The vacancy math
Take a sales role carrying a $1.2 million annual quota, with a rep at 85% attainment. That seat produces roughly $1.02 million a year, or about $19,600 every week it stays empty.
Now suppose that role takes 90 days to fill. That is thirteen weeks of lost production, around $255,000, before you count the ramp time for whoever you hire. And it is not offset by the saved salary, because the salary was never the point. You approved the headcount because the seat generates more than it costs.
The same logic applies outside sales, though the number is harder to see:
- A plant manager vacancy shows up as overtime, missed ship dates, and a safety record that drifts because nobody owns it
- An open controller role shows up as a close that slips from day five to day twelve, and an audit that costs more because the workpapers were rushed
- An unfilled nursing line shows up as agency rates at two to three times your loaded cost, plus the turnover of the nurses who covered the gap
- A vacant attorney seat shows up as work sent to outside counsel at four times the internal rate
We built a calculator that runs this math for your specific numbers in about thirty seconds. Most people are surprised by the weekly figure, which is the one that matters, because it turns “we are still looking” into a number with a date attached.
Why roles sit open for 90 days
In our experience, it is almost never a shortage of candidates. It is one of these:
The job posting is a requirements list, not an offer. Fourteen bullet points of requirements, no salary, and a sentence about being a fast-paced environment. Strong candidates who already have jobs read that and move on. They are not applying; they are evaluating whether it is worth a conversation.
No salary is published. This is the single biggest self-inflicted wound in hiring. Candidates filter out postings without pay information, because experience has taught them it means a lowball or a bait-and-switch. Publishing a range costs you nothing you were not going to pay anyway, and it roughly doubles your qualified response rate.
The process has too many steps and too much time between them. Five rounds over six weeks loses the candidates you most wanted. The good ones have other processes running, and the fastest credible offer usually wins. You are not choosing between candidates; you are racing other companies for the same people.
You are fishing where everyone else is fishing. The best candidates for your role are, almost by definition, employed and not looking. They are not on the job boards. Reaching them requires someone to identify them, contact them directly, and give them a reason to take a call.
What a realistic time to fill looks like
Industry benchmarks put technology roles at around 44 days. Our average across all searches is 24 days. That is not a claim about working harder; it comes from a different starting point.
We maintain a database of over 200,000 candidates and a network of roughly 500,000, built since 1994. When a search opens, we are not starting from zero and waiting for applications. We are calling people we already know, who already know us, and who will take the call.
A few other numbers worth knowing when you evaluate any recruiting partner:
- 86% of the candidates we present get interviewed. If a firm sends you ten résumés and you want to meet two, they are not screening; they are forwarding.
- 34 months average tenure, against an industry average around 18. A fast hire that leaves in eight months is worse than no hire, because you pay the vacancy cost twice.
- 95% of our clients re-engage us for additional searches.
Four things you can change this week
Even if you never speak to a recruiter, these move the needle:
- Publish the salary range. Every posting, no exceptions.
- Cut a round out of your process. Whatever you have now, remove one step and compress the rest into two weeks.
- Rewrite the first paragraph of your posting so it describes the opportunity rather than the requirements. What will this person own? Why does the role exist now?
- Decide your number before you start, not after you meet someone you like. Deciding under pressure is how you end up making an offer you regret or losing a candidate over $5,000.
If you would rather not run it yourself
We recruit across sales, technology, healthcare, legal, finance, insurance, manufacturing, and real estate, in 24 major markets. Our hiring pages cover specific roles and cities, so you can see exactly how we approach the search you are running: softwareplacement.com/hire
Or run your own numbers first with the vacancy cost calculator. If the weekly figure does not bother you, the role probably is not urgent. If it does, you now have the argument you need to get it prioritized internally.
Software Placement Group has completed over 1,000 searches for 750+ clients since 1994, contributing more than $3 billion in candidate value. Engagements are available on retained, contingency, and volume-credit terms, with a replacement guarantee.
