Cost per hire calculator
What does one hire cost your team?
Enter a few numbers about your hiring. See how many candidates you screen and interview for each hire, the team hours that takes and the full cost per hire.
- Applications read
- 244
- Screening calls
- 15
- Interviewed candidates
- 5
- Offers made
- 1
- Team hours
- 30
- Team time
- $1,195
- Outside costs
- $1,500
Cost of 10 hires a year$26,948
Spent on a hire who leaves$32,695
Salary paid until they leave, plus the cost of hiring again. Lost output and the team's time come on top.
How to calculate cost per hire
The cost per hire formula
Cost per hire = (internal recruiting costs + external recruiting costs) ÷ number of hires, all for the same period. Internal costs are mostly your team's time. External costs are what you pay outside the team, such as job ads, agency fees and tools.
The funnel runs back from one hire
Offers are 1 divided by the share of offers accepted. Interviews are the offers divided by the interview-to-offer rate, and screening calls are the interviews divided by the screen pass rate.
Team hours
Every application is read, every screening call is held and every interviewed candidate takes the team hours you enter. The sum is the team's time for one hire. The calculator multiplies it by the hourly cost and adds the outside costs of that hire.
Where the starting numbers come from
The pass rates are from Ashby's 2026 benchmarks: about 35% pass the recruiter screen, and 24% pass the onsite and 95% the post-onsite stage, which gives 23%. 81% pass the offer stage. The 244 applications per job are Greenhouse's 2025 average. The $40 hourly cost is close to the US mean wage of HR specialists, $39.42 in May 2025 (BLS), without benefits. The other time and money values are examples, so replace them with yours.
Questions about cost per hire
How do you calculate cost per hire?
Add the internal cost of hiring, which is mostly the team's time, to the external costs such as job ads, agency fees and tools. Then divide by the number of hires in the same period. This calculator works it out for one hire from your funnel and your hourly cost.
How many candidates do you screen for one hire?
In Ashby's 2026 data, about 35% of candidates pass the recruiter screen and about 24% pass the onsite interviews, so a team screens about 15 candidates for every hire. Your own number depends on the role and on how well the job post matches the right applicants.
What does a bad hire cost?
At least the salary paid until the person leaves, plus the cost of hiring again. The calculator adds those two from your numbers. Lost output, the manager's time and the effect on the team come on top, and they are hard to measure.
How can I lower cost per hire?
Most of the internal cost sits in CV review and screening calls, because those stages see the most candidates. Screening every CV against the role's criteria and running first interviews as AI interviews takes most of that time off the team. People still decide who moves on.
Works with the rest of Firstview
Firstview handles CV screening and first interviews, the two stages that see the most candidates.
