Cost Per Hire Calculator
The ANSI/SHRM formula, every cost line most teams forget, and SHRM's 2025 benchmarks to compare against.
Last reviewed October 25, 2026Reviewed by the Skillora hiring teamNo signup
External costs
Money paid to outside vendors for the hires in this period.
Job board fees, sponsored posts, paid social, careers site ads
Third-party recruiter and executive search fees
Booths, campus recruiting, travel for your team
Background and drug screens, skills tests, vendor fees
Onsite interview travel and relocation packages
Internal costs
What your own team and tools cost for the same hires.
The share of in-house recruiter cost spent on these hires
Bonuses paid for referred hires
ATS, sourcing tools, interview platforms for the period
Every round, every interviewer, plus debriefs
Fully loaded cost of the people interviewing
Count only hires the costs above paid for
Compare with
Your cost per hire
$4,180
$209,000 across 50 hires
$1,320
External per hire
$2,860
Internal per hire
68%
Internal share
$30,000
Interviewer time
Against SHRM's 2025 nonexecutive benchmark
$1,200
SHRM median
$4,180
You
$5,475
SHRM average
Above the SHRM nonexecutive median of $1,200 but under the average of $5,475. Most of the gap usually sits in one or two lines.
SHRM's definition does not count interviewer time; set interviewer hours to 0 for a like-for-like comparison. Medians from SHRM's 2025 Recruiting Executives Benchmarking data brief; averages from SHRM's October 15, 2025 benchmarking release.
How the number works
- External = $66,000
- Internal = $113,000 + interviewer time $30,000 = $143,000
- Cost per hire = ($66,000 + $143,000) / 50 = $4,180
Interviewer time is often the biggest internal line. Skillora runs first-round interviews with follow-up questions, so your team only meets the candidates worth meeting.
Cut interview hours with AIMost of cost per hire is your own team's time.
Recruiter hours and interviewer hours are the internal lines that grow with every hire. Skillora runs first-round interviews with follow-up questions and scores every candidate on one rubric, so your team spends its hours on the finalists.
- Live AI interviews, 24/7
- Every candidate scored on one rubric
- Fewer interviewer hours per hire
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Cost per hire is what you spend to fill one role. This cost per hire calculator uses the ANSI/SHRM standard: add your external recruiting costs and your internal recruiting costs for a period, then divide by the hires you made in that period. Enter your own figures, or start from the example, and the result updates as you type.
Most teams undercount. They add up job boards and agency invoices and stop there. The bigger costs sit inside the company: recruiter pay, referral bonuses, recruiting software, and the hours hiring managers and panelists spend interviewing. In the example, a company making 50 hires a year spends $66,000 externally and $143,000 internally. Its true cost per hire is $4,180. Counting external costs alone would report $1,320.
The calculator then places your number against SHRM's 2025 benchmarks, for nonexecutive or executive roles. Those benchmarks hide a surprise: the average cost per hire is 4.6 times the median. The section on 2025 benchmarks explains why, and which of the two numbers you should compare yourself with.
The Cost Per Hire Formula
SHRM and ANSI published the cost-per-hire standard in 2012 so every organization measures the same thing. It is one line.
Costs and hires must cover the same period. SHRM reports the result separately for executive and nonexecutive roles.
External costs
Paid to outside vendors.
- Job boards and advertising: Job board fees, sponsored posts, paid social, careers site ads.
- Agency and search fees: Third-party recruiter and executive search fees.
- Career fairs and events: Booths, campus recruiting, travel for your team.
- Background checks and assessments: Background and drug screens, skills tests, vendor fees.
- Candidate travel and relocation: Onsite interview travel and relocation packages.
Internal costs
Your own people and tools, plus interviewer time.
- Recruiter pay and benefits: The share of in-house recruiter cost spent on these hires.
- Employee referral bonuses: Bonuses paid for referred hires.
- Recruiting software: ATS, sourcing tools, interview platforms for the period.
- Interviewer time: hours per hire across every round, times the interviewers' hourly cost.
What to leave out
The new hire's salary
Pay is the cost of the job, not the cost of filling it. Mixing the two makes every senior role look like a recruiting failure.
Onboarding and training
These start after the offer is accepted. Track them as onboarding cost so cost per hire stays comparable across teams.
Costs from another period
An agency invoice for a hire made last quarter belongs to last quarter. Match costs and hires to the same months, or the number swings for no reason.
Cost Per Hire Example
A company makes 50 nonexecutive hires in a year, with one in-house recruiter and two agency placements. These are the calculator's starting values.
| Cost line | Type | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Job boards and advertising | external | $15,000 |
| Agency and search fees | external | $40,000 |
| Career fairs and events | external | $3,000 |
| Background checks and assessments | external | $3,000 |
| Candidate travel and relocation | external | $5,000 |
| Recruiter pay and benefits | internal | $91,000 |
| Employee referral bonuses | internal | $10,000 |
| Recruiting software | internal | $12,000 |
| Interviewer time (8 hrs x $75 x 50 hires) | Internal | $30,000 |
| Total ($66,000 external + $143,000 internal) | $209,000 | |
| Cost per hire ($209,000 / 50) | $4,180 | |
Internal costs are 68% of the total. The two agency fees alone add $800 to every hire in the year.
How to calculate cost per hire in 4 steps
1. Pick the period
A quarter or a year. Pull hires and costs for exactly those months. A year smooths out one-off agency fees.
2. Total the external costs
Add every invoice paid to an outside vendor for recruiting: job boards, agencies, events, background checks, assessments, candidate travel, relocation.
3. Total the internal costs
Add recruiter pay and benefits for the time spent on these hires, referral bonuses, recruiting software, and interviewer hours times their hourly cost.
4. Divide by hires
Add the two totals and divide by the number of hires in the period. Do it once for executive roles and once for everyone else.
Average Cost Per Hire in 2025: $1,200 or $5,475?
Both numbers come from SHRM's 2025 benchmarking. They answer different questions.
| Role level | Median cost per hire | Average cost per hire |
|---|---|---|
| Nonexecutive | $1,200 | $5,475 |
| Executive | $10,625 | $35,879 |
The median is the middle organization: half spend less per hire, half spend more. The average adds every organization's figure and divides, so a minority with large agency or search bills pulls it up. That is why the nonexecutive average is 4.6 times the median. Compare a typical role with the median. Use the average only if your hiring looks like the expensive minority: heavy agency use, relocation, or hard-to-fill specialist roles.
The trend splits by level. SHRM's median nonexecutive cost per hire fell 27% from 2017 to 2025, while the executive median more than doubled. The executive to nonexecutive ratio went from 3.1 in 2017 to 7.0 in 2022 and 8.9 in 2025. In large and extra-large organizations it reached 17.7 and 18.3.
| Year | Nonexecutive | Executive |
|---|---|---|
| 2017 | $1,633 | $5,000 |
| 2022 | $1,244 | $8,750 |
| 2025 | $1,200 | $10,625 |
Sources: medians and trend from SHRM, 2025 Recruiting Executives Benchmarking: Insights to Maximize Recruitment (data brief); averages from SHRM press release, "SHRM Releases 2025 Benchmarking Reports", October 15, 2025. Survey of 2,371 SHRM members, January 9 to March 3, 2025.
Average cost per hire by industry
SHRM's 2025 recruiting brief reports cost per hire by role level, not by industry. Most industry tables online are vendor estimates without a stated method, so treat them as rough guides at best.
Industry moves cost per hire through a few predictable lines. Healthcare and regulated finance pay for licensing checks and longer background screens. Tech and specialist roles lean on agencies and search firms, the single largest external line. High-volume retail and hospitality spread fixed recruiter and software costs across many hires, which pulls cost per hire down. The most useful benchmark is your own number, by role level, tracked every quarter.
How to Lower Cost Per Hire
Five levers, in the order they usually pay off.
Move volume from agencies to referrals
One agency fee on a six-figure role can equal a year of job board spend. A referral bonus is usually a fraction of it. If agency fees are your biggest line, start here.
Cut interviewer hours per hire
Every hour a senior engineer or director spends interviewing is internal cost. A structured first round that filters out poor fits before the panel removes the most expensive hours from the process.
Drop the job boards that send no hires
Track hires by source, not applicants by source. A board that sends 500 applicants and no hires costs more per hire than one that sends 20 and a hire.
Shorten time to fill
SHRM's 2025 median time to fill is 44 days for nonexecutive roles and 45 days for executive roles. Each extra week means reposted ads, more screens, and more recruiter hours on the same requisition.
Balance recruiter load
SHRM finds requisitions per recruiter rise with company size. An overloaded recruiter falls back on agencies; an underloaded one makes recruiter pay a bigger share of every hire.
| Organization size | Employees | Requisitions |
|---|---|---|
| Small | 2 to 99 | 6 |
| Medium | 100 to 499 | 22 |
| Large | 500 to 4,999 | 50 |
| Extra-large | 5,000+ | 60 |
Want the time side of the same problem? The time to hire calculator prices the days a seat stays empty, and the recruiting ROI calculator shows the recruiter hours AI first-round interviews give back.
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Cost per hire FAQ
- What is the formula for cost per hire?
- Cost per hire = (total external recruiting costs + total internal recruiting costs) / total hires, with every number covering the same period. This is the ANSI/SHRM cost-per-hire standard. External costs are paid to vendors, such as job boards and agencies. Internal costs are your own team and tools, such as recruiter pay and referral bonuses.
- What is the average cost per hire in 2025?
- SHRM's 2025 benchmarking puts the average at $5,475 for nonexecutive hires and $35,879 for executive hires. The medians are much lower: $1,200 and $10,625. A few expensive searches pull the average up, so the median is the better yardstick for a typical role.
- What should be included in cost per hire?
- External: job board and advertising fees, agency and search fees, career fairs, background checks and assessments, and candidate travel and relocation. Internal: recruiter pay and benefits, referral bonuses, recruiting software, and the time your interviewers spend. Leave out the new hire's salary, onboarding, and training.
- Should interviewer time count in cost per hire?
- Yes, if you want the true cost. Hiring managers and panelists spend hours on every hire, and their time is an internal recruiting cost. Many teams skip it, which makes their number look lower than it is. Count hours per hire across every round and multiply by a fully loaded hourly rate. SHRM's definition does not list interviewer time, so set it to zero when you compare your number with SHRM's benchmarks.
- Is cost per hire different for executives?
- Yes, by a wide margin. SHRM's 2025 median is $10,625 for executive roles against $1,200 for nonexecutive roles, a ratio of 8.9 to 1. In 2017 the ratio was 3.1 to 1. Calculate the two separately; one blended number hides both.
- How can I lower cost per hire?
- Shift volume from agencies to referrals and direct sourcing, cut interviewer hours with a structured first round, drop job boards that send no hires, and shorten time to fill so roles stop needing reposts. Track the number by role level and by source, so you can see which lever moved it.