APEX AGENTS
info@apexagentsystems.co
FOR UK RECRUITMENT AGENCIES

Your consultants are billing less than you think.

Not because they are slow. Because roughly half of every vacancy is admin — sifting, chasing, scheduling, writing up. Put your own numbers in and see what that time is worth, and how many placements it could have been.

Built on Totaljobs / Stepstone research with 748 UK HR and hiring leaders, which measured 17.7 hours of admin per vacancy and put the cost at £17,000 per recruiter per year. Every assumption below is editable — if you think a number is wrong, change it and watch the answer move.

YOUR DESK
Anyone who works vacancies. Exclude pure resourcers if they cost less — you can adjust the hourly rate below.
Roles actively worked, not just placed. Most desks manage four to six at a time properly.
Your average invoice per placement, permanent or the margin equivalent on a contract.
25%
Be honest here. It is the number that decides whether freed-up time is actually worth anything.
Change the assumptions →
Totaljobs / Stepstone measured 17.7 across 748 UK hiring leaders.
This one is an estimate, not from the study. It is the whole job — sourcing, calls, interviews, client management, plus the admin above. It matters because extra capacity costs full consultant time, not just the admin you saved. If you track it, use your real figure.
51%
51% is the sum of the three tasks the same study broke out: 3.6h sifting applications, 2.5h scheduling interviews, 3.0h writing up notes = 9.1 of 17.7 hours.
75%
Nobody converts saved minutes 1:1. Standard practice is to discount to 70–80%. We use 75%.
A £30k salary costs about £34,500 once employer NI at 15% and pension are added, which is roughly £20/hour over ~1,740 productive hours. £25 adds normal overhead. Raise it for senior desks.
WHAT IT IS COSTING YOU
£0
a year in consultant time spent on work that does not need a human
THE WORKING
THE PART THAT ACTUALLY MATTERS
£0

Saved hours are not saved cash unless you cut headcount — and you would not. That is why the number above is the one to look at: on a recruitment desk, freed time turns into placements, not redundancies.

Send me these numbers →

Goes to info@apexagentsystems.co with your figures attached. No form, no call booking, no sales sequence.

When this calculator is wrong

If your consultants are not capacity-constrained — if they have spare hours and the bottleneck is vacancies coming in, not time to work them — then freeing up admin time gains you very little. Fix the front of the funnel first. Automation will not sell your service for you.

It is also wrong if your fill rate is low because of candidate quality or client behaviour rather than speed. Sifting faster does not help if the applications are not there. In that case the honest advice is to spend the money on sourcing, not on us.

Around one in five agencies we run these numbers with should not buy anything from us, and we say so. A calculator that only ever returns a reason to buy is an advert, not a diagnostic.

If the number is big enough to bother with

Three steps, priced up front, and you can stop after any of them. Nothing here needs a call before you know what it costs.

STEP 01

The teardown

Free

A short recorded walkthrough of your actual process — application to offer — with the three biggest leaks named and what each is costing.

  • Under 10 minutes to watch
  • No call required
  • Yours whether you buy or not
MOST START HERE
STEP 02

The Leak Audit

£1,500

Five working days. We map the desk properly, interview the consultants doing the work — not just the director — and cost every step against your own figures.

  • Written report you can hand to anyone
  • Ranked fixes with cost and payback
  • Includes what not to automate
  • £750 comes off the build if you go ahead within 60 days
STEP 03

The build

£8,000–£15,000

Fixed price agreed in writing before anything starts. Four to six weeks. Half on signature, half when it goes live and works.

  • You own everything we build
  • Written handover, no lock-in
  • Four weeks of free fixes after go-live
  • Optional care from £900/month
Apex Agents is a trading name of Apex Agent Systems Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 17410168. Registered office: 167–169 Great Portland Street, 5th Floor, London, W1W 5PF. Contact: info@apexagentsystems.co