Job board cost vs agency fees.

Job board ROI compares the cost of job board subscription (LinkedIn Recruiter, Indeed, Reed, specialty boards) against saved recruitment agency fees. Recruitment agencies typically charge 15-25% of first-year salary - 10-30k per hire. A 15k annual job board that enables 10 hires saves 150-300k in agency fees. Obvious ROI above 2-3 hires per year.

15,000 annual job board cost. 10 hires via board × 20,000 average agency fee = 200,000 saved. Net value 185,000, ROI 1,233%. Strong. At this hire volume, even multiple job board subscriptions (40k total) pay back. The challenge isn't ROI on the tool - it's making enough hires to justify the cost.

Below 3-5 hires per year, targeted use of recruitment agencies often beats subscription job boards. Strategic roles (executives, specialists) usually still benefit from agency expertise regardless of cost. Volume hiring (graduate programmes, customer service, sales teams) is where subscription job boards dominate.

A worked example

Try the defaults: job board annual cost of 15,000, hires via board of 10, avg recruitment agency fee of 20,000. The tool returns 1,233.33%. You can adjust any input and the result updates as you type — no submit button, no reload. That's the real power here: seeing how sensitive the output is to one or two assumptions.

What moves the number most

The result responds to Job Board Annual Cost, Hires via Board, and Avg Recruitment Agency Fee. Not every input has equal weight. Flip one at a time toward extreme values to feel which ones move the needle most for your situation.

The formula behind this

Fees saved = hires × avg agency fee. Net = fees saved - board cost. ROI = net ÷ cost × 100. Cost per hire = board cost ÷ hires. Everything the calculator does is shown in the formula box below, so you can check the math against your own spreadsheet if you want.

What the score tells you

Headline financial numbers — income, savings, debt — each tell part of the story. This calculation stitches several together into a single read you can track over time. The value is in the direction, not the absolute number.

What this doesn't capture

The score is a composite of the inputs you provide. Life context — job security, family obligations, health, housing — doesn't appear in the math but shapes the real picture. Use the number as a prompt, not a verdict.