An open position is never neutral: at a company with 10-50 employees, an unfilled role can cost anywhere from $10K to more than $300K depending on the function, and a DIY search takes roughly 113-149 hours of your team's time. At MJL Recruiting & Consulting we help companies compare the real cost of hiring internally against working with a recruiter before the next search starts.
Every day a critical position stays open, it's easy to treat it as a neutral holding pattern, a line on a headcount plan waiting to be filled. It isn't neutral. It's an active, compounding drain on revenue, productivity, and the people already on the team.
How much does an unfilled position cost?
The dollar impact of a vacancy varies significantly depending on the role and the size of the company, but it's rarely small. At a company with 10-50 employees:
- Leadership roles (CEO, VP, or Director-level): $150K or more in impact
- Sales and business development: $30K-$300K
- Engineering and IT: $25K-$250K
- HR, finance, and customer support: $10K-$150K, depending on the specific position
HR, finance, and customer support roles are often treated as lower priority to backfill, but they still carry real costs.
That impact shrinks somewhat at larger companies with more redundancy built into the org chart, but it never disappears. Even at 200+ employees, an open leadership role still runs $75K or more, and every other function on the list still carries a measurable cost.
What are the hidden costs of a vacant position?
The numbers above capture the direct financial impact, but prolonged vacancies also trigger a second, less visible category of cost:
- Employee burnout, as remaining team members absorb the gap
- Decision paralysis, as strategic calls wait on leadership bandwidth that isn't there
- Increased turnover, as the strain compounds and other people start looking for the exit themselves
This is the part of an open role that rarely makes it into a budget conversation, but it's often the more expensive half of the equation over time. A vacancy doesn't just cost what the empty seat would have produced. It costs some fraction of what the people around that seat would have produced too, as their own output degrades under the added weight.
How many hours does it take to hire someone yourself?
Running a search internally is rarely accounted for as a real time cost, but it should be. A single role, filled without outside help, typically requires something in the neighborhood of 113-149 hours across the full cycle:
- Determining responsibilities and writing the job description
- Reviewing resumes
- Conducting initial screens
- Running interview rounds as a team
- Making the final call
That's the equivalent of three to four full working weeks (not calendar weeks, actual working hours) spent by people whose job is not, in fact, recruiting. Most of that time, 80-95 hours, goes to resume review alone, which is exactly the part of the process most prone to inconsistency without a structured screening approach.
How much does DIY hiring cost in dollars?
Translated into dollars, a four-month DIY search on a non-revenue-generating role runs roughly $75,000 once every cost is accounted for:
- Job board spend
- The salary-equivalent time cost of the people actually doing the reviewing and interviewing
- The strain and lost productivity that ripples through the team covering the gap
- The quality and timeliness cost of work that lags while the role stays open
For a revenue-generating role, that number climbs sharply, often north of $275,000 once lost revenue from the unfilled seat is factored in at even a conservative estimate. The job board fee is the smallest line item in that total by a wide margin, which is usually the opposite of how companies mentally budget for a search.
Is it cheaper to hire internally or use a recruiter?
Not always internally. None of this is an argument that hiring should never be done internally; plenty of roles are well-suited to it. It's an argument for doing the math honestly before assuming a DIY search is the cheaper option by default. Once the real time cost and the real dollar cost of an extended vacancy are on the table side by side, "free" internal hiring often turns out to be the more expensive path, not the more economical one.
The question worth asking before the next search starts isn't just "what will a recruiter cost." It's "what is doing this ourselves actually costing us, in hours our team doesn't have and revenue we're not seeing." Then weigh both real numbers against each other, not just the one that shows up on an invoice.
Frequently asked questions about the cost of an open position
How much does an open position cost a small business? MJL Recruiting & Consulting's research shows that at a company with 10-50 employees, an open leadership role can cost $150K or more, sales and business development $30K-$300K, engineering and IT $25K-$250K, and HR, finance, and customer support $10K-$150K. Even at 200+ employees, an open leadership role still runs $75K or more.
How many hours does a DIY hiring process take? MJL Recruiting & Consulting estimates that filling a single role internally takes roughly 113-149 hours, the equivalent of three to four full working weeks. Resume review alone accounts for 80-95 of those hours.
What does a DIY search cost in total? MJL Recruiting & Consulting estimates a four-month DIY search for a non-revenue-generating role costs roughly $75,000 once job boards, staff time, lost productivity, and delayed work are included. For a revenue-generating role, it often exceeds $275,000 once lost revenue is factored in.
What are the hidden costs of a long vacancy? MJL Recruiting & Consulting sees long vacancies cause burnout on the team covering the gap, decision paralysis when leadership bandwidth is missing, and increased turnover as other employees start looking for the exit.
Is it cheaper to hire without a recruiter? Not always. MJL Recruiting & Consulting recommends comparing the full cost of a DIY search, including staff hours and the cost of an extended vacancy, against a recruiter's fee. Once both are on the table, "free" internal hiring often turns out to be the more expensive path.
Want the full breakdown, with cost by role and company size plus a side-by-side time comparison of DIY hiring vs. working with a recruiter? Contact us for all the research and data today →