Principia

Cost per Hire

operationalpure operational · recruitment · currency · organization

Total recruiting cost per hire.

How it’s computed

Formula
(internal + external recruiting cost) / hires
Measurement model
operational (a formula over systems data) — not a reflective survey scale; “reliability” here means data quality, not internal consistency
record grain →← summary (lossy)financerecruiting_costΔt 12moHRIS hiresΔt 12mointernal + externalrecruiting costΣhiresΣnCost per Hire÷
Fig. How Cost per Hire is built — data sources → actions → metric, read left to right. The grain boundary marks where record detail becomes a summary.

What it operationalizes

This is a pure operational metric — it has no single latent construct behind it; it stands as its own node, connected to programs and outcomes rather than to a psychometric scale.

Use it

Track Cost per Hire and its drivers in the People Analytics Toolbox — the registry’s evidence wired into deployable measurement.

Related metrics

Candidate Experience Score

Score derived from candidate surveys capturing satisfaction or likelihood to recommend the hiring process.

Failed Hire Rate

The percentage of hires who quit or are terminated within their first year.

Hiring Cost

Total cost to recruit, hire, onboard, and train a new employee.

Recruitment Cost

Total internal and external expenses incurred for recruiting during a period.

Time to Hire

Days from candidate entering pipeline to accept.

Programmatic access: /api/v1/metrics/metric.cost_per_hire · /api/v1/evidence-statements?construct=.