Recruitment fee and margin calculator
Free, no account needed
What a placement earns, what a consultant returns, and what one extra placement per quarter is worth. Set the salary, the fee model, and your cost base. The figures update as you move the sliders.
Fee model
Fee per placement
€ 15,000
25% of € 60,000
Revenue per consultant
€ 22,500 per month
€ 270,000 per year at 1.5 placements per month
Margin per consultant
€ 15,500 per month
69% of revenue, after € 7,000 in costs
One extra placement per quarter is worth € 60,000 per consultant per year, at the same cost base.
How the calculation works
The fee per placement is the gross annual salary times the fee percentage. On a no cure no pay assignment the whole fee is invoiced on placement. On retained search part of it is invoiced at the start of the assignment and the rest on placement, which changes when the cash arrives, not how much.
Revenue per consultant is the fee per placement times the number of placements per month. Margin is that revenue minus the fully loaded cost of the consultant: salary, employer costs, desk, and tooling. The sensitivity line prices one extra placement per quarter, because that is the unit a training or process change actually moves.
The fee benchmarks in the defaults come from IPMERC research on Dutch agency practice: contingency fees of 22 to 32% of gross annual salary, retained search at 20 to 30% with part invoiced up front. Median salaries per IT market are published as open data.
The number this calculator is most sensitive to is placements per consultant. That is what IPMERC trains. The Open source tier is free and includes the IPMERC 101 foundation program.