Recruitment Cost & ROI Calculator
Aggregates agency fees, job board fees, referral bonuses, plus HR and interviewer time cost into total and per-hire recruitment cost with a breakdown.
FreeOnline Tool
Loading…
How to Use
- Under "Channel Costs", enter headhunter/agency fees, annual job board fees, and total referral bonuses paid out (all optional, leave 0 if not applicable).
- Under "Internal Labor Cost", enter HR's monthly salary and the percentage of their time spent on recruiting (e.g. 50% if half their time goes to hiring), plus the interviewers' average hourly rate and total interview hours.
- Under "Output", enter the number of hires completed.
- Click "Calculate", or click "Load Sample" to preview instantly (sample: 20k agency fee, 5k job board fee, 10k referral bonus, HR monthly salary 15k at 50%, interviewer rate 100/hr for 40 hours, 5 hires).
- Results show total recruitment cost, cost per hire, a line-item breakdown table (channel costs, HR time cost, interviewer time cost with percentages), and a colored proportion bar.
Features
- Channel cost subtotal = headhunter fee + job board fee + total referral bonus.
- HR time cost = HR monthly salary x percentage of time spent on recruiting.
- Interviewer time cost = interviewer average hourly rate x total interview hours.
- Total recruitment cost = channel cost + HR time cost + interviewer time cost; cost per hire = total cost / number of hires (hire count floors at 1 to avoid division by zero).
- Auto-generates a detailed cost table listing agency fee, job board fee, referral bonus, HR time cost, and interviewer time cost, each with its percentage of total cost.
- Uses a colored horizontal proportion bar to visualize the split between channel cost, referral, HR, and interviewer cost categories.
- Amounts above 10,000 CNY are auto-formatted in "wan" (10k) units for concise display.
Use Cases
Quarterly recruiting cost review
A recruiting manager aggregates all channel fees and internal labor cost for the quarter to calculate actual cost per hire, and reports hiring efficiency to leadership.
Comparing hiring channel cost-effectiveness
The HR team separately calculates total cost for filling the same role via a headhunter versus via employee referral, comparing cost-per-hire to optimize future channel strategy.
Requesting a recruiting budget
HR uses historical recruitment cost data (channel fees + internal labor cost) to estimate the total budget needed to hit next year's hiring targets.
Evaluating interview process efficiency
A hiring lead checks what share of total recruitment cost comes from interviewer time; a disproportionately high share signals too many interview rounds or an inefficient process worth streamlining.
FAQ
What's included in total recruitment cost?
Total cost = channel cost (headhunter fee + job board fee + referral bonus) + HR time cost (HR monthly salary x % time on recruiting) + interviewer time cost (interviewer hourly rate x total interview hours).
How should I fill in "HR recruiting time percentage"?
Enter the percentage of HR's total working time spent specifically on recruiting each month — e.g. 50 if half their time goes to hiring. It's used to pro-rate HR's salary into a recruiting-related cost.
How is cost per hire calculated?
Cost per hire = total recruitment cost / number of hires. If hire count is 0 or left blank, the tool treats it as a minimum of 1 to avoid a divide-by-zero error.
Can I leave some cost fields blank?
Yes. All cost inputs default to 0, so leaving a field blank or at 0 won't cause an error — the tool sums total cost based on whatever fields are actually filled in.
How are the percentages in the proportion bar calculated?
Each category's share = category cost / total recruitment cost x 100%. The four categories (channel, referral, HR, interviewer) roughly sum to 100% — note referral is a sub-item of channel cost and is annotated separately in the detail table.