Annual external spend
Your monthly sourcing spend multiplied by twelve. This is the simplest baseline for tracking whether database reuse changes external acquisition dependence.
How dependent is your agency on buying or finding new candidates every month?
A growing candidate database should eventually create some reuse. This calculator turns external sourcing spend and recruiter sourcing time into a simple operating baseline you can track over time.
Calculate sourcing dependenceRuns locally in your browser.
Build your current sourcing baseline
Use a consistent monthly definition. Do not include costs you would not compare again next month.
What the calculator measures
Spend per new candidate
Monthly external sourcing spend divided by newly sourced candidates. It is only meaningful if the candidate count is measured consistently.
Recruiter sourcing hours
Recruiters × sourcing hours per week × 52. This exposes capacity consumed before candidate conversations, submissions and placements happen.
Reduction scenarios
10%, 20% and 30% scenarios show arithmetic only: what spend and hours would look like if external sourcing dependence fell by that amount.
What counts as sourcing spend?
There is no universal accounting definition, so choose a practical one and keep it stable. Depending on your operation, that may include job boards, paid sourcing databases, candidate-acquisition advertising and sourcing tools whose primary purpose is finding new candidate supply.
Do not change the definition every month. A consistent imperfect baseline is more useful than a perfect number that cannot be compared over time.
Why time belongs next to cash spend
An agency can have modest software spend and still be highly sourcing-dependent if recruiters spend a large part of the week rebuilding candidate lists externally. That is why the calculator keeps cash and recruiter hours separate rather than pretending one converts cleanly into the other.
If you later want a labour-cost model, use a real loaded hourly cost from your own business. Do not apply an invented industry salary to recruiter time.
What a reduction scenario does — and does not — mean
If the calculator shows a 20% scenario, it is simply applying 20% to your current spend and sourcing hours. It does not claim that candidate reactivation, a new ATS or automation will produce that result.
The useful next question is operational: could better candidate rediscovery, cleaner data or structured reactivation reduce repeated external sourcing without reducing candidate quality or placement output?
When high sourcing dependence is not automatically a problem
- the agency has entered a new market or role family where historical coverage is weak
- candidate supply changes quickly enough that old records have low relevance
- growth requires materially more candidate inventory than the existing database can provide
- external channels are producing strong candidate quality at an acceptable cost
The goal is not to minimise sourcing at all costs. It is to know when you are repeatedly paying for discovery that your existing database should already support.
Frequently asked questions
What should I include in monthly sourcing spend?
Include the recurring external candidate-acquisition costs you want to monitor. Keep the same categories month to month.
Is spend per candidate a quality metric?
No. It says nothing about candidate quality, fit or placement outcome. Use it only as a cost baseline alongside downstream recruitment metrics.
Should we try to reduce sourcing by 30%?
Not because the calculator shows the number. The scenarios are there to quantify scale. Set operational targets only after you know which sourcing activity can realistically be replaced by database reuse without harming delivery.
Find out whether the candidate database can reduce repeated sourcing
The Database Health audit connects sourcing dependence to utilisation, re-engagement maturity and recruiter capacity.