Recruitment BD funnel planner

Blank inputs are intentional. The example button uses invented arithmetic assumptions, not Clientflow results or pricing.

Enter your assumptions to calculate a scenario.

Method: work backwards from the objective by dividing by each stage rate and rounding up at each step. Weekly pace is total contacted employers divided by weeks. Fractional rates and timing make this an approximate planning exercise. Zero conversion cannot support a positive objective; revisit the bottleneck rather than dividing by zero. Placements, fees, profit and capacity constraints are not forecast here.

Use the same period and currency for both options. Enter total costs for that period, including setup charges. Include internal staffing once: if hours × hourly cost already includes salary, do not also enter that salary in the service/staffing box. Hourly cost is your loaded cost or explicitly chosen opportunity-cost assumption, not an industry rate.

Calculate costs after entering both options.

Total = service/staffing cost + extra tools/data + retained hours × hourly cost. Cost per planned outcome uses the same funnel scenario for both options; it does not establish that either option can deliver those outcomes. Tax, delivery costs and other costs are included only if you put them in your inputs. Lower cost is not automatically better scope or value. For fee revenue scenarios, use the existing annual economics calculator.

Use the actual proposals. Keep a field “Unknown” until you have evidence; do not infer coverage from a supplier’s service name. The count below checks coverage only and does not weight quality, commercial risk or the importance of any missing responsibility.

Enter counts for four review weeks; leave unrecorded values blank. No employer names are needed. This is an activity log, not the mature cohort used for the funnel rates. Employers can recur across weeks, so adding weekly counts does not produce distinct employers for the month. Later outcomes may relate to earlier outreach.

Download to keep your edits before leaving the page.

Choose a stage to see a review question. This is a diagnostic prompt, not a proven cause.

A job advert is a reason to research an employer, not evidence that it wants a recruitment agency. Use this six-check framework to separate confirmed facts, unknowns and unsuitable opportunities. Keep the underlying public source and check date in your own research record. The tool needs no company, candidate or contact details.

Hypothetical example: a specialist engineering desk verifies a current role on an employer’s careers page and confirms its own delivery fit. Recruiter openness, the supplier decision route, commercial fit and a meeting purpose remain unknown. That supports further research or a relevant question; it does not yet support labelling a meeting qualified.

The ONS Vacancy Survey methodology concerns employers actively seeking external recruits. That definition does not establish agency demand. Google’s job-posting guidance requires expired listings to be handled appropriately; a listing’s presence in search therefore still needs a current-source check. These sources support the distinction between an advert and a verified current requirement, not a conversion forecast or endorsement of this checklist. The six checks are Clientflow’s operational framework.

For the next decision, use the reply workflow and supplier-route decision tree. Unknown is a valid research outcome. A refusal, opt-out or delivery mismatch is a reason to stop or exclude the opportunity.