Stop Guessing Recruiter Headcount: A Startup's 1-Min Calculator 🧮

A tool for founders, VCs, and talent leads to estimate recruiting team needs in 1 minute

Scaling your startup? Then you probably ask this all the time:

"Do we need another recruiter?"

It's tricky. Hire too slow, and nothing gets done. Hire too fast, and you burn through cash. I've been there, and it's tough to get right.

Guessing feels bad. Crazy spreadsheets are worse. I wanted a really simple way to estimate how many recruiters my startups need, based on what's actually going on.

So, last night, I built this calculator while playing around and learning some lovely tools (like Gemini, Cursor AI, and GitHub). It's pretty straightforward. Think of it as my V1 experiment – I'd love feedback to make it better and need some testers!

Here it is:

🔗 The Recruiting Capacity Calculator

I made it to help all of us (founders, recruiters, VCs, talent folks) get a quick idea of how many recruiters or sourcers we might need (based on our hiring plans and how hard the roles are), and also see how a little automation might free you up from manual work so you can focus on creative ways to find the best talent.

Why even bother planning this?

1. 🧠 Hire Smarter: Keep things moving without wasting money.

2. 🎯 Reach Your Goals: Make sure you have enough people to hire the team you need.

3. 🧮 Explain Your Needs: Gives you a solid number to talk about budgets.

4. 👷🏻‍♀️ Build the Right Team: Helps figure out if you need recruiters, sourcers, or both.

How it works (my logic behind it)

This isn’t just random numbers. Here’s how I built the logic.

1. Base time: I started with 25 hours as a guess for how long it takes to hire one "standard" person (like a mid-level non-tech role).

2. Multipliers - difficulty scores: But let's be real, some hires are way harder! So, I added scores that change the time based on:

   • Type of role: Tech roles? Harder (Score ≈ 1.4x). Super niche roles? Even harder (Score ≈ 1.7x+). Support roles? Maybe easier (Score ≈ 0.9x).

   • Level: Hiring a VP? Takes way more work (Score ≈ 2.5x+) than hiring someone junior (Score ≈ 0.8x).

   • Location: Hiring just in one city like London? Tough competition (Score ≈ 1.5x). Hiring remote? Bigger pool (Score ≈ 1.0x).

   • Company Stage: Early startup? Lots of selling the dream (Score ≈ 1.3x). Big company? Maybe more process (Score ≈ 1.1x).

   • Pay: Paying great? Easier (Score ≈ 0.8x). Paying low? Takes more effort (Score ≈ 1.6x).

   • How picky: Just need good folks? Standard effort (Score ≈ 1.0x). Only want absolute superstars? Takes much longer (Score ≈ 1.6x-2.2x).

3. Adds up hours: It figures out the total hours needed for all the hires you plan to make.

4. Recruiter time: Recruiters need breaks and meetings! So, I figured they have about 128 work hours a month for pure hiring tasks.

5. Using helper tools? If you use tools like AI screeners or auto-schedulers a lot, I estimated it saves about 30% effort.

6. Team setup: It works whether you have recruiters doing everything (Full-cycle) or a Split team (sourcers finding, recruiters closing).

Okay, that's the thinking behind it. Here's how to use it:

How to use it (it's quick!) 🚀

1. Go here: https://terkins-star.github.io/calculator/

2. Add Roles: Click "Add Role Profile" for each job type you're hiring for.

   • Fill in: How many per month? What kind of job? Level? Where?

   • Add more roles if you need to.

3. Company details: Pick your company stage, pay level, how picky you are, and if you use helper tools.

4. Team type: Are your recruiters doing it all, or is it split?

5. Click "Calculate FTE"!

What the numbers mean (let's do an example)

So, what does it tell you? Let's try an example:

• You Need:

  • 3 Senior Software Engineers (Tech, Senior, Hiring in Berlin only)

  • 2 Mid-Level Sales Reps (Sales, Mid-Level, Remote)

• Company is: Growing, pays decent (75th-90th percentile), wants good people ("High Bar"), no major tools used yet.

• Team: Recruiters do everything (Full-Cycle).

I put that in, and it estimated needing ~2.1 recruiters (FTE).

It also shows why:

1. Where time goes (estimate):

   (This helps show where the workload is!)

   • Maybe ~105 hrs/month just finding people & looking at resumes (needs ~730 resumes!)

   • Maybe ~110 hrs/month doing calls and interviews.

   • Maybe ~40 hrs/month on offers.

   • Maybe ~25 hrs/month scheduling things.

2. Total recruiters needed: 2.1 FTE.

3. Split team numbers? Not for this example, but it would show Sourcer vs. Recruiter if you picked that.

Just remember: You have to hire whole people! So 2.1 FTE means you need to plan for 3 recruiters.

Things to keep in mind

• It's a guide, not gospel: I built it based on what I've seen, but every company is different. Use it as a starting point.

• Your own numbers are best: If you know how long it really takes your team to hire certain roles, trust that data! This is just a general model. Tweak the assumptions if needed based on what you know.

• What it doesn't know: Does everyone want to work for you (great brand)? Or is your interview process super slow? This calculator doesn't know that stuff, though things like 'Company Stage' hint at it.

• It's about numbers, not people skills: This helps with planning, but good recruiting is still about connecting with people!

• Writing novels? If your outreach emails are super long and personalized for everyone, maybe mentally buffer the sourcing time a bit more than the model does automatically.

So, what's the bottom line on realism? It's a valuable estimation tool and a great starting point for capacity discussions. It's likely "directionally correct" – harder roles will show higher FTE needs. But don't treat the output number as absolute fact without validating and likely calibrating the assumptions (especially multipliers) against your own internal data. It simplifies reality, which is its strength (ease of use) and weakness (precision).

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Further reading / resources

If you want to dive deeper into capacity planning, benchmarks, or startup hiring, here are a few resources I find helpful or that came up while I was putting this together:

• Recruiting Benchmarks Reports: Good for context, but remember your own situation is unique!

  • Gem 2025 Recruiting Benchmarks Report: https://www.gem.com/resource/recruiting-benchmarks

  • SmartRecruiters Global Recruiting Benchmarks 2025: https://www.smartrecruiters.com/resources/landing/global-recruiting-benchmarks-2025/

  • PinpointHQ - Hires Per Recruiter Trend: https://trends.pinpointhq.com/hires-per-recruiter

• Capacity Planning & Metrics: Different ways people think about modeling and measuring recruiting.

  • Coda - Recruiting Capacity Planning Template by Rosetta Phan: https://coda.io/@rosetta-phan/recruiting-capacity-planning

  • AIHR - 23 Recruiting Metrics You Should Know: https://www.aihr.com/blog/recruiting-metrics/

  • Workable - Time to Fill / Time to Hire FAQ: https://resources.workable.com/tutorial/faq-time-to-fill-hire

• Startup Headcount Planning: Advice specifically for growing companies.

  • SignalFire - Mastering Headcount Planning for Startups: https://www.signalfire.com/blog/startup-headcount-planning-guide

  • SignalFire - Startup's Guide to Headcount, Capacity, and Location: https://www.signalfire.com/blog/startups-guide-to-headcount-capacity-and-location-strategy

• General Startup Hiring Thoughts:

  • Elad Gil's Blog (Lots of great startup advice. He mentions that very early companies hiring <3 people/month might lean on ads/referrals before a full-time recruiter): https://www.google.com/search?q=http://blog.eladgil.com/