it's half the total.
Leave out the new hire's salary and benefits. Cost per hire measures the cost of filling the position, not the cost of employing the person.
Why cost per hire is misleading on its own
A falling cost per hire looks like progress. It isn't always. You can cut the number by skipping screening steps, and the damage shows up two quarters later as a mis-hire you have to replace.
Track cost per hire by role rather than as one blended average, and read it next to your turnover rate. If cost per hire falls while turnover rises, you didn't get more efficient. You got less careful.
Check the other side of the equation with the employee turnover calculator.
Cost per hire questions, answered
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How is cost per hire calculated?
Add your external recruiting costs and your internal recruiting costs for a period, then divide by the number of hires you made in that same period. That's the SHRM standard formula. The key is consistency: quarterly costs against quarterly hires, never annual costs against a single month of hires.
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What is included in cost per hire?
External costs are payments to outside vendors: job boards, ads, agency fees, recruiting software, assessments, background checks, recruiting events, and candidate travel. Internal costs are your own team's effort: recruiter time, hiring manager and interviewer time, referral bonuses, and interview training.
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Does cost per hire include the new hire's salary?
No. Cost per hire measures what you spend to fill the position, not what you pay the person once they start. Salary, benefits, and ongoing compensation sit outside the metric. Post-start onboarding is usually excluded too. Pick a rule for edge cases and apply it every period.
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Why is cost per hire misleading on its own?
Because the cheapest hire isn't automatically the right hire. You can cut cost per hire by skipping screening steps, and the damage shows up later as a mis-hire or turnover. One blended average across all roles also hides the variance that matters. Pair it with quality and speed measures, segmented by role.
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What is a good average cost per hire?
Published averages exist, but they blend industries, role levels, and company sizes, so they rarely match your situation. A senior engineering hire and a seasonal warehouse hire shouldn't be held to the same number. Track your own cost per hire by role and watch the trend instead.
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How often should you calculate cost per hire?
Quarterly works for most teams. It's frequent enough to catch a trend before it becomes the new normal, and long enough that one expensive hire doesn't distort the picture. Recalculate with the same cost buckets each time so the comparison holds.
See other free recruiting tools
- Metrics Employee turnover calculator Your real turnover rate, plus what each departure costs you. Built from your numbers, not industry averages.
- Sourcing Boolean search builder Turn a role and a skills list into a clean boolean string for LinkedIn, Indeed, or Google. Copy it and go source.
- Interviewing Interview question generator Pick a role family, seniority, and the competencies you care about. Get a structured question set with a scorecard.
Cut the screening hours behind your cost per hire
High cost per hire and high turnover usually start in the same place: who you let into the funnel. Truffle is a candidate screening platform that combines resume screening, one-way video interviews, and talent assessments, so you shortlist with evidence and review candidates in minutes instead of hours. AI surfaces the evidence. You decide.
7-day free trial. No credit card required.