Fifteen questions about how you hire

How many people joined you in the last twelve months?

Contracts signed, not offers made. Leave out interns and freelancers.

On permanent contracts

On fixed-term contracts of six months or more

When hiring peaks, what does it look like?

Most roles you have had open at the same time

Time actually spent on recruitment, in full-time people0.5 means half of someone's week, adding everyone up. 2 means two people flat out.

What does a year of recruitment cost, next to your payroll?

Recruitment spendAgency fees, job boards, tools, advertising. Not the salaries of the people hired.per year

Gross payroll, employer charges includedper year

Is that recruitment spend written down as a budget anywhere?

YesNo

From opening a role to a signed yes, how long does it take?

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?

This delay is the most common bottleneck we find, which is why it gets its own question.

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

Of those, how many got any reply

Before a search starts, are the criteria agreed in writing?

In writing means the manager signed off a list of criteria before the search. A job advert does not count.

Searches you opened over twelve months

Of those, how many had written criteria first

How much of that hiring went through agencies?

Of them, hired through an agency

Total paid to agenciesover twelve months

Fee rate they charge you, if you know it%

And how many came through an employee referral?

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 board credits, assessment tools. Invoices, not memory.

All licences and job boards togetherper year

Do any of those tools do the same job twice?

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

Tools that overlap

How much of your team's time goes into hiring?

Count everyone: whoever screens CVs, managers in interviews, whoever chases candidates. Two interviews a week is already about a hundred hours a year.

Hours a year, everyone combinedhours

Average gross salary of those peopleper year

How many of them were gone within their first year?

Resignations and dismissals both count. If your number covers a different group of hires, adjust the first field.

People hired in the group you are counting

Of those, gone within twelve months

Four yes-or-no questions on pay transparency.

The EU pay transparency directive applies from June 2026. These four answers are what it turns on.

Of the roles you hand to agencies, how many could a generalist recruiter fill?

A judgement call, and it is yours to make, not ours. Rare specialists stay with specialists.

Share of agency roles that are not specialist%

Job board spend you would drop tomorrowper year