About InterviewCost.com.
An independent, vendor-neutral cost reference for the full interview and hiring loop. Built by Digital Signet for hiring managers, talent leaders, and finance partners who need a defensible budget number that does not come from a recruiting-tech sales pitch.
Why this site exists.
Almost every interview-cost or cost-per-hire article on the open web is published by a company that sells recruiting software, ATS platforms, RPO services, video interview tools, or skills assessments. Each piece anchors its headline figure to whatever serves the sponsor: the ATS vendor anchors on tooling cost so a $20K ATS contract looks reasonable, the RPO provider anchors on agency-fee replacement so per-hire pricing looks cheap, the video platform anchors on travel savings to justify itself, and the headhunter anchors on bad-hire cost to justify retained fees.
None of them are wrong in isolation, but none of them are complete. A hiring manager who reads five vendor pages walks away with five confidently-stated headline figures that differ by 3x to 5x, because each vendor is measuring the slice of the elephant their product touches.
This site exists to write the interview cost guide no recruiting-tech vendor can write. Independent ranges for recruiter time, interviewer time, tooling, candidate logistics, and vacancy cost. Five components, sourced ranges, the math you can audit. The bands are wide enough to cover the realistic startup hiring its first ten engineers and the realistic enterprise hiring 500 retail associates.
Who builds this.
InterviewCost.com is built and maintained by Oliver Wakefield-Smith at Digital Signet, a UK-based independent consultancy that publishes cost-reference sites across hiring, security, compliance, and developer-tooling categories.
Digital Signet does not sell ATS subscriptions, RPO contracts, executive search retainers, video interview tooling, skills assessments, or any product whose pricing benefits from a particular cost figure being right. The portfolio of cost-reference sites is a network: each site cross-links to adjacent cost categories so the reader can assemble a multi-program budget rather than just a single line item.
Sister sites in the same hiring and developer cluster include engineeringhiringcost.com, techhiringcost.com, onboardingcost.com, developeronboardingcost.com, reworkcost.com, and mlengineersalary.com.
Editorial position.
This site is a reference, not a lead-generation funnel. There are no email gates on the interview cost calculator, no gated whitepapers, no "talk to sales" buttons hiding an ATS or RPO product, and no affiliate links to recruiting tools. Where this site recommends an approach (in-house vs agency, virtual vs hybrid vs in-person, contingency vs retained vs RPO) the recommendation is calibrated to role seniority, hire volume, time pressure, and budget. Not to any commercial relationship.
What this site covers.
Fourteen content pages plus this About and the Methodology. Every existing page below, with deeper sub-pages added regularly for per-industry, per-role, and procurement long-tail.
Editorial principles.
Source pattern
Every cost band on this site triangulates four input streams: (a) SHRM Talent Access Benchmark for the cost-per-hire averages by industry, role, and company size; (b) BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics for the salary anchor (loaded-rate calculations use the May 2024 release); (c) LinkedIn Talent Solutions, Glassdoor Economic Research, JobVite Benchmark Report, Greenhouse and Lever benchmarks for time-to-hire and recruiting funnel data; (d) practitioner sources like ERE Recruiting Intelligence, Interviewing.io, and Lightcast for engineering-hour and time-to-fill cross-references.
No paid placements
There are no sponsored slots, no pay-to-rank, and no commercial relationships with any ATS, video interview platform, scheduling tool, skills-assessment vendor, RPO, retained search firm, or recruiting agency. The recruiting tooling category page (/tools) deliberately names no products because pricing is negotiated and named lists go stale within a quarter.
No affiliate parameters
Outbound links to source publications (SHRM, BLS, LinkedIn Talent Solutions, Glassdoor, JobVite, Greenhouse, Lever, ERE, Lightcast, BetterUp) are plain unaffiliated URLs. Cross-links to sister Digital Signet sites (engineeringhiringcost.com, techhiringcost.com, onboardingcost.com, developeronboardingcost.com, reworkcost.com, mlengineersalary.com) are internal portfolio references, not affiliate links.
Monthly verification
Cost bands and benchmark figures are re-verified against public sources on the first business week of each month. The current verified label reads May 2026. SHRM Talent Access refresh lands annually (typically Q4); BLS OEWS lands in March each year; LinkedIn and Greenhouse benchmark reports refresh annually.
Single-source freshness
The verification date is held in one constant (LAST_VERIFIED_DATE) imported by every page, the footer stamp, the Article schema dateModified, and the WebSite schema dateModified. Date drift across the site is structurally impossible.
Conservative band math
Where SHRM, BLS, LinkedIn, JobVite, and practitioner sources diverge on a figure, the site cites the wider band that includes both extremes. The home-page headline figures (SHRM CPH $4,800; engineering loop $6K-$23K; retained executive search $50K-$250K; vacancy cost senior IC $1K-$2.5K/day) reflect the full SMB-to-enterprise spread, not a single source's point estimate.
Methodology and sources.
Detailed primary sources (SHRM Talent Access Benchmark, BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, BLS Employer Costs for Employee Compensation, BLS JOLTS, LinkedIn Talent Solutions, Glassdoor Economic Research, JobVite Benchmark Report, Greenhouse and Lever annual benchmarks, ERE Recruiting Intelligence, BetterUp coaching research, Lightcast talent analytics, Interviewing.io engineering-interview research), the calculation framework, the in-scope and out-of-scope coverage, default assumptions, and the corrections process are documented on the methodology page.
Contact and corrections.
Spotted a figure that does not match your last hire, your most recent agency invoice, or a recent benchmark publication? Email [email protected] with the specific number and the source. We verify and update within five business days of a substantiated correction.
Related cost references.
Sites in the Digital Signet cost-reference network. Each follows the same editorial principles: independent, no paid placements, monthly verification, single-source freshness.
InterviewCost.com is not affiliated with SHRM, ANSI/ISO, BLS, LinkedIn, Glassdoor, JobVite, Greenhouse, Lever, ERE, Lightcast, BetterUp, Interviewing.io, or any ATS, video interview platform, scheduling tool, skills-assessment vendor, RPO provider, retained search firm, or recruiting agency. All trademarks belong to their respective owners. We have no commercial relationship with any organisation cited on this site.