Recruitment and labour hire
Every recruiter you hire makes your software dearer.
Recruitment software is priced per recruiter, without exception. That is a tax on the one thing a growing agency does: hire more recruiters. Twenty consultants is four times the software bill of five, for a product that has not changed.
And you cannot see the price before you are in a sales process. JobAdder publishes four tiers, all banded by user count, and not one number against any of them.
The meter
The product does not get better when you grow. The invoice does.
A five-recruiter agency and a twenty-recruiter agency use identical software. One pays four times as much for it. That is the entire argument for per-seat pricing from the vendor’s side, and there is no version of it that benefits you.
A build inverts it. The system costs once, and the twenty-first recruiter costs exactly nothing. For an agency planning to grow, that is the difference between software as a cost that scales and software as an asset that does not.
What agencies actually ask for
Margin, visible on the placement rather than in a monthly export.
The single most common request we get from agency owners is not a feature. It is seeing gross margin per placement, per consultant, per client, in the moment rather than in a spreadsheet somebody builds at month end.
Second most common is the pipeline in your own words. Every agency runs a different process, and every ATS ships with somebody else’s. Screening, floated, submitted, interview one, interview two, reference, offer, placed, guarantee period: yours, in your order, with your rules about what can skip what.
For labour hire, timesheets and on-hire margin are the whole business, and they are exactly the part that most generic products treat as an add-on.
The scope
What gets built, and what we leave alone.
What we build for an agency
- Candidates, jobs, submissions and placements with your stages and your rules
- Margin per placement, per consultant and per client, live rather than at month end
- Client and contact records that match how your agency is actually organised
- Timesheets and on-hire margin for labour hire, not bolted on afterwards
- Job board posting where it genuinely earns its place
- Compliance documents and expiries tracked against the candidate, with reminders
- Placement guarantees and rebate periods tracked automatically
- Xero or MYOB sync for invoicing
What we will not build
- Payroll and award interpretation for on-hire staff. That is legislated, it changes, and getting it wrong is an underpayment claim
- Background and right-to-work checking. Use the certified providers and store the result
- A job board. If you need reach, buy reach
Where the line sits. Anything legislated or certified stays with a specialist and we integrate with it. Your pipeline, your margins and your process are yours, and those are what a build is for.
The sum
Whatever they quoted you, times sixty.
Do it on your own number
Per-recruiter pricing means this number grows every time you hire. Set the dial to today's bill and then think about what it looks like with four more consultants on it.
Common questions
Answered plainly.
How much does recruitment software cost in Australia?
Nobody publishes it. JobAdder lists four tiers banded by user count and asks you to request a tailored proposal. That is the industry norm rather than an outlier, which is why we wrote a page about the absence rather than pretending to know the number.
When does a custom recruitment system pay for itself?
Broadly once an agency is above about eight recruiters, or paying more than roughly $750 a month. A $9,000 build against $1,200 a month clears in about eight months, and every recruiter hired after that is free rather than another licence forever.
Can it post to Seek and the other job boards?
Where the board offers a posting integration, yes. It is worth being clear that board integrations are the part most likely to need ongoing maintenance, because the boards change them, so we scope it explicitly rather than waving at it.
Do you handle labour hire timesheets?
Yes. Timesheets, approvals and on-hire margin are core rather than an add-on, because for a labour hire business they are the business. Payroll itself stays with a specialist product.
Can we migrate off JobAdder or Bullhorn?
Candidates, jobs, placements and notes come across. Export quality varies by vendor and by plan, so we check what you can actually get out before quoting the migration rather than after.
Where to next
Bring the quote you were given.
Twenty minutes. We run your per-recruiter number out five years, add the hires you are planning, and tell you honestly whether a build clears it for an agency your size.