On this page: Key takeaways · Why do requisition rules of thumb mislead in frontline hiring? · How does a recruiter workload calculator work? · What does a worked example look like? · So how many vacancies can one recruiter handle? · Which inputs move the answer most? · Where do you get your own numbers? · What changes for staffing agencies and in house teams? · What should you not cut to make the numbers fit? · Conclusion · How Radius helps · Frequently asked questions
Key takeaways
- A requisition count hides the work: one vacancy can mean one hire or twenty.
- Count hours per hire step by step, using your own funnel.
- Funnel shape moves the answer more than recruiter speed: interviewing every applicant instead of half cuts our example from 4.2 to 2.7 hires a week.
- Size the team for the busiest week, and never balance the sum by cutting interviews or checks.
Why do requisition rules of thumb mislead in frontline hiring?
A requisition count says nothing about the work behind it. A 2018 article from SHRM, the US HR association, on in house recruiters gave national averages of 30 to 40 open requisitions per recruiter at any one time, and a median of 15 to 20, from SHRM's HR Knowledge Center. It called such figures more an economic indicator than a basis for setting workload [1]. A staffing firm president quoted there thought a high volume recruiter "might be able to handle 20 openings at a time", against four or five for hard to fill roles.
In frontline hiring, count hours instead.
How does a recruiter workload calculator work?
It divides available hiring hours by the hours one hire takes.
- Hiring hours a week = (contract hours minus fixed hours for meetings, reporting and admin) × the share of the year actually worked.
- Minutes per hire = for each step, people who reach it for one hire × minutes per person, added up.
- Vacancy work per hire = minutes for intake, the job advert and updates ÷ hires per vacancy.
- Hires a week = hiring hours a week ÷ hours per hire.
- Vacancies one recruiter can carry = hires a week × target weeks to fill ÷ hires per vacancy.
- Recruiters needed = hires needed in your busiest week ÷ hires a week per recruiter.
"People per hire" comes from your own funnel. If 12 applications produce one hire and you interview half, 6 people reach the interview for every hire.
What does a worked example look like?
Here is one order picker hire. Illustrative example: the inputs are placeholders, not benchmarks or client data.
Hiring hours: a 36 hour contract minus 6 hours for meetings, reporting and admin leaves 30. We assume holidays, training and sickness take about a tenth of the year (CBS puts sickness absence among Dutch employees in 2025 at 5.4% of working days [2]), so 30 × 0.9 = 27 hiring hours a week.
| Step | People per hire | Minutes each | Minutes per hire |
|---|---|---|---|
| Read the application, make first contact | 12 | 5 | 60 |
| Schedule the interview, with reminders and changes | 6 | 5 | 30 |
| Interview and rate the answers | 6 | 30 | 180 |
| Checks before the offer: identity, right to work, certificates | 2 | 20 | 40 |
| Offer and contract (allows for declines) | 1.5 | 20 | 30 |
| Confirm the start, follow up after the first shift | 1 | 20 | 20 |
| Vacancy work: 120 minutes shared by 5 hires | 24 | ||
| Total | 384 minutes = 6.4 hours |
Capacity: 27 ÷ 6.4 = about 4.2 hires a week, or about 18 a month.
Hires a week for one recruiter, worked example
27 hours = (36 − 6) × 0.9; 6.4 hours = 384 minutes for one order picker hire
See how these steps can sit on one candidate record: How Radius works.
So how many vacancies can one recruiter handle?
It depends on how many hires each vacancy needs:
- Large vacancies. Five order pickers each, filled within three weeks: 4.2 × 3 ÷ 5 = about 2.5 vacancies open at once.
- Single hire vacancies. All two hours of vacancy work fall on one hire: 8.0 hours per hire and 3.4 hires a week, so about 10 vacancies open at once over three weeks.
Ten vacancies or two and a half: same person, same hours. A fixed cap on requisitions per recruiter cannot see that difference.
Vacancies one recruiter can carry at once
Same person, same hours, three weeks to fill
To size a team, start from the busiest week: if it needs 15 hires, 15 ÷ 4.2 = 3.6, so plan for four recruiters. Our article on frontline hiring's capacity problem explains why the worst week, not the best, should set the design.
Which inputs move the answer most?
Your funnel matters more than recruiter speed. Each row changes one input:
The two biggest shifts come from how many people reach the interview for each hire. Applications per hire is the input you control least: in the second quarter of 2026 the Netherlands had 95 vacancies for every 100 unemployed people, according to provisional, seasonally adjusted CBS figures [3]. Check it every quarter.
Where do you get your own numbers?
From one ordinary week of timed work and your last twenty hires.
- Time one week by step. Tally minutes against the table's rows, then repeat in your busiest week.
- Count the funnel. For your last twenty hires in one role family, pull applications, interviews, offers and starts from your applicant tracking system, and divide each by twenty.
If the steps are unclear, start with our one hour recruitment process audit; How to Run Structured Interviews at High Volume models the interview step alone.
What changes for staffing agencies and in house teams?
Agencies carry more vacancy work; in house teams wait on managers.
At an agency, intake calls and client updates repeat for every client, so many small vacancies inflate the vacancy work row. Calculate per client or branch, with a shorter row for returning workers whose checks are still current.
In house, the hiring manager's diary sets the pace: two interview slots a week cap hires before the recruiter does.
What should you not cut to make the numbers fit?
Do not cut the interview or the checks; cut waiting and repeat work.
When the sum falls short, two shortcuts tempt: skipping interview questions, or moving checks to after the offer. Both cut hours on paper and move the cost to the first shift, when a missing certificate becomes an empty shift. Which checks can happen before the offer covers that step.
Better targets are rescheduling, chasing answers and retyping details between systems. If a tool takes over part of a step, rerun the sum with minutes from your own pilot and keep a person making each hiring decision.
Conclusion
There is no fixed number of vacancies per recruiter, only a method: hiring hours ÷ hours per hire, converted into vacancies. Plan for the busiest week and protect the steps that produce evidence.
How Radius helps
Radius Hire is the AI hiring platform for frontline roles. It puts sourcing, a structured first interview and the evidence for each requirement on one candidate record, so a recruiter can see what each decision rests on.
- The AI Sourcer is built to bring applicants from the channels you connect, such as job boards, and from your own candidate records into one pipeline, with the source recorded.
- The AI Interviewer gives applicants a short, structured voice interview on their phone, in the language set for the role, whenever it suits them. Each interview can be kept as a recording, a transcript and a summary.
- Match shows, for each requirement, whether it is backed by a document or a check, rests only on what the candidate said, or is still missing.
- Radius for agencies explains how Radius is built for agencies that recruit for several clients and sites.
Radius never rejects a candidate on its own. A recruiter reviews the evidence, can overrule anything Radius presents and makes every hiring decision. Radius is new, so this article explains how the product works rather than claiming results.