Cost-per-Hire

Cost-per-hire (CPH) is the main economic KPI of recruiting. The standard SHRM formula is:

CPH = (External Costs + Internal Costs) / Number of Hires in the Period

External costs include: job board posting (LinkedIn premium ~€500/month per slot, Monster pay-per-CV, regional packages), head-hunter or agency fees (15-30% of first-year salary), assessment costs (psychometric tests, dedicated software), background checks, ATS software cost.

Internal costs include: recruiter person-hours (~€40-60/h fully loaded in Europe), hiring-manager person-hours (€60-100/h), IT time for workstation setup, initial training before full productivity.

CPH reduction drivers are: increasing organic inbound (employer branding, referral programs), screening automation (AI-powered ATS), time-to-hire reduction (faster process, lower indirect costs), funnel conversion improvement.

For high-volume roles (logistics, food service, retail), the main driver is conversion on the application form. A Voice CV link converting at 60% versus 12% on a traditional web form saves 5x on cost-per-application-collected.

For specialist roles (senior developers, engineers) the driver is shortlist quality: a few well-targeted profiles reduce hiring-manager person-hours.

European market benchmarks: blue-collar 800-1,200 €, administrative roles 1,500-2,500 €, mid-level IT 3,000-5,000 €, senior/managerial 6,000-15,000 €, executive 15,000-50,000 €.

Cumino impacts CPH by lowering internal screening costs (Voice-to-CV cuts time per processed CV from 135 to 15 minutes) and by increasing inbound funnel conversion in scalable verticals.