What does recruitment marketing cost?

What the costs depend on

• How many vacancies or clients you want per month. Volume is the biggest cost driver.
• How scarce your audience is. A production worker costs a fraction of a certified engineer.
• Which regions you recruit in. Thin supply means more expensive ad auctions.
• Whether you want only the candidate side, only the client side, or both.
• Ad budget: at nearly every agency a separate line on top of the fee. Always ask for the total monthly cost.

The four pricing models

• Hourly rate — you pay for time, not for results. The risk sits entirely with you.
• Fixed project fee — clear up front, but recruitment is never a project that ends.
• Monthly subscription or retainer — the most common model in the Netherlands. You keep paying, including in a month without results.
• No-cure-no-pay — you pay for what is delivered. This is our model, with a 7-day delivery guarantee.

What an in-house recruitment marketer costs

The alternative to outsourcing is hiring someone. Public salary data for that role varies: Glassdoor Netherlands lands on a base salary of €3,000 to €4,000 per month based on 30 submissions; Indeed Netherlands reports €3,780 per month for the broader marketer role based on 2,600 submissions.

But the salary is the smallest part. Add it up: employer contributions, ad budget you spend regardless, tooling and job board subscriptions, and three to six months of ramp-up during which nothing comes out yet. And if that person leaves, your campaigns stop.

• Salary plus employer contributions as a fixed monthly cost, regardless of results.
• Ad budget and tooling come on top of that, just as with an agency.
• Three to six months before a new marketer pays off.
• One person means one skill set — campaigns, sourcing, data and copy are rarely combined in the same person.

The Dutch benchmarks that actually exist

Plenty of numbers circulate in this field without a source. The only structural Dutch measurement is the Recruitment Key Figures Study, carried out by Intelligence Group together with Compagnon, Werf& and the Academy for Labour Market Communications.

• Cost per hire: €3,818 for 2020, €4,088 for 2019. The 2019 edition measured an average of €4,494.
• Time to hire: agency recruiters 46 days on average, corporate recruiters 65 days.
• Fulfilment: agencies filled 59% of their vacancies, corporate recruiters 87%.
• Vacancies in portfolio: agency recruiters 8 on average, corporate recruiters 20.

The calculation that really matters

The question is not what an agency costs, but what an open assignment costs. At a fulfilment rate of 59%, four in ten assignments go nowhere — that is lost margin, lost hours and often a lost client.

Set against that what we delivered in real campaigns: 200+ account managers in 90 days at €8.96 per candidate for Giant Leap Recruitment, and 107 engineers in 90 days at €30.51 per candidate for Bureau In Techniek.

Because we work 100% no-cure-no-pay, the maths is simple for you: no delivery, no invoice.

Sources

• Recruitment Kengetallen Onderzoek 2021 — Werf&
• Werving van een werknemer kost gemiddeld €4.494 — Werf&
• Salaris recruitment marketeer — Glassdoor Nederland
• Salaris marketeer — Indeed Nederland