Free Tool
Cost-Per-Hire
Calculator
Job ads, recruiter fees, screening, onboarding, bad-hire risk — hiring costs add up fast. See exactly what you're spending and how much Zedtreeo saves you.
Total Cost-Per-Hire Savings
$51,157(98% less)
Traditional Hiring Cost
$52,180
Zedtreeo Hiring Cost
$1,023
Cost Breakdown — Line by Line
Job Posting & Advertising
LinkedIn, Indeed, industry job boards
Traditional
$1,200
Zedtreeo
$0 — included
Recruiter / Agency Fee
Typically 15–25% of first-year salary
Traditional
$23,266 (20%)
Zedtreeo
$0 — no fees ever
Screening & Interviews
Internal time spent reviewing, interviewing (40+ hrs avg)
Traditional
$3,200 (40 hrs)
Zedtreeo
$0 — Zedtreeo pre-vets
Background & Reference Checks
Third-party verification services
Traditional
$350
Zedtreeo
$0 — included
Onboarding & Training
Equipment, setup, initial training period
Traditional
$4,000
Zedtreeo
$500 (your tools only)
Bad-Hire Risk (30% probability)
Cost if hire doesn't work out within 90 days
Traditional
$10,470 (risk-adjusted)
Zedtreeo
$0 — free 5-day trial + replacement guarantee
Time-to-Productivity Gap
6-week ramp-up vs 2-week with Zedtreeo
Traditional
$9,694 (4 weeks lost)
Zedtreeo
$523 (1.3 weeks)
First-Year Total Cost (Salary + Hiring)
United States (Traditional)
$168,509
Zedtreeo
$20,031
You save $148,478 in the first year alone.
Traditional hiring costs from SHRM, Glassdoor & LinkedIn 2026 benchmarks. Zedtreeo: $0 recruitment fee, from $1,056/month.
What Goes Into Cost-Per-Hire?
The hidden costs most companies overlook.
📢
Recruitment Costs
Job board postings ($200–$500 each), recruiter agency fees (15–25% of first-year salary), LinkedIn Recruiter licenses, and internal recruiter time.
🔍
Screening & Selection
Resume screening (23 hrs avg per hire), phone screens, technical assessments, panel interviews, background checks, and reference verification.
⚠️
Risk & Ramp-Up
30% of new hires fail within 90 days (SHRM). Each bad hire costs 50–200% of annual salary. Even good hires take 6+ weeks to reach full productivity.
Cost-Per-Hire FAQs
Understanding the real cost of hiring.
Cost-per-hire is the total cost of filling a position, including job advertising, recruiter fees, screening time, background checks, onboarding, and the risk cost of a bad hire. SHRM's benchmark puts the average US cost-per-hire at $4,700 — but for professional roles, it often exceeds $15,000 when all factors are included.
Zedtreeo eliminates the most expensive hiring costs entirely: zero recruitment fees, zero job board costs, zero screening overhead (we pre-vet all candidates), and zero bad-hire risk thanks to our free 5-day trial and replacement guarantee. You only pay the flat hourly rate — from $1,056/month.
Cost-per-hire traditionally refers to the cost of the hiring process itself — not the ongoing salary. However, our First-Year Total Cost section adds salary to give you a complete picture. Even including salary, Zedtreeo typically costs 70–85% less than a local hire.
The US Department of Labor estimates a bad hire costs at least 30% of the employee's annual salary. With a 30% probability of failure within 90 days (SHRM data), the risk-adjusted cost is significant. Zedtreeo eliminates this with a free 5-day trial and free replacement guarantee.
Traditional hires take 6+ weeks to reach full productivity. Zedtreeo's candidates are pre-vetted for your specific role requirements and can start within 48 hours. With dedicated onboarding support, most reach productive output within 2 weeks — saving you 4+ weeks of lost productivity.
None. Zedtreeo's flat hourly rate includes everything: recruitment, vetting, HR management, payroll processing, and account management. The only additional cost is your own software licenses and tools that the team member needs access to.
Methodology
How the Cost-Per-Hire Calculator works
How the number is produced
- Local annual salary = Zedtreeo hourly × market multiplier × 176 × 12; Zedtreeo annual = hourly × 176 × 12.
- Traditional hiring adds: agency fee 20% of salary, screening time, onboarding, bad-hire risk (30% probability × 30% of salary), tooling and equipment; a 4-week vacancy vs 1.3 weeks with Zedtreeo.
- Cost-per-hire = the sum of those items; the Zedtreeo column carries $0 recruitment fee.
Assumptions built in
- The 20% agency fee, 30%/30% bad-hire risk and 4-week vacancy are stated assumptions drawn from common industry ranges — edit them if yours differ.
- Excludes manager interview time.
Benchmarks & sources
- SHRM Human Capital Benchmarking / cost-per-hire studies (2024)Used for: context that in-house recruiting carries agency fees, screening time and onboarding cost; the calculator's 20% agency-fee and 30% bad-hire-probability inputs are stated assumptions, not SHRM figures.
- Zedtreeo Rate Index (2026)Used for: the offshore hourly rate per role used on the Zedtreeo side of every comparison — the same figures quoted on our service pages.
- Zedtreeo pricing engine (site-wide constants) (2026)Used for: 176 billable hours per full-time month; local-market multipliers of ~3.5× (US), ~3.0× (Europe avg.), ~3.2× (Australia), ~2.8× (Canada) applied to the offshore rate when you pick a comparison market.
Methodology and constants last reviewed against the Zedtreeo pricing engine and Rate Index. Estimates are for planning; your quote depends on role, scope and engagement.
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Skip recruiter fees, job board costs, and bad-hire risk. Zedtreeo delivers vetted remote staff from $1,056/month with a free 5-day trial.