How Much Does Recruiting Really Cost Irish SMEs?

Most Irish SMEs think of recruitment cost as the job board fee or the agency invoice. The real cost is much higher — and most of it never appears on an invoice.

Here's a realistic breakdown of what a single hire actually costs when you account for everything.

The visible costs

These are the costs most businesses track:

Cost item	Typical range
Job board advertising (Indeed, IrishJobs etc.)	€150 – €400 per role
Recruitment agency fee (if used)	10–20% of first year salary
Background checks / reference verification	€50 – €150 per candidate
Visible cost subtotal (no agency)	€200 – €550

For a role paying €30,000, an agency fee alone can run to €4,500–€6,000. Most SMEs trying to avoid that cost handle recruitment internally — which is where the hidden costs begin.

The hidden costs

Internal recruitment has a cost that rarely gets calculated: the time of the people doing it.

Activity	Time per hire (est.)	Cost at €25/hr
Writing and posting job ad	1–2 hours	€25–€50
CV screening (50 applicants)	3–5 hours	€75–€125
Phone pre-screening (20 candidates)	5–8 hours	€125–€200
Scheduling and coordinating interviews	2–3 hours	€50–€75
Interviews (5 candidates, 2 interviewers)	5–8 hours	€125–€200
Follow-up, offers, rejections	1–2 hours	€25–€50
Internal time cost subtotal	17–28 hours	€425–€700

Add advertising costs and you're looking at €625–€1,250 per hire before anyone starts work — and that assumes the hire works out first time.

The cost of a bad hire

When a hire doesn't work out in the first three months, the process starts again. You've lost the time invested in recruitment, the time invested in onboarding, and any output the role was supposed to deliver while it sits vacant again.

For volume roles — operatives, drivers, warehouse staff — turnover is a persistent problem. If you're refilling the same role two or three times a year, the cumulative recruitment cost is significant even without an agency involved.

Where the time actually goes

The single biggest time sink in internal recruitment for volume roles is the phone pre-screen. For a role with 50 applicants, a recruiter might make 20–30 calls before getting to a shortlist of five people worth interviewing. Many of those calls are to candidates who knew within 30 seconds they weren't right for the role — but stayed polite through the full conversation anyway.

That's not a failure of process — it's the nature of phone screening. Candidates are less likely to self-select out in a live conversation than they are when reading a job description or answering structured questions in writing.

What changes with AI screening

An AI screening bot handles the pre-screen stage automatically. Every applicant gets the same structured questions about availability, location, experience, and role requirements. The bot explains the role in full — shift times, pay, physical demands — and candidates who aren't suitable simply don't complete the application.

The recruiter opens a dashboard and sees a shortlist of candidates who have already confirmed they meet the basic criteria. No calls made to build that list.

For a role with 50 applicants, the time saving is typically:

• CV screening: eliminated — the bot collects structured responses
• Phone pre-screening: eliminated — replaced by the bot conversation
• Shortlist: ready without any recruiter time beyond posting the link

The maths for a typical SME

If your business fills 10 operative roles per year and each pre-screen process costs 8 hours of recruiter time, that's 80 hours per year spent on calls — before a single interview has taken place. At a fully loaded cost of €25/hour, that's €2,000 per year in recruiter time on pre-screening alone.

A1RO's screening bot costs €79 per role on a pay-per-use basis, or €149/month on the Starter plan. For 10 roles per year, the pay-per-use cost is €790. The time saving is worth significantly more than that.