The Cost of Posting a Job: The Big Picture for Big Companies

External recruiters are expensive. That’s why most businesses choose to post their jobs on job boards to fill open positions. When you’re hiring one or two positions per year, job postings make a lot of sense. It’s a “one-and-done,” no long-term commitment solution.

But suppose you’re a large organization that’s “always hiring” or looking to fill 20 positions or more. Posting jobs suddenly becomes quite the investment in terms of both time and money.

Read on to find out how much it really costs your business to post positions manually, and whether or not an automated solution is right for you.

Publishing Costs

There are hundreds of job boards out there and numerous options for posting your open positions, though prices generally start around $200 and you can expect to pay up to$500 for a 30-day job posting. Using our example above of having 20 positions to fill, and assuming you get a bulk discount of $150/posting, the best-case scenario is a $3,000 investment (assuming you fill all of your positions in 30 days and only use one website).

Staff Costs

Time is money. After you’ve spent $3,000 on 20 job postings, now it’s time for you (or someone on your HR team) to complete the posting process. Suppose that’s an HR Manager with a $50/hour wage, and they can post a single job in 15 minutes (a generous estimation considering that not all job boards are easy to navigate):

300 minutes/5 hours = additional $250 investment

Opportunity costs must be considered as well. For example, if your HR/recruiting team is manually posting positions, those are hours not spent actively sourcing talent via value-added activities such as contacting potential new hires, scheduling interviews, running background checks, and extending offers.

Additional Food for Thought

Human Error

Nobody’s perfect, and manually posting your jobs opens up the possibility for mistakes. This is especially true if you have 20 postings to get through in one sitting with different titles, requirements, locations, etc.

Misspellings and grammatical errors in job descriptions don’t just hurt your brand; entering the wrong location or job title, for instance, could mean qualified candidates can’t even find your ad. Plus, some job listings won’t allow you to edit certain details once your posting goes live.

“Free” Job Boards

There are options out there that allow you to post a job for free, but to put it bluntly, you have to be prepared to get what you "pay" for: unqualified candidates. And lots of irrelevant applications mean even more time spent by your HR team weeding through resumes that aren’t a good fit. Bottom line: while avoiding job posting costs with a free job board, you’re instead investing hours of HR staff time filtering through irrelevant resumes.

Learn more about how iHire’s Job Wrap Solution can help you reduce overhead expenses, make the most of your recruiting budget, quickly reach a unique talent pool, and affordably fill your open positions with qualified talent.