Cost per hire calculator
Cost per hire is external plus internal recruiting costs divided by the number of hires in the same period, as the ANSI/SHRM standard defines it; SHRM's 2025 benchmark puts the nonexecutive average at $5,475. Enter your costs for one period and get the breakdown.
$6,870
Internal External
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What your cost per hire means
The number is the average money and team time it took to fill one position in the period. The ANSI/SHRM standard writes it as CPH = (Σ external costs + Σ internal costs) / total number of hires in a time period. It stops at the start date: the new hire's salary, training after hire and losses from turnover are outside it.
Compare like with like
Agency fees and executive searches move the average more than anything else; SHRM's 2025 data puts executive hires at $35,879 against $5,475 for nonexecutive ones. Work out the number per role family or per source, and compare your own periods with each other before you compare with a national average.
Cheap is not the goal
The standard itself warns that driving the metric down without regard to the organisation's ability to attract talent has generally proven harmful, and that it says nothing about time to fill or quality of hire. A few hours spent on a work sample test or on structured scoring with the interview scorecard template raise the cost a little and lower the odds of a wrong hire. Our piece on hiring bias shows where an unstructured process costs you good candidates.
Questions
What is the cost per hire formula
The ANSI/SHRM Cost-per-Hire Standard (06001.2012, approved on 8 February 2012) defines cost per hire as the sum of external costs plus the sum of internal costs, divided by the total number of hires in the same time period. Count the hires from one system of record, and use the same period for costs and hires.
What counts as internal and external costs
External costs are money paid outside the organisation during recruiting: agency and RPO fees, job boards and advertising, background and drug checks, pre-screening assessments, referral awards, candidate and recruiter travel, relocation, sign-on bonuses, events and recruiting software. Internal costs are the organisation's own resources: the fully loaded pay of recruiters and sourcers, hiring manager time spent on interviews, a share of office costs, recruiter training and compliance work. The new hire's salary, training after hire and turnover losses are out of scope.
What is an average cost per hire
SHRM's 2025 benchmarking reports put the average at $5,475 for nonexecutive hires and $35,879 for executive hires. Its 2022 data gave nearly $4,700. Averages vary widely by role, industry and company size, so your own trend over time tells you more than a national number.
Are referral bonuses internal or external costs
External. The standard lists employee referral awards among the external cost factors. If you pay the award only after the new hire stays a set time, you may count it in the period of the hire as an accrual, as long as you note that you did.