Demo contentIllustrative record — no real organizations, statistics or outcomes.
Metric
Cost Per Hire
What does each hire cost us?
RecruitingDescriptiveDiagnostic
Definition
Total recruiting spend divided by the number of hires in the same period.
How to calculate it
Total recruiting costs / Number of hires
Business question
What does each hire cost us?
How to read it
Use alongside quality-of-hire; low cost per hire with poor outcomes is a false economy.
Recommended segments
- Business unit
- Geography
- Function
- Grade or level
How to visualize it
- Trend over time
- Segment comparison
- Distribution
Decisions it supports
Vendor negotiations, internal recruiting headcount, and technology investment.
What can make it misleading
Omitting agency fees or internal labor; allocating fixed costs inconsistently.
Updated 2026-08-09