$1,921: The effective cost of hiring one craft worker on job boards
Hiring craft workers continues to be a challenge for contractors. There are several reasons behind this.
The pipeline is shrinking as retirements outpace new entrants.
Mega projects pull talent into long runs that drain local supply.
Pay expectations and per diem allowances continue to rise due to the labor shortage, especially among highly skilled workers.
Job boards tend to flood recruiters with unqualified resumes, no matter how specific the job description is.
Recruiters have to persistently chase qualified workers given the small window to reach them in between field work.
Many recruiting teams work through email when most workers are using mobile to find their opportunities.
Put together, these forces increase spend, burn recruiter time on sifting and chasing, and still lead to lower show rates. All of this has a cost and compounded the effective cost to land one successful craft hire comes out to $1,921.
This number is not a guess. It comes from a practical model that blends three measurable pieces of data:
Cash spent to source candidates
Recruiter time to move them through the funnel
The impact of interview no-shows.
Gone are the days when contractors could set the terms for qualified craft. Many skilled craft workers are fielding multiple offers, choosing jobs that fit their schedule and commute, and walking away from slow or confusing hiring processes.
The sourcing spend you can see
Most teams use a mix of job boards and trade boards, targeted social ads, and a small share of agency help for hard fills. The blended sourcing cost for one hire ranges $680 to $1,450, with an average near $1,065. Half of that spend usually sits with job postings, about forty percent on social media, and the rest on selective agencies to help find hard-to-fill roles in a thin market. None of this is surprising. It is the cost of getting in front of working tradespeople who are not scrolling listings all day.
The recruiter’s time
The biggest expense in time is not a long series of interviews. It is the front end of the funnel. Recruiters and coordinators spend hours sifting through unqualified resumes and chasing candidates to line up a conversation. That is where the day goes.
This can be quantified as $163 to $223 per hire in internal time, with an average near $193. Here is how that breaks down in practice:
Sourcing and outreach: hunting for relevant profiles, sending first touch messages, following up when there is no reply. This costs approximately $89 to $119 per hire in time lost for the recruiter.
Screening and resume review: separating real experience from keyword stuffing, matching certifications, and weeding out the obvious mismatches adds another $30 to $45 per hire.
Communications and scheduling: calling and texting to find a time that sticks, leaving voicemails, sending calendar invites, confirming again on the interview day adds $45 to $59 per hire.
Those numbers reflect the reality that many inbound resumes are not qualified for the job and that many good candidates work inconsistent hours. They do not sit in front of a computer and reply to emails at a set time. If you want them to show, you need to reach them on the device and in the window that works for their day. This is often in the evenings or weekends where recruiting teams are not working.
The show rate that changes the math
Even when your sourcing spend and recruiter time are in line, no-shows change the outcome. If 20 to 40 percent of scheduled interviews do not happen, you need to generate more interviews to land one start. This is not a moral judgment on candidates. It is a practical effect of worker choice. A journey-level electrician with two offers may accept the conversation that feels most concrete and skip the one that looks like a long process or a dead end. A carpenter who got called to a different site that morning may not be able to break away for a phone screen that was booked by email days ago.
The clean way to plan for this is to use a simple formula:
Effective cost per hire = (Sourcing cost + Recruiting time) ÷ (1 − No-show rate)
Run the bookends from your table and you get a cost on the low end of $1,054 and on the high end $2,788. The midpoint of that range is $1,921, which is a strong planning number for most markets. This is a cost that is often not computed when recruiting budgets and targets are set.
Why costs are rising even when your plan looks reasonable
Contractors are not overspending out of ignorance. Costs rise because qualified workers have options, not because teams think hiring is easy. Recruiting teams can feel this in three ways:
Resume volume does not equal fit. Job boards reward volume. The more you sponsor, the more you receive. That does not help if most resumes do not match your safety history requirements, your licensing rules, or the exact experience you need on this phase of work. Recruiters spend the time to sort it out, which is a direct cost.
Communication gaps: Emailing back-and-forth is slow and easy to miss for people who work on their feet. Calendar links that look simple on a laptop are not always simple on a phone in the field. Every time you wait for a reply or miss the right window to call, the candidate takes another option.
Slow processes lose to fast ones. A competitor who can confirm an interview by phone that day will often win the start. Not because they pay more, but because they made the next step easy. With competing offers in play, delay is a hidden fee you pay in poor show rates.
What to change inside your process
Contractors cannot control the broader craft labor market. What can be controlled is how predictable your funnel is and how much effort you waste before someone shows up.
Tighten your job descriptions. List the exact scope, license, and certifications you will accept, and remove anything that sounds optional. Also, if there are ‘must haves’, make sure you make these clear to limit unqualified candidates. You should get fewer resumes but stronger fits. That saves screening time and lowers the false positive rate that frustrates your supers.
Move scheduling to phone-first with automated reminders. Most candidates do not live in their inbox. When you set interviews by phone and follow with a text reminder the show rate improves. Same-day reschedules also keep your calendar from collapsing when the morning’s plan changes.
Block calendars in short windows. If your project team is only free for long, flexible slots, your show rate suffers. Reserve short blocks where you can make quick decisions and avoid idle time.
Measure show rate every week by trade and city. Do not guess. If you see a drop, look for a recent change in how you are contacting candidates or a shift in your screening and confirmation steps.
Stop paying for duplicate reach. Consolidate postings and social buys so you do not sponsor three versions of the same job in the same market. Duplicates create noise and more unqualified resumes.
None of these steps require a new philosophy. They respect the reality that a qualified worker with a phone and multiple options will choose the path that feels simple and respectful of their time.
How to budget and report with confidence
Use the effective cost number to fund hiring plans and to set expectations with operations. Start with sourcing cost and recruiting time, then divide by your actual show rate. Fund the result and track it weekly. If show rate improves, costs fall. If show rate drops, your budget will warn you before the project manager does. Report on three metrics that leaders understand:
Show rate by trade and market
Minutes per hire in sourcing, screening, and scheduling
Effective cost per start on this project
These three numbers help you decide where to spend, where to simplify, and when to escalate for help on a tough fill.
Where Skillit fits in your plan
If you want to press the effective cost down from $1,921, focus on the two levers that matter most in this market: get better qualified candidates to the top of the stack and raise your show rate by making scheduling fit the worker.
Skillit was built to help on those exact points with a verified pool of qualified craft workers, unlimited hires for one price, and Sam, an AI-powered recruiting assistant that schedules interviews and does all of the follow up to ensure higher show rates. Skillit sources hundreds of workers in seconds, using our construction specific search engine, eliminating sourcing costs and wait times that are ubiquitous with job postings. Proper use of the search engine can automatically eliminate unqualified candidates. Also, with unlimited hires for one price, you can use Skillit to fill multiple roles at a fraction of the cost of job boards or staffing agencies. Most hires on Skillit have an effective cost of between $350 - $500 depending on the contract length.
Skillit is not only built for fast hires, but efficient hires that cost much less than traditional methods. Cut your effective cost significantly by switching to Skillit.
