Costs of poor recruitment in 2024

Money thrown away on ads and selection

Most IT company owners only count the invoice for the job board. This is an error. In July 2024, the average cost of publication on two main industry portals was 1,247 PLN net. On top of that, you must add your recruiter's or Office Manager's time. Reviewing 87 CVs, of which only 4 were suitable for a technical interview, takes an average of 13 business hours. At a rate of 85 PLN per hour, just 'sifting' candidates already costs you over 1,100 PLN.

If you use an external agency, it's even more expensive. You pay an advance or a 'success fee', which for a junior/mid usually amounts to 15-18% of the annual gross salary. When such an employee leaves after 3 months because they didn't fit the team culture, you lose that money forever. At Mosty Zarządzania, we see that companies rarely enforce guarantees because the process of finding a replacement takes another 7 weeks, paralyzing projects.

Just reviewing 87 poor CVs costs your company 1,105 PLN in recruiter work time.

Seniors are not coding because they are saving the new guy

This is the hidden cost that hurts the budget most. A Senior Developer earning 24,500 PLN on B2B costs the company about 153 PLN for every hour of work. In the first month of a new, poorly matched person's work, the Senior spends an average of 34 hours explaining code, setting up the environment, and correcting the new colleague's errors. This is a cost of around 5,202 PLN thrown down the drain, as those hours should have gone into delivering key features in the project.

In one project we audited in March 2024, a poorly onboarded Mid Java Developer generated so much technical debt in 19 days that two Seniors had to work overtime for a whole week to save the release. The company paid 7,400 PLN in overtime just because the technical skill verification process at entry was full of holes. This is not theory; it is hard data from Jira/Jira Service Management systems.

A Senior loses 34 hours a month onboarding someone who will leave anyway.

Contractual penalties and lost client trust

Bad recruitment rarely ends with only internal costs. If the lack of competence of a new employee causes you to miss a implementation deadline for a client, contractual penalties kick in. The average penalty for one day of delay in IT contracts we work with in Wroclaw is about 0.1% of the stage value. For a project worth 200,000 PLN, a week's delay costs you 1,400 PLN in pure loss. But that is still little compared to the loss of trust.

A client who sees turnover in the project team starts to get scared. We had a case where after the departure of two key people during the quarter (poorly selected in terms of soft skills), the client did not extend a contract worth 450,000 PLN per year. (By the way: it would have been cheaper to invest in a proper candidate profile at the beginning than to look for a new contract now). Reputation loss is not easily recovered in one quarter.

Team KPI drop by 14.3%

Team atmosphere is not a 'soft' topic. It's specific numbers. When a person who doesn't deliver tasks or ruins relationships enters a tight 5-person team, the rest's efficiency drops. Our measurements show that morale and Velocity drop by 14.3% monthly in such cases. Instead of focusing on code, developers get frustrated on Slack or waste time on unnecessary meetings clarifying errors.

In May 2024, we studied a team in a Warsaw startup where one 'toxic' recruitment caused two best developers to resign within 11 days. The cost of replacing those two people is another 80,000 PLN and months of searching. That's why at Mosty Zarządzania we repeat: recruitment is not filling a gap in the office; it is laying the foundations for your profit. Without specific metrics at every stage, you will always overpay.

One bad person in a team lowers code delivery velocity by over 14%.