[level iv]

It's much cheapter to pay an employee $1500--or offer a free vacation that's worth a little less, than to recruit on their own.

Some regions do a lot of hiring through outside agencies, who often charge $3-$6K per placement. One of my old regions spent money on temp agencies like it grew out of a RALPH machine. Even own recruiting efforts, between ads, college career fairs, mailers, etc., all add up to huge $$$$ (Take your average college career fair: include the cost of getting a table or booth, the cost of all the materials you'll need to distribute, the salary+commission of your recruiting manager for one day's work, reimbursement of his/her travel & entertainment expenses, the cost of your recruiting admin asst's time to sort through garbage resumes, the "weeding out" time spent, blah, blah... much easier to find someone in-house to reel 'em in for you).