Five questions I get every time.

You might. The two get counted as one number, which is what makes this hard to settle in the abstract.

Here's the line I draw. Recruiting is whatever got somebody to apply. Everything after that — the offer, day one, week one — is retention. It's short-term retention, but it's retention.

So the question isn't which one you have. It's where the number falls off.

How many did you hire last year, and how many of them are still there? Of the ones who left inside the first month, do you know why?

If you don't know why, that's the conversation. If you do know and the answer is pay, this isn't a fit and I'll tell you that on the call.

Some of it, for other things. Not for this.

It was shot at a different time, in a different place, with different people, and it won't cut together with what we'd make.

It was also shot with the opposite goal. Yours was made to attract. This is made to filter.

Mix the two and the honest material stops being believed. That belief is the only thing holding this up, and it doesn't come back once it's gone.

Some of them won't. That's real, and it's why it's five interviews instead of one.

Pick the people who've been there two years or more. They have the least to prove and the most credibility with somebody still deciding whether to stay.

And the first time a crew sees that you ran the complaint instead of burying it, the rest of the interviews get easier. That shift is worth more than any single answer on camera.

Less than you're spending to fill the same seat twice. I'll give you the number on the call, and I'll give it to you on the call — not after three meetings and a proposal.

I don't publish it because it moves with the role, the site, and how far I'm travelling. A single yard an hour from an airport and a rotation across three states aren't the same job, and pretending they are means one of us is getting a bad deal.

What I'd rather you do first is take your cost per seat and multiply it by the people who left inside 30 days last year. That's the number this gets compared to, and you'll know within about ten seconds of hearing my number whether it's worth a conversation.

For comparison, agencies doing employer-brand and website work in these industries start around $25,000 and run three to ten months.

Good. HR is who runs this day to day.

The one thing I'd ask is that you stay in it. HR implements this and you authorize it.

If it turns into HR's project instead of yours, it dies the first busy week — not because anyone's lazy, but because nothing survives a busy month without a mandate behind it.