Free tool
Placement fee and desk revenue calculator
Enter your average placed salary, fee percentage and yearly placement count to see what actually lands after fallout, splits and the fixed cost of the desk.
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Client update and search capacity calculator
Count the weekly hours your open searches spend on status writing and feedback chasing, then see how many searches are left in the week you have.
Recruiters plan capacity by counting searches, but two searches with a silent hiring manager can consume more of a week than five with a responsive one. This calculator separates the two kinds of work: the hours a search needs for sourcing and interviewing, and the hours it takes to keep the client informed and to extract feedback on people you already submitted.
The output that matters most is the last one. If the searches your week can actually support is smaller than the number you have open, something is being neglected right now, and on a boutique desk it is usually the search that is closest to filling but least noisy about it.
Your result
Hours a week on updates and chasing
5.4
Time spent telling clients things rather than moving searches forward.
Yearly cost of that reporting time
$29,900
Priced at your own hourly value across forty six working weeks.
Searches the week can actually support
5
What is left for real search work once reporting time is removed.
Spare hours left in the week
2.6
Zero here means every new search is taken out of an existing one.
If the searches your week supports is lower than the searches you have open, the shortfall is being paid for somewhere, usually in slower submissions.
Chasing feedback is the hidden line item
Most recruiters accept status writing as part of the job and underestimate the chasing. A candidate submitted on Tuesday, a reminder on Thursday, a call on Monday, a nudge to the second interviewer, then a rewrite of the same summary for a hiring manager who never opened the first email. None of that advances the search, and all of it takes the sharpest hours of the day.
The fix is structural rather than personal discipline. When the client has a page showing every submitted candidate, the stage of each and an obvious place to record a decision, the chase becomes one link instead of a fresh email that has to restate the candidate all over again.
What the capacity number should change
If the calculator says your week supports four searches and you have seven open, you have three choices and they are all decisions rather than efforts. Turn down or return the weakest search, cut reporting time per search, or add hours to the desk. Boutique firms usually try the fourth option, which is working later, and that holds until a search that mattered goes cold.
Recalculate after a month of running client facing updates instead of hand written emails. The reporting minutes per search is the input that moves, and because it is multiplied by every open search, a change of fifteen minutes per search per week is worth more capacity than most recruiters expect.
Questions about this calculator
Why forty six weeks instead of fifty two?
It allows for vacation, holidays and the dead weeks around late December when almost nothing moves in a search. If your firm works through those periods, adjust the annual figure upward yourself. The weekly hours number is the one to act on either way.
What should I use for my hourly value?
Take the billings your firm keeps after splits and fallout, then divide by the hours you actually work. Most boutique recruiters find that number is higher than they assume, which is exactly why the reporting cost is worth taking seriously.
Does this work for a solo recruiter?
Yes. Enter your own available hours as the weekly total and keep the rest the same. Solo desks usually show the tightest capacity gap because there is nobody to absorb the chasing when a client goes quiet for a week.
More free tools and working documents
Working document
The client shortlist checklist
Everything that has to be true before a slate goes to a hiring manager, and what to do in the days after it lands.
Now make that number hold across every open search
The figure on this page came from your own placements, your own fee percentage and your own week, so it is worth more than any benchmark. Keeping it honest means every submission, every stage change and every piece of client feedback landing in the same place instead of three reply threads. Ask for a demo and bring the inputs you just entered, and we will show you which part of that number a live shortlist actually moves.