How we calculate interview cost.
Two kinds of number appear on this site: anchors taken from a named public source (SHRM, BLS, a vendor's own pricing page), and our own model built on those anchors with stated defaults. Here are the sources, the formulae, the defaults, the freshness policy, and the corrections process.
Primary sources.
These are the public sources the cost model takes numbers from. Vendor prices (HackerRank, Codility and the rest) come from each vendor's own pricing page and are cited on the page that states them. Ranges that no public source publishes, such as recruiter fee bands, role-level time to fill and vacancy impact factors, are our own planning model and are labelled that way.
| Source | What we take from it | Cadence |
|---|---|---|
| 2025 SHRM Benchmarking Report Society for Human Resource Management | National average cost-per-hire ($5,475 nonexecutive, $35,879 executive) from the Recruiting benchmarking report released 15 October 2025 (survey of 2,371 SHRM members, January to March 2025). SHRM's 2026 Recruiting Executives Benchmarking data brief reports medians, including a 39-day median time to fill for nonexecutive positions; its cost values are members-only. SHRM sponsored the ANSI/SHRM 06001.2012 cost-per-hire standard, and this report is the anchor for all SHRM-cited figures on the site. | Annual |
| BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) Bureau of Labor Statistics, US DoL | National median salaries by SOC occupation code. The salary anchor for every loaded-rate calculation on the site. Current release: May 2025 (published 15 May 2026). | Annual (March) |
| BLS Employer Costs for Employee Compensation (ECEC) Bureau of Labor Statistics, US DoL | Benefits as a percentage of total compensation. Used to justify the 1.35 benefits multiplier default in loaded-rate calculations. | Quarterly |
| BLS Job Openings and Labor Turnover (JOLTS) Bureau of Labor Statistics, US DoL | Monthly job openings, hires and quits rates. Used only as labour-market context; JOLTS does not publish a time-to-fill measure. | Monthly |
Calculation framework.
The five-component model decomposes the loop into the buckets a finance-literate HR leader would itemise. Each component has its own formula and primary source.
Formula from the ANSI/SHRM 06001.2012 cost-per-hire standard. How this site applies it: external = job board, agency, background checks, assessments, relocation, candidate and staff travel, sign-on; internal = recruiter and sourcer hours, coordinator hours, tooling amortised per hire, referral bonuses, plus hiring manager and panel hours, which many employers leave out of their reported figure. Excludes vacancy cost and onboarding by design. Anchor source: 2025 SHRM Benchmarking Report.
Default benefits multiplier 1.35, a conservative choice: BLS ECEC for June 2026 puts benefits at 30.0 percent of private-industry compensation and 31.5 percent for management and professional roles, which implies about 1.43x to 1.46x wages. Anchor sources: BLS OEWS May 2025 (occupation medians) and BLS ECEC (benefits ratio).
260 = 52 weeks x 5 working days. Impact factor 1x entry/admin, 2x IC in revenue roles, 2.5x managers, 3x leadership. The impact factors are this site's model assumptions, not a published standard; change them in the calculator.
Not a SHRM standard metric; we publish it because finance teams budget against it. Inputs: BLS OEWS wages for interviewer loaded rates, and this site's default assumptions (listed below) for recruiter hours, tooling, logistics and the vacancy impact factor, all of which you can change in the calculator.
Industry-standard funnel metric. Anchor: SHRM's 2026 Recruiting Executives Benchmarking data brief, which puts the median time to fill for nonexecutive positions at 39 calendar days. Role-level day counts elsewhere on this site are our own planning estimates.
Contingency 15-25% of base salary, retained 25-35% of first-year total comp, flat fee $5K-$20K per role, RPO per-hire $1,500-$4,000 or monthly retainer $5K-$80K+. These are this site's planning bands for common fee conventions, not a survey statistic; agreed fees are set in each firm's terms.
Default assumptions.
- Benefits multiplier
- Default
- 1.35
- Rationale
- Conservative default. BLS ECEC (June 2026) puts private-industry management and professional total compensation at about 1.46x wages ($78.88 / $54.06 an hour), so loaded rates here understate rather than overstate
- Working hours per year
- Default
- 2,080
- Rationale
- 40 hours x 52 weeks, standard US workforce assumption
- Working days per year
- Default
- 260
- Rationale
- 5 days x 52 weeks, standard US workforce assumption
- Impact factor, entry / admin
- Default
- 1.0x
- Rationale
- Output roughly equals salary
- Impact factor, individual contributor
- Default
- 2.0x
- Rationale
- Revenue-producing or impact IC produces 2x salary in value
- Impact factor, manager
- Default
- 2.5x
- Rationale
- Force-multiplied across team output
- Impact factor, leadership
- Default
- 3.0x
- Rationale
- Strategic impact across the organisation
- Context-switch multiplier (engineering)
- Default
- 1.4x
- Rationale
- Interviewing.io research, deep-work cost literature
- Recruiter hours per hire, in-house
- Default
- 14 hrs
- Rationale
- This site's default planning assumption; set your own in the calculator
- Recruiter loaded rate, in-house
- Default
- $50/hr
- Rationale
- ~$90K salary x 1.35 / 2,080, typical SMB and mid-market recruiter comp
- Tooling amortised per hire
- Default
- $250
- Rationale
- This site's default planning assumption (annual recruiting-stack spend divided by annual hires); set your own in the calculator
- Time-to-fill, nonexecutive median
- Default
- 39 days
- Rationale
- SHRM 2026 Recruiting Executives Benchmarking data brief
| Assumption | Default | Rationale |
|---|---|---|
| Benefits multiplier | 1.35 | Conservative default. BLS ECEC (June 2026) puts private-industry management and professional total compensation at about 1.46x wages ($78.88 / $54.06 an hour), so loaded rates here understate rather than overstate |
| Working hours per year | 2,080 | 40 hours x 52 weeks, standard US workforce assumption |
| Working days per year | 260 | 5 days x 52 weeks, standard US workforce assumption |
| Impact factor, entry / admin | 1.0x | Output roughly equals salary |
| Impact factor, individual contributor | 2.0x | Revenue-producing or impact IC produces 2x salary in value |
| Impact factor, manager | 2.5x | Force-multiplied across team output |
| Impact factor, leadership | 3.0x | Strategic impact across the organisation |
| Context-switch multiplier (engineering) | 1.4x | Interviewing.io research, deep-work cost literature |
| Recruiter hours per hire, in-house | 14 hrs | This site's default planning assumption; set your own in the calculator |
| Recruiter loaded rate, in-house | $50/hr | ~$90K salary x 1.35 / 2,080, typical SMB and mid-market recruiter comp |
| Tooling amortised per hire | $250 | This site's default planning assumption (annual recruiting-stack spend divided by annual hires); set your own in the calculator |
| Time-to-fill, nonexecutive median | 39 days | SHRM 2026 Recruiting Executives Benchmarking data brief |
In scope.
- +Direct recruiting spend: job board, agency fee, retained search, RPO, background checks, assessments, relocation, sign-on bonus.
- +Internal recruiter and sourcer time at loaded rate.
- +Hiring manager and interview panel hours at loaded rate.
- +Coordinator time amortised across hires.
- +ATS, video, scheduling, and assessment platform cost amortised per hire.
- +Candidate logistics for in-person rounds: travel, hotel, meals, ground transport.
- +Daily vacancy cost while the role is open, reported separately from CPH per SHRM/ANSI standard.
Out of scope.
- -Onboarding and training. Post-hire productivity cost, not recruiting cost. Mixing them makes CPH non-comparable across companies. Track separately if you want total cost of employee.
- -Voluntary relocation paid by the candidate. Only offer-required relocation is in scope.
- -Equity and long-term incentive in loaded-rate calculations. Equity is not delivered per hour worked. Included in total-comp percentages for retained search fees only.
- -Bad-hire and post-hire turnover cost. Separate metric documented on the /reduce-costs page (link out: BetterUp coaching ROI research for the retention component).
- -Enterprise-negotiated recruiting-tech pricing. Public list prices and published vendor benchmarks only.
- -Non-US wage tables. Loaded-rate calculations use BLS OEWS US national medians; regional cost-of-labour adjustments are deferred to the reader.
Freshness policy.
Cost bands and benchmark figures are re-verified against the source publications on the first business week of each month. The verified date is held in a single constant (LAST_VERIFIED_DATE) imported by every page, the footer stamp, and the JSON-LD schema dateModified. Date drift across the site is structurally impossible.
Source-specific refresh windows:
- BLS OEWS: refresh on the annual May release (May 2025 data published 15 May 2026).
- BLS ECEC and JOLTS: refresh quarterly.
- SHRM Benchmarking Report: refresh on the annual release (typically Q4).
- LinkedIn Talent Solutions Global Talent Trends: refresh on annual release.
- JobVite Benchmark Report: refresh on annual release.
- Greenhouse and Lever benchmark reports: refresh on annual release.
- ERE Recruiting Intelligence: refresh quarterly against ERE practitioner survey series.
- Lightcast: refresh quarterly against the posting-volume and time-to-fill series.
Out-of-cycle refresh is triggered by: a SHRM or BLS release outside the normal cadence, a public correction to a cited figure, a methodology change in any primary source, a reader correction that materially shifts a band, or a meaningful change in average US labour cost (BLS ECEC quarterly).
Limitations.
- !Calculator output is a planning estimate, not a precise figure. Two organisations with identical inputs can land 20-40 percent apart on actual realised cost depending on internal accounting treatment.
- !SHRM and JobVite benchmark figures lag actual market conditions by 6-12 months because their underlying surveys close before publication.
- !BLS OEWS publishes national medians; high-cost metros (SF, NYC, Seattle, Boston) run 25-45 percent above national for technical roles. Calculator users in high-cost metros should override the default salary input.
- !Per-industry CPH spreads in SHRM data reflect the average organisation in the survey. Highly-engineered industries (semiconductors, AI/ML, quant finance) can run 2-4x the industry mean.
Corrections process.
We want corrections. If a figure does not match the source, a formula has an error, or a benchmark is out of date, email [email protected] with the specific number, the page URL, and the source. We verify and publish corrections within five business days of a substantiated correction request.
The calculator uses these formulae and defaults, and every default is editable. Start there.
Related reading.
The SHRM/ANSI formula applied to every line item.
Read →Loaded-rate tables from BLS, with worked examples.
Read →The five-component model with every formula applied.
Read →Who builds the site, editorial position, and how we stay independent.
Read →Contingency vs retained vs RPO with worked examples.
Read →Daily cost of an open role by salary and impact factor.
Read →