The cost of a bad hire.

A bad hire is rarely just a salary you stop paying.

It's the months of half-output, the rehiring, and the deals that never got written.

How much less they produced than the right person would have, as a share of the salary you paid them. Gallup puts the total cost of replacing an employee at one half to two times annual salary, read at gallup.com, and this calculator's total sits inside that range. The 35% used here is our own conservative pick from the bottom of the 20% to 55% spread those models produce, not a published figure, because a number you can argue down is worth more than a big one.

Your recruiting and onboarding cost as a share of salary, counted twice: once for the hire that did not work and once for the replacement. The 20% starting point is ours rather than a published figure, and it is the input most worth replacing with what you actually paid.

What that miss costs $0
  • Salary paid during the miss$0
  • Lost production vs a good hire$0
  • Rehiring & onboarding (twice)$0

And that is before the harder-to-count costs: the team morale, the clients who felt it, and your time spent managing the problem instead of growing the business.

Indicative only. Every input above is yours to change and every figure below is the sum of them, with nothing computed out of sight. It deliberately leaves out management time and any severance or exit cost, both of which other calculators include, so the real number is likely higher rather than lower. Use it to start the conversation, not to set a budget.

Cheaper to get it right the first time.

That number is exactly why we work a search properly.

Tell us the seat and we will help you fill it with someone who stays.

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