Interview costcalculator.
Work out what interviewing costs you in people’s time: interviews per hire, interviewers, hours and hourly cost, plus the time spent scheduling, per hire and per year. Free, no sign-up, and nothing you type is stored or sent to us.
Example figures: replace them with yours
Everyone you interview for one hire, including the people you don’t hire.
All rounds and interviewers together, with preparation and feedback.
Loaded: pay plus benefits and employer taxes.
Add detailCurrency, round by round with pass-through rates, scheduling time, hires per year, and a second plan to compare.
See what cutting a round, or screening before the first interview, would save.
Rounds
One card per round, in order. Each round’s candidates are the ones the round before passed on. Once a round has anything in it, the rounds replace the two quick figures above.
Round 1
Including preparation, write-up and the debrief.
Loaded: pay plus benefits and employer taxes.
Share invited to the next round. Blank if everyone moves on.
Scheduling
Finding times, booking rooms or links, rescheduling and reminders.
Volume
Your own, to show the interviewer time as working weeks.
Result
Interview cost per hire
$1,440
In this example, 8 interviews per hire take 24 hours of interviewer time, 88% of it on people you don’t hire. Add your hires per year under “Add detail” for the yearly cost.
| Interviews per hire | 8 |
| Interviewer hours per hire | 24 hours |
| On candidates you don’t hire | 21 hours |
| Interviewer cost per hire | $1,440 |
| Interview cost per hire | $1,440 |
Uses only the figures you entered.
In plain English
For each hire, 8 candidates go through 1 round, which is 8 interviews and 24 hours of interviewer time, costing $1,440 with scheduling. 21 hours of that time (88%) goes on candidates who aren’t hired.
Opens the cost per hire calculator with $1,440 of interviewer and scheduling time for one hire.
The link holds your figures, so anyone with it sees them.
The formula
What does an interview cost?
An interview costs the paid time of everyone involved in it: the interviewers, for the interview and the preparation, write-up and debrief around it, and the person who schedules it. Across a hire, multiply that by every interview you hold, including those with the candidates you don’t hire.
Formula
Interview cost per hire = (interviews × interviewers × hours × hourly cost) + (interviews × scheduling hours × scheduler’s hourly cost)
Interviews per hire = candidates interviewed × rounds per candidate. Multiply the cost per hire by your hires per year for the annual figure. When some candidates stop after a round, count each round’s candidates on their own: the calculator does this from the share moving on.
Use a loaded hourly cost for each person: their pay plus benefits and employer taxes, divided by the hours they work in a year. Pay alone understates what an hour of their time costs the organisation.
Where the hours go
Fewer interviews, better evidence.
- Every candidate you interview and don’t hire is part of the cost of the one you do. Screening on evidence before the first interview cuts the number of interviews more than shortening each one.
- Give each round a purpose. Two rounds that test the same thing double the cost without adding information.
- Count the time around the interview: reading the CV, writing feedback and the debrief often take as long as the conversation.
- Rescheduling adds up. Booking all of a candidate’s interviews at once saves the scheduler’s time and the candidate’s.
Questions
About interview costs.
What is a loaded hourly cost?
Should I include the candidates I didn’t hire?
Does this include candidates’ travel or agency fees?
How can I reduce the cost of interviewing?
Does this tool store what I type?
Related: interview invitation email template, interview kit builder, cost per hire calculator and structured interviews.
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