Best ats for staffing agencies

The best ATS for a staffing agency is a different purchase from the best ATS for the company paying that agency, and this sheet is for the second one deciding whether to keep paying. Enter the starting salary, the agency's fee percentage, what it costs you to fill the same role in-house, the hires like this you make in a year, and what an in-house recruiter would cost. It returns the fee on one role, the difference against doing it yourself, a year of hiring each way, and the number of hires a year at which the recruiter pays for themselves. On the worked example, a $90,000 role at 20% is an $18,000 fee against $3,200 to fill it yourself: $14,800 of difference per role, and at $85,000 for a recruiter the break-even is 5.7 hires a year. Six hires a year makes the recruiter the cheaper option by $3,800; five makes the agency cheaper. That is the whole decision, and it is arithmetic.

The in-house number has to be honest

Take it from the cost per hire sheet on this site, with your own hours in it. Comparing a real agency invoice against an in-house cost that pretends recruiting is free produces an answer that is always the same and always wrong.

Break-even is a range, not a line

5.7 hires on the worked example. Below it the agency wins, above it the recruiter does, and near it the decision turns on things this sheet cannot weigh: how lumpy the hiring is, and whether you can keep a recruiter busy in a quiet quarter.

Agencies are not all or nothing

The most common honest answer is a recruiter for the roles you hire repeatedly and an agency for the rare and senior ones. Run the sheet twice, once per group, rather than once for everything.