Budgeting recruiting spend ahead of a hiring wave requires a different tool than measuring what you actually spent afterward. This calculator is built for the planning side: enter your expected hiring volume and channel mix to get a full-period budget before you post a single job.
This tool and our Cost Per Hire Calculator answer related but different questions on purpose. This one is forward-looking: given your planned hiring volume and expected channel mix, what should you set aside as a budget. Cost Per Hire uses the standard SHRM/ANSI formula to measure actual cost once hiring is complete, internal and external costs divided by the number of hires made. Compare the two once a hiring cycle finishes: if actual cost per hire runs well above what this budget implied, that is a signal your channel mix or agency reliance shifted from plan, worth investigating before the next cycle.
Agency fees are usually the single largest lever in this budget. A hiring plan that shifts even a handful of roles from agency-sourced to direct-sourced can meaningfully change the total, which is why this tool asks for agency hires and fees separately rather than folding them into a single average cost figure.
Yes, if your team has dedicated recruiters, their allocated cost for the period is a real part of your recruiting spend, even though it feels like a fixed cost rather than a per-hire variable one.
Agency fees in India are commonly quoted as a percentage of the hired candidate’s first-year salary, typically in the 8 to 20% range depending on seniority and role scarcity, rather than a flat rupee figure; adjust your input accordingly if your agreements work that way.
Referral hiring usually carries a much lower direct cost, often just a referral bonus, so treat those hires similarly to direct-sourced hires in this calculator rather than folding them into the agency-fee line.
Run your actual figures through our Cost Per Hire Calculator after the cycle closes, and check our Recruitment Funnel Calculator if the actual cost ran higher than planned, a weak conversion rate at any stage usually explains a budget overrun better than the channel costs alone.