Written by a recruiter, so read it with that in mind. The arithmetic below is the honest version, including the times doing it yourself is plainly the right answer.
Hiring internally is cheaper in cash and more expensive in time and risk. Whether it is cheaper overall comes down to two numbers most employers never actually work out: how many hours it takes you, and how long the seat stays empty.
This page does not quote a fee. Fees are agreed in writing before any work starts, and a number on a web page would be a guess about your role. What it does instead is put the other side of the ledger on the table, because that is the half nobody counts.
Not the advertising. The advertising is the small part. The cost is your hours, and the hours of whoever else gets pulled in.
| Step | Realistic hours |
|---|---|
| Writing the ad and getting it live | 1 to 2 |
| Reading applications | 2 to 6, depending how many arrive |
| Phone screening | 3 to 6 |
| Interviews, including the ones who do not turn up | 4 to 8 |
| Checking licences and tickets properly | 1 to 2 |
| Reference calls | 1 to 2 |
| Offer, negotiation and paperwork | 1 to 3 |
| Total for one hire | 13 to 29 hours |
Call it two to four working days of someone's time, usually the owner or the manager, usually broken into fragments across three or four weeks. Put your own hourly value on that and you have the real cash cost of doing it yourself.
The hours are not the expensive part either. The expensive part is what those fragments displace: quoting, running jobs, managing the people you already have.
This dwarfs everything else and it is almost never counted, because nobody sends an invoice for it.
A role on a $450 day rate costs about $2,250 a week while it is unfilled, measured only as work not getting done. Four extra weeks of an open seat is $9,000.
Against that, three or four hours a week of your own time spent recruiting looks small, and the difference between filling in four weeks and filling in eight looks enormous. The full working is on what an unfilled role costs you every week.
So the real question is not "which is cheaper per hire". It is "which one ends the vacancy sooner, and by how many weeks". If both routes fill the role in the same month, do it yourself. If one of them takes twice as long, the arithmetic usually stops being close.
Genuinely, and this is most hires:
Not access to a job board. You have that. Three things:
The four checks each candidate clears before you see a name are written out on the Skilled Screen, including where reference checks actually sit.
Want the seat filled?
GET MY SHORTLISTTerms first, then names. You pay nothing until your hire starts.
Internally is cheaper in cash. Whether it is cheaper overall depends on how many hours it takes you and how many extra weeks the seat stays empty. On a $450 day rate the empty seat runs at about $2,250 a week, which is usually the largest number in the comparison.
Realistically 13 to 29 hours for one hire, covering the ad, reading applications, phone screening, interviews, licence checks, references and the offer. That is two to four working days, normally broken into fragments across several weeks.
When you already have someone in mind, when the role reliably attracts applicants, when the seat is not costing you anything urgent, or when the role is entry level and you are hiring for attitude rather than a licence. Most hires fall into one of those.
It varies by role, seniority and the terms agreed, so any figure on a web page would be a guess about your vacancy. Ours is agreed in writing before any work begins, and nothing is payable until your hire starts.
If they leave inside the first 90 days we replace them free. Hiring internally has no equivalent: if your own hire leaves in week six you run the whole process again from the beginning.
Not necessarily. Check the rate against the current market band first, because a rate below the band is the most common cause and it is free to fix. If the rate is confirmed right and three weeks has still produced nothing, then the pool is the problem rather than the ad.