People and HR
Cost per hire
- People and HR
Definition
The average cost of filling one vacancy, including advertising, agency fees, recruiter time and assessment costs.
For your role
Choose your role to see what this term means in your work.
Why it matters
It helps set recruitment budgets and compare hiring channels, as long as quality of hire is weighed too.
Where it is used
Recruitment budgets and HR reports. Used by talent acquisition leads, HR business partners, finance business partners and recruiters.
How to calculate it
Cost per hire = (external recruitment costs + internal recruitment costs) ÷ number of hires
Worked example
ILLUSTRATION. Raket Parts B.V. made 22 hires from January to September 2025 (real count). Its ledger puts recruitment in one account with travel and training, so recruitment costs cannot be separated. If recruitment costs were €88,000, cost per hire would be €88,000 / 22 = €4,000.
Raket Parts B.V. is a fictional company created for Insyt.
Definitions vary. Some include internal recruiter salaries, referral bonuses and hiring manager time; others count only external spend. Check how your organisation calculates it.