Training/Upskilling vs Hiring: Which Is Better for IT? A Cost Comparison Guide
Demand for skilled IT professionals in fields like cybersecurity, cloud, and networking continues to outpace supply. Research by recruiting firm Robert Half found that 72% of tech leaders report a skills gap in their departments, and 65% of respondents say it’s more challenging to find skilled professionals today than last year.
When a gap opens, there's pressure to fill it fast. The decision you make can impact your budget, company culture, and overall company performance for years to come. IT leaders facing a skill gap have two choices: hire new talent or train someone already on their team.
There's no simple right answer, but there is a smarter way to figure out what path is right for your company. This guide breaks down the real costs and long-term value of both strategies so you can make the right choice.
What is the Difference Between Training and Hiring in IT?
Training and upskilling are about investing in the talent you already have on your team. That might mean encouraging employees to take certification courses, giving them access to on-demand platforms, or even offering tuition reimbursement. The benefit is that those new skills stay in-house—and so does institutional knowledge.
However, your team has to want (and be able to) acquire those new skills. And depending on how long it takes to learn, it could take months to get them up to pace. If you're planning to launch a new platform in two months or are facing a cybersecurity issue now, training can take too long.
Hiring new talent means finding someone with the skills you need and bringing them in-house. They also tend to bring in fresh ideas and a new perspective. However, the tradeoff is you'll spend time finding and interviewing—and you'll have an expanded payroll budget going forward. There is also the inherent risk that they might not work out.
Both approaches solve the same problem: filling a talent gap. But they solve it on different timelines and have different costs. The next two sections will help you evaluate the costs so you can compare apples to apples.
What are the Costs of Hiring IT Talent?
According to Pluralsight's 2024 Technical Skills report, the average cost of hiring a tech talent is over $23,000—and that doesn't include their salary. Here are a few costs to consider when hiring:
Recruitment and Onboarding Costs: The average cost for hiring a new employee is around $5,000. And high-demand fields like cybersecurity and data science can exceed $10,000.
Salaries and Benefits: After the hiring costs, you'll have to consider ongoing salary costs and benefits. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, benefits alone account for 31% of salary costs.
Time to Productivity: The average time to fill a tech role is 52 days—and that is just for hiring. Once onboarding is complete, your new employee will have to learn your systems, team, and environment before they can start delivering.
Risk of Turnover: If that new hire doesn't work out, all that investment could be for nothing. When you consider that half of U.S. employees are either watching or actively looking for new work at any given time, that's a real risk.
Hiring a new employee costs a lot more than their salary and hiring costs—there's also lost productivity from your current team as they work to onboard the new hire.
What are the Costs of Training and Upskilling?
Training isn't free. And while the cost of training does tend to be lower than hiring, there are more costs than you might realize.
Training Programs and Certifications: The average U.S. organization spent $874 per learner in 2025, but IT-specific certifications and technical training are typically higher. But even at the pricier end, you're unlikely to exceed the $23,000 hiring costs.
Time Investment: Employees working through certification programs or structured learning paths divide their attention, and that's a real operational cost to account for. The good news is that newer "in the flow" learning platforms can limit this.
Productivity Dips: When an employee is upskilling, there's a window where they're not operating at full capacity in their new skill area. But it's worth putting this productivity into context: 66% of organizations say hiring new tech talent takes just as long or even longer than training current employees.
Ongoing Learning Costs: Training isn't a one-time expense—it should be an ongoing investment. Whether you hire or upskill current employees, however, this cost should remain the same.
There's another cost of hiring that training doesn't have—the loss of institutional knowledge. When you upskill current workers, you maintain knowledge about workflows, quirky programs, or even what type of presentation the CTO prefers. That knowledge isn't easy to pass down to new hires.
How Do the Long-Term Benefits Compare?
Comparing costs is a good starting point, but they only tell part of the picture. The real impact is how the different approaches deliver over time.
Training Builds Internal Knowledge and Loyalty
When you invest in developing your existing team, the returns compound. Companies with a strong learning culture have a 57% employee retention rate: roughly double that of organizations with a moderate learning culture. That means fewer replacement hires, lower recruiting costs, and more institutional knowledge staying where it belongs: inside your organization.
Hiring Brings Immediate Expertise
The strongest argument for hiring is speed. When a critical skill gap opens, and your timeline is short, a qualified external hire can close it faster than any training program. Someone who has been working in cloud security for 5 years brings knowledge that your team would take months or years to develop internally. Hiring can also bring in fresh ideas that benefit both the team and your organization.
Upskilling Supports Retention and Growth
The data on this point is hard to ignore: 94% of employees say they would stay longer at a company that invests in their learning and development. In IT, where there's a big talent gap, giving your team a clear path to grow is one of the most effective retention tools.
Hiring May Solve Short-Term Gaps Faster
Some skill gaps are too large or too urgent to close through training alone. If your organization needs a certified cloud architect next quarter, a training program won't get you there. Hiring for specialized or senior roles—where experience and credentials are non-negotiable—is often the faster and more reliable path.
The reality is that neither approach is always the right answer. Training wins on retention, cost efficiency, and long-term culture. Hiring wins on speed, specialization, and immediate impact. So how do you know when to hire and when to upskill?
When Should You Choose Training Over Hiring?
Consider upskilling your existing team when:
The skill gap is related to current knowledge. If your network engineers need to expand into cloud networking, that's a natural extension of existing expertise.
You have time on your side. If the need isn't immediate, the weeks a training program requires are well worth the payoff.
Retention is a priority. If your team is showing signs of disengagement or you're at risk of losing good people, investing in their development sends a clear signal that you're committed to their growth.
Institutional knowledge is critical. Some roles are so embedded in your organization's operations that bringing in an outsider poses real risk. When deep familiarity with your systems, culture, or processes is part of the job, upskilling is usually the right move.
Budget is tight. Training almost always costs less than hiring when you factor in recruiting, onboarding, and ramp-up time. If the headcount budget is constrained, upskilling is often the most financially defensible path.
When Does Hiring Make More Sense?
There are situations where internal development can't get you where you need to go fast enough—or tall. Here's when hiring is likely the right call:
The skill gap is too large or too specialized. If you need a certified penetration tester or a cloud solutions architect and nobody on your team is close, building that expertise from scratch isn't generally realistic.
You need someone productive immediately. A product launch, a compliance deadline, or an active security incident won't wait for a training program. When the timeline is weeks, not months, an experienced external hire is often the better choice.
You're scaling fast. Rapid growth can outpace training timelines. When you need to add capacity quickly, hiring gives you volume and speed that upskilling alone can't match.
You want to bring in new thinking. Someone who has solved the same problems in different environments can challenge assumptions and introduce better practices, which can deliver real value.
The role requires credentials your team doesn't have. Some positions, particularly in security, compliance, and architecture, require certifications or experience that can take years to earn. If those credentials are non-negotiable, hiring is the right path.
Conclusion
The question isn't really "is training or upskilling better?" Rather, it's learning when it's the right time to upskill—and when hiring is the better play. Getting it right means building a framework for evaluating each skill gap: How urgent is it? How specialized? How much runway do you have? The answers to those questions should drive the decision more than habit or budget pressure alone.
What the data does make clear, however, is that teams that consistently invest in training spend less on recruiting overall, have lower turnover rates, and build more adaptable teams. At the same time, no training can replace the speed and specialization of a new hire with decades of experience.
The strongest IT teams happen when leadership knows when to hire—and treats training like the ongoing investment it is.
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