Insights — Sales & Commercial Recruitment — 3 min read
How Much Does It Cost to Recruit an Employee in the UK?
The agency fee is only part of it. Here is every cost involved in recruiting an employee, and how to estimate your own.
In short
The cost of recruiting a UK employee combines direct costs — advertising, agency or recruitment fees and any assessment — with indirect costs such as management and interview time, lost output while the role is vacant, onboarding and the risk of a bad hire. The direct fee can range from a few hundred pounds for self-managed advertising to several thousand for a traditional agency placement. Indirect costs are often larger and are frequently overlooked.
When businesses think about the cost of hiring, they usually think of the agency invoice or the job advert. The true cost is wider: the hours spent writing, sifting and interviewing, the work that does not get done while the seat is empty, and the risk of getting it wrong.
This guide sets out every element so you can build a realistic estimate for your own business.
Direct recruitment costs
Job advertising
Paid job-board listings, social media promotion and specialist boards all carry a cost, and roles that are hard to fill may need adverts refreshed or repeated.
Recruitment agency or partner fees
Traditional contingency agencies charge a percentage of first-year salary. Subscription and hybrid models spread the cost over the year. Our guide to UK recruitment agency fees compares the models.
Candidate sourcing tools
Doing your own search may require paid database or professional-network subscriptions.
Indirect recruitment costs
Internal management time
Writing the job description, reviewing applications, holding interviews and chasing references can take many hours — often from the most expensive people in the business.
Interview time
Each interview round ties up at least one manager, frequently two or three. Poorly screened shortlists multiply this cost.
Vacancy duration and lost productivity
Every week a revenue-generating or operational role is empty has a cost: lost sales, delayed projects, overtime or pressure on the rest of the team.
Onboarding
Training, equipment, and the time before a new starter reaches full productivity all belong in the true cost.
Bad-hire risk
If a hire does not work out, much of the process has to be repeated — along with the disruption and lost time. This is why screening and qualification matter as much as price.
A worked example
The following is an illustrative framework, not a statistic. Replace each line with your own figures.
| Cost element | How to estimate it |
|---|---|
| Advertising | Actual advert spend for the campaign |
| Recruitment fee | Agency percentage × salary, or subscription + success fee |
| Management time | Hours spent × hourly cost of the people involved |
| Interview time | Rounds × interviewers × hours × hourly cost |
| Vacancy cost | Weeks vacant × estimated weekly value of the role’s output |
| Onboarding | Training time and ramp-up period |
How different recruitment models affect the total
Doing it yourself lowers the direct fee but raises management time. A traditional agency reduces your time but adds a large per-hire fee. A partnership model such as Evans Recruitment Partner aims to keep management time low — Evans handles sourcing, screening and coordination — while keeping the fee predictable. For more senior appointments where the cost of getting it wrong is higher, Executive Recruitment is the better fit.
Conclusion
The cheapest recruitment is the one that finds the right person quickly and keeps them. Estimate your full cost — not just the invoice — and choose the model that reduces both. If you are weighing lower-cost routes, see our guide to alternatives to recruitment agencies for small businesses.
Recruitment without the traditional agency fee shock.
Evans Recruitment Partner gives growing UK businesses ongoing permanent recruitment support for £199 + VAT per month, with a 5% success fee when Evans places a candidate. One active vacancy at a time, on a 12-month agreement.
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