15 questions about how you hire

How many roles did you fill in the last twelve months?

Roles you managed to fill, whatever the contract. A renewal is not a new hire.

On permanent contracts

On fixed-term contracts

As freelancers

How many roles do you run at the same time, on average?

Roles open at the same time

People working on recruitment, in FTE0.5 for half a person, 2 for two people full time.

What does hiring cost you in a year?

Recruitment spendAgency fees, job boards, tools, advertising. Not the salaries themselves.per year

Total gross payroll, if you have it at handOnly used to compare your spend to your size. Skip it if it is not close by.per year

Does recruitment have its own budget line?

YesNo

How long does a hire take, from opening to signature?

Your typical role, not your worst one.

Days, start to signaturedays

You send a CV to the hiring manager. How long before you hear back?

Days before an answerdays

Does everyone who applies get an answer?

An automatic rejection email counts as an answer. Silence does not.

Applications received over twelve months

Among those, how many got a reply

Do you agree selection criteria with the manager before a search, or do you start from the job description alone?

Criteria means what makes a candidate a yes or a no, agreed with the manager. A job description on its own does not count.

Searches opened over twelve months

Among those, how many started from agreed criteria

How many of your hires came through an agency?

Hires made through an agency

Total paid to agencies over twelve months

Of that, paid for freelance staffingKept apart so we can compare your permanent hiring to market benchmarks, which only count employees.

Their fee rate, if you know it%

How many came through employee referrals?

Hired on a referral

Referral bonus you payZero if there is none.

What do recruitment tools cost you a year?

Applicant tracking, sourcing licences, job boards, assessment tools. Your best estimate is enough.

per year

Do any of your tools overlap?

Two sourcing licences. A job board your ATS already includes.

Tools that overlap

How many hours a year do your managers spend on hiring?

Interviews, briefings, CV reviews by the people who are not in recruitment. Two interviews a week is about a hundred hours a year.

Hours a year, all managers combinedhours

Their average gross salaryper year

How many of them were gone within their first year?

Resignations and dismissals both count.

Hires over twelve months

Among those, how many left within a year

4 yes-or-no questions on pay transparency.

The EU pay transparency directive applies from June 2026. These four answers decide where you stand.

How many of those agency roles were rare specialist profiles?

Rare means a profile you could not find without an agency. Everything else is addressable.

Share that were NOT rare specialists%

Job board spend you could drop tomorrowper year