Every week a key role stays open, it costs you in lost output — and the longer it drags, the more the pressure builds to settle for the wrong hire. Put a number on it.
Exclusive, contingency search — retained-level rigour, fee on the hire, and the bandwidth to fill fast, so you never face the choice between an empty seat and the wrong person.
We take the role’s annual value — base salary multiplied by the value factor you set — spread it across the year, then multiply by the weeks the seat sits empty and the number of open roles. A directional estimate of output forgone, not an invoice.
The deeper cost is not on the meter: the longer a role stays open, the greater the pressure to compromise — and a bad senior hire is the most expensive, hardest-to-undo mistake a leader can make.
An empty seat is not free. The work either does not happen, happens late, or gets absorbed by people who already have jobs. The standard way to price it is to compare what the role produces against what it costs, then spread that across the days it stays open.
The value multiple is the input people argue about. A fully performing professional hire generally returns well above their salary — 2× is a defensible default, higher for revenue-generating or schedule-critical roles, lower where there is slack in the system.
Most vacancy models assume the work waits for the hire. On a project it rarely does. An unstaffed discipline pushes a drawing package; a missing superintendent pushes a sequence; a delayed stamp gates everything behind it. The cost is priced by the schedule, not the payroll line.
The second thing they miss is the load on everyone else. A team carrying an unfilled role beyond ninety days shows measurably higher voluntary turnover (Work Institute, 2023). The vacancy does not just cost the missing output; it degrades the people absorbing it, and that bill arrives later.
Not on the meter above. The longer a role stays open, the greater the pressure to compromise — and settling is the most common route to a bad hire. Run the other calculator and you are usually looking at the same problem, later.
Take the role’s annual salary, multiply by the value it returns above that salary, subtract the salary you are not paying, and divide across the days open. The contested input is the value multiple, which is why this calculator asks you to set it.
It depends on the value of the role, not its salary. A project manager whose absence delays a schedule costs more per day than salary implies, because the delay is priced by the project. SHRM’s 2023 benchmarking puts lost output at roughly a third of annual salary value per quarter unfilled.
2× salary is a defensible default for a productive professional hire. Go higher on a project’s critical path — a structural lead whose stamp gates construction — and lower where the work can genuinely wait.
It should, and most internal estimates leave it out. Colleagues covering an unfilled role are doing two jobs, and teams carrying a vacancy beyond ninety days show measurably higher voluntary turnover (Work Institute, 2023). The seat being empty is the visible cost; the people absorbing it are the compounding one.
Materially, yes. Most vacancy models assume the work waits. On a project, it usually cannot — a delayed drawing or an unstaffed site pushes a schedule, and schedule has a contractual price. That is why an unfilled engineering or construction role frequently costs more than a generic calculator suggests.
No. The calculator runs entirely in your browser, nothing is submitted, and we never see the numbers you enter.
A calculator works on the numbers you already know. RIQIndex™ measures the recruitment behind them — and gives you a Recruitment Health Score: where you stand today, which gaps are costing you, and which are worth fixing first. No pass, no fail.
Free, confidential, and yours to keep — whether or not we ever do business together.