Most teams only count the recruiter invoice. The real bill includes months of salary that bought nothing, the team that carried the load, and the search you now have to run again.
Hired through an agency?
Adds a typical placement fee to the sunk cost.
An estimate, not an invoice. We assume a bad hire delivers ~60% of expected output (40% of pay bought nothing), managers and teammates lose time worth ~25% of that pay to supervision and rework, and each hiring round costs ~15% of annual salary internally — plus an 18% placement fee if an agency was involved. Published estimates run from 15–24% of salary (Robert Half AU, 2021) to 3–4× salary once manager time is counted (SHRM, 2022). This sits at the conservative end; your real number is probably higher.