Cost of vacancy

What it measures

Cost of vacancy is the daily cost of an empty seat. Cost per hire tells you what filling a role costs; cost of vacancy tells you what not filling it costs. The two are opposite sides of the same decision, and most teams only ever look at the first one.

A rough formula

The simplest version that’s still honest:

Daily cost of vacancy = (annual revenue per employee ÷ working days) × productivity factor

For a revenue-generating role, take the revenue that role is expected to produce, divide by working days (~220/year), and you have a daily number. For a non-revenue role, substitute the value of the work that isn’t getting done plus any overtime, contractor, or coverage costs the gap creates.

A worked example: a salesperson expected to bring in €600,000 a year, sitting empty, costs roughly €2,700 per working day. A role open for 60 days has quietly cost €160,000 — usually far more than the entire cost per hire.

Why speed matters

Once the daily number exists, the math on hiring speed changes. If a vacancy costs €2,700 a day, then a process that closes two weeks faster is worth ~€27,000 — which dwarfs whatever you’d save by squeezing the recruiting budget. Cost of vacancy is the argument for investing in time to fill, not against it.

How it complements cost per hire

Look at them together or you’ll optimize the wrong thing. A team obsessed with low cost per hire will run a cheap, slow process — and bleed money on vacancy the whole time. A team that only watches vacancy cost will overspend on agencies to fill fast. The healthy read is both numbers side by side: spend efficiently and quickly.

Where Join fits

Faster time to fill is the most direct lever on cost of vacancy, and Join’s pricing scales by team size rather than candidate volume — so speeding up hiring doesn’t inflate your tooling bill. See the pricing page.