What does a bad hire really cost?
Fill in what you know — the itemized total updates as you type. Estimates lean conservative; the real number is usually worse.
Runs 100% in your browser — nothing you type or upload is sent anywhere.
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≈ 12.2 months of salary
Frequently asked questions
How is the cost of a bad hire calculated?
The calculator itemizes the direct and indirect costs: salary paid until the mis-hire is acknowledged, the productivity shortfall during onboarding, the fee or internal cost of re-running the search, severance, the hiring team's interview hours, onboarding spend, and the output lost by the team around the bad hire. Each line uses your inputs — no hidden multipliers.
What do studies say a bad hire costs?
Published estimates range from about 30% of first-year salary (U.S. Department of Labor figure widely cited) to 2-3× salary for senior roles once team drag and opportunity cost are included. This calculator lets you build your own number from your actual inputs instead of quoting an average.
Is my data stored anywhere?
No. The math runs entirely in your browser. Nothing you type is sent to a server, stored, or logged.
How do I reduce the risk of a bad hire?
Structured evaluation is the best-documented lever: define the dimensions before you interview, score every candidate against the same rubric, and keep written evidence for each score. That is exactly what Verdict automates for CV screening.
More free tools
When the stakes are a real hire, use evidence
These tools are quick heuristics. Verdict reads the CV against your job description and scores six dimensions with verbatim quotes as evidence — a hiring document you can defend.