Most businesses dramatically underestimate it. Move the numbers and see for yourself.
Senior and leadership hires carry far more risk: their decisions, their hires, and their impact ripple further.
Estimated cost of this bad hire
Roughly 1.0x salary, and that is before the cost to morale, your time, and the customers a wrong hire can affect.
This calculator gives an indicative estimate based on widely-cited industry ranges: wasted salary over the time in post, a replacement cost of around 20% of salary, and a disruption cost scaled by seniority. Real costs vary by role, sector and situation, and often run higher once lost opportunities and team morale are factored in. It is a conversation starter, not a precise figure.
What is inside this number
The figure above is built from three things most businesses can agree on, then deliberately stops short. The real cost is almost always higher. That is the point.
What you paid the wrong person for the time they were in post, before you accepted it was not working. The longer it drags, the higher it climbs.
Roughly 20% of salary to do the whole thing again: advertising, screening, interviewing, onboarding, and the management time it quietly eats.
Lost momentum, knock-on effects on the team, and the gap left while the seat sits empty again. Scaled by seniority, because a senior wrong hire ripples further.
What it does not count: the hit to team morale, the customers a wrong hire can affect, your own time spent managing the problem, and the opportunity cost of the right person you did not hire. Add those in and the number climbs well past what the calculator shows. We have kept it conservative on purpose, so the figure is one you can defend in a meeting.
The cheaper option
A 92% fill rate and 82% retention at twelve months is not luck. It is what happens when someone takes the time to understand the role, the business, and the person, before anyone signs anything. One avoided bad hire usually pays for the work many times over. That is the whole point of how Marshall Harmony works.
See how Marshall Harmony hires