When Should You Relocate an Executive Instead of Hiring Local?
- Philip Lamb
- Jul 8
- 3 min read
Every company assumes hiring local is the cheap option. It is not always true, and treating it as gospel has cost more than one Western Pennsylvania company its best possible leader.
A relocation package looks expensive on paper. According to a Worldwide ERC study, the average relocation cost for a homeowner employee runs about $97,000, and most executive relocation packages start around $80,000, climbing to $200,000 or more depending on family size, housing market, and distance. That is a real number, and it is easy to let it end the conversation. But it is only half the equation. The other half is what you actually get for it, and what you give up by refusing to pay it.
PRL International is a retained executive search firm serving Pittsburgh and Western Pennsylvania, specializing in senior-level placements in energy, manufacturing, and mid-market companies. We run this exact tradeoff constantly, because the strongest candidate for a senior Western Pennsylvania role is frequently not already living here.
What Does It Actually Cost to Relocate an Executive?
A full executive relocation package typically costs $80,000 to $200,000 or more, covering the home sale or lease break, moving costs, temporary housing, a house-hunting trip, and often a cost-of-living adjustment, according to industry relocation benchmarks. That range is wide because the drivers are specific: a homeowner selling in a slow market costs more to relocate than a renter, a family with school-age children costs more than a single candidate, and a cross-country move costs more than a regional one.
The number that gets missed is what this actually buys. A relocation package is not a courtesy. It is the price of access to a national talent pool instead of a local one, and for the most specialized senior roles, energy leadership, plant management with a specific technical background, a finance executive with capital markets experience, the local pool may simply not contain the person you need.
When Does Hiring Local Actually Cost More Than Relocating?
Hiring local costs more than relocating when the local pool forces you to settle for a weaker candidate, because the true cost of a mediocre executive dwarfs the price of a relocation package. A search confined to candidates already living within commuting distance of Western Pennsylvania eliminates the vast majority of the national talent pool for a specialized senior role, and the company that insists on local-only ends up choosing between a compromised hire and an empty seat, both of which are expensive.
Run the comparison honestly. A failed or underperforming senior hire costs on the order of $240,000 in hiring costs, compensation, and lost productivity, a figure we detail in how often executive searches fail in mid-market manufacturing. Against that number, a $100,000 to $150,000 relocation package for a proven, right-fit leader is not the expensive option. It is frequently the cheap one, because it is buying certainty in a decision that is otherwise a coin flip.
The purpose of all war is peace. (Saint Augustine)
Augustine's line reframes cost the right way: you accept an expense now because of what it prevents later. A relocation package accepted now is often what prevents the far larger cost of a search that fails, restarts, and drains another 18 months.
How Do You Decide Whether a Role Justifies Relocation?
You justify relocation when the role is specialized enough that the local candidate pool is genuinely thin, and you should test that assumption with real search data before assuming either way. Some mid-market roles, a controller, an operations manager without a technical specialty, are well served locally, and a relocation package there is money spent without a corresponding gain in candidate quality. Other roles, a plant leader with a specific process background, an energy executive who understands the Marcellus or Appalachian Basin, a CFO with capital markets experience, draw from a genuinely national bench, and refusing to relocate anyone simply shrinks your options to whoever happens to already live nearby.
In more than 30 years of retained search, we have found that the companies who make this decision well run the search first and decide on relocation second, rather than ruling it out before they know what the market actually looks like. Define the role, run a real search against the national market, and then make the relocation call with actual candidates in front of you instead of a policy decided in the abstract. For how we approach searches that draw from a broader market, visit our mid-market executive search practice, and for the regional specifics of who is worth relocating into, see what does Pittsburgh mid-market executive search look like beyond energy and manufacturing.If you are ready to fill a senior role or want to talk through your search, reach out at prlinternational.com/contact
Want to know what questions to ask before hiring a search firm? Download the free 7-Question Guide: https://prl-proposal.vercel.app/guide
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