Hiring Cost Calculator

Interview cost is interview hours multiplied by the interviewer's hourly cost, and it's grouped with onboarding cost as an internal cost — staff time your organization already pays for, as opposed to external cash outlays like job ads or recruiter fees. Adding more interview hours grows that internal bucket relative to the total, which pulls the internal percentage up and the external percentage down correspondingly.

It depends heavily on which inputs you use — industry surveys commonly cite a few thousand dollars for average roles, but that figure typically omits harder-to-price costs like management time, lost productivity from an open seat, or a new hire's own ramp-up period. This calculator only totals the direct line items you enter, so your result is a useful floor for planning but likely understates the fully-loaded true cost.

Multiply your per-hire cost by planned annual hires to see the total recruiting and onboarding spend you should budget for the year, which is useful for building an HR department budget request or comparing the cost of scaling headcount against alternatives like contractors or automation.

External costs are cash you pay to outside parties — job boards, recruiting agencies, background check vendors — while internal costs are the value of your own staff's time spent interviewing and onboarding. A high external percentage suggests you're paying a premium to outsource sourcing, while a high internal percentage suggests hiring is quietly consuming significant staff hours that could otherwise go to other work.