When a role stays open longer than expected, the instinct is usually to focus on the search itself. Post again. Adjust the title. Try a different recruiter. What most companies do not do is stop and calculate what the open seat is actually costing them while all of that is happening.
That number tends to be larger than people expect. And once you know it, the conversation about recruiting fees looks very different.
Why Vacancy Costs Get Underestimated
The most visible cost of an unfilled role is the salary you are not paying. That one feels like a savings, at least on paper. But it is not a savings if the work is still happening. Someone else is doing it, either on overtime, on top of their existing job, or not at all.
The costs that do not show up on a spreadsheet are the ones that add up fastest. Projects that slow down because a key person is missing. Decisions that get delayed because there is no one in the seat to make them. Candidates who were close but slipped away because the process took too long and they took another offer. Team members who start looking around because they have been covering a gap for three months and nobody seems to be fixing it.
These are real costs. They are just harder to put a number on, which is why they tend to get ignored until they become a bigger problem.
A Simple Way to Calculate What You Are Losing
There is a straightforward formula that gives you a working estimate of what an open role is costing per day. Take the annual salary for the position and divide it by 260, which is the approximate number of working days in a year. That gives you the daily salary equivalent.
Then apply a multiplier based on how the role affects the business. For an entry-level or support role, a multiplier of one is reasonable. For a technical, revenue-generating, or senior role, the multiplier should be two or three, because those positions tend to have an outsized effect on output compared to their salary alone.
So for a senior engineering role with a first-year salary of $120,000, the daily vacancy cost works out to roughly $462, multiplied by two for the technical impact, which gives you around $924 per day. At 45 days open, that is more than $41,000 in estimated lost value before you have made a single hire.
That number does not include the cost of the time your team has spent screening resumes, scheduling interviews, and managing the search internally. It does not include overtime paid to cover the gap. And it does not include the longer-term cost of losing a team member who finally ran out of patience carrying extra weight.
Where the Recruiter Fee Fits Into That Math
Recruiting fees tend to draw attention because they are a visible, upfront number. A fee of 20 to 25 percent of first-year salary on a $120,000 role is $24,000 to $30,000. That is not a small amount, and it makes sense that companies want to think carefully before committing to it.
But when you put that fee next to a daily vacancy cost of $924, the math changes. If a recruiter fills the role 30 days faster than the search would have closed on its own, the fee has already paid for itself in recovered productivity. Fill it 45 days faster and you are ahead.
The question is not really whether the fee is worth paying. The question is whether the search would close faster and better with outside help. For roles that have already been open 30 days or more with nothing viable, the answer is usually yes.
Steven Cardwell Search & Placement works on a contingency basis, with fees ranging from 20 to 25 percent of first-year salary depending on the seniority and complexity of the search. Every placement comes with a 90-day guarantee. If something does not work out within that window, the search continues at no additional cost. The full process is laid out on the How We Work page.
The Cost Nobody Talks About: Your Team
One of the less visible effects of a stalled search is what it does to the people around the open seat. When a role stays vacant for weeks, the work does not disappear. It gets absorbed by whoever is nearby, usually the people you can least afford to burn out.
High performers who are already stretched tend to be the ones who pick up the slack. They do it because they care about the team and the work. But there is a limit to how long that holds before frustration sets in. When those people start looking around, you have traded a single vacancy for something much more expensive.
Filling a senior role quickly is not just about the role itself. It is about protecting the people already on the team who are making up the difference while the search drags on.
When to Stop Waiting and Change the Approach
Most companies wait longer than they should before deciding the current approach is not working. Thirty days in, the instinct is to give it more time. At 60 days, there is often a conversation about whether to try a recruiter. By 90 days, the situation has become genuinely disruptive and the pressure to do something is hard to ignore.
The problem with waiting is that the costs keep running the whole time. Every week the seat is empty is another week of productivity lost, another week of strain on the team, and another week of competitive disadvantage if the role is tied to something the business is trying to grow.
Thirty days is a reasonable point to reassess. Sixty days is a clear signal that the strategy needs to change. If you are past either of those marks with no qualified shortlist, bringing in a specialist recruiter is almost always the faster path to a resolution.
The firm works with mid-market companies across Canada and the United States in engineering, skilled trades, finance, and accounting. You can see the industries covered on the Industries We Serve page or browse current open roles to get a sense of the work currently being done.
Start With the Number
Before you decide whether to change anything about an open search, run the vacancy cost calculation. Take the daily salary equivalent, apply the right multiplier for the role, and multiply by the number of days the seat has been empty. Then ask yourself how many more days you are prepared to absorb that cost with the current approach.
If the answer is not many, get in touch and let us talk through what a different approach would look like.