Glossary
What is cost per hire?
Cost per hire is the total cost of recruiting over a period divided by the number of hires it produced, adding up both external spend, such as job ads and agency fees, and internal costs, such as recruiter time, to show what a hire really costs to make.
The figure is only as honest as the costs you count. External spend is easy to see; internal costs such as the hours hiring managers and recruiters put in are easy to leave out, and leaving them out flatters the number.
Cost per hire is best read alongside time to hire and funnel yield, because cutting one often moves the others. A calculator totals the costs you enter and divides by the hires; it holds no benchmark, because the right figure depends on the roles.
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