This Month's Insight: Do You Know What Talent Actually Costs Your Business?
Everyone tracks cost per hire. Almost nobody tracks the four numbers that tell you whether the hire actually worked.
1. Cost of vacancy — the cover, not just the seat
Most formulas assume a vacant role produces nothing. In practice, someone almost always stretches to cover it, at partial capacity, with no scope communicated to the wider team. A role worth 25% of a team's output, covered at half capacity, isn't costing 25%. It's costing the uncovered half — 12.5%, every day.
"The vacancy is the visible cost. The unclear, uncommunicated cover is the one that compounds."
2. Quality of hire — did they actually perform?
Time to fill tells you when the requisition closed. It doesn't tell you whether the hire worked. SHRM's 2025 benchmarking found organizations spent 26% of HR budget on recruiting, yet only 20% measured quality of hire.
The data usually already exists — performance reviews, retention, promotion history — it's just never connected back to the hiring decision.
3. Talent engagement — is the pipeline working, or quietly leaking?
Response rates, time-to-first-contact, and how candidates describe the process all signal whether talent is engaging with you or dropping out before an offer's ever made. A weak pipeline is rarely a market problem. It's usually a process one.
4. Offer acceptance — read against the cover, not just the market
A below-benchmark acceptance rate is usually blamed on compensation. Read alongside the cost of vacancy, it often points somewhere else: roles that were poorly covered or rushed to fill send a signal candidates pick up on during the process, before an offer is even made.
The takeaway
None of these four require new systems. They require someone to ask the question and write down the answer. Most leadership teams can answer zero of the four for their current open roles.
Want this run on your numbers?
We'll tell you which of the four you can already answer, and what the gaps are costing.
Start the Conversation →This insight references 2025 SHRM benchmarking research and established cost-of-vacancy methodology.
SHRM. "SHRM Releases 2025 Benchmarking Reports: How Does Your Organization Compare?" October 15, 2025.