What does it cost to hire a recruitment administrator in the UK?

An employer pays about £30,747 a year for a full-time recruitment administrator on the median salary, once employer National Insurance and the minimum pension contribution are added, and about £32,747 in the first year with the cost of recruiting. The Office for National Statistics' Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings for 2025 puts the full-time median at £26,851, in the group for human resources administrative occupations, where it codes the title, and the middle half of that group earn between £24,827 and £31,843.

How much is a recruitment administrator paid?

The ONS occupational index codes "recruitment administrator", and "administrator" at a recruitment agency, to unit group 4136, human resources administrative occupations. The ONS rates the group's median as reasonably precise rather than precise, so treat it as a guide.

Adverts offer more. Reed.co.uk's salary checker put the average advertised salary at £30,860 on 3 October 2026, around four thousand pounds above the ONS group's median, though it is an average of only 68 live adverts. Part of that is time, since the ONS figure is for the year to April 2025, and part is that the group is wider than the title. Budget on the advertised figure if you want the post filled this quarter.

What does an agency pay on top of the salary?

• Employer National Insurance. The rate for the 2026 to 2027 tax year is 15% of pay above the secondary threshold of £5,000 a year. On the median of £26,851 that is £3,278. If your agency qualifies for the Employment Allowance, it takes up to £10,500 a year off your total employer National Insurance bill.

• Pension. At least 3% of qualifying earnings, the slice of pay between £6,240 and £50,270 a year. On the median that is about £618.

• Holiday. 5.6 weeks of paid holiday a year, 28 days for a five-day week.

• Recruitment. The CIPD's Resourcing and talent planning report 2026 gives a median cost per hire of £2,000 for employees below senior management. It is a survey median, and the sample is small: the 223 employers able to estimate it.

Salary, National Insurance and pension together come to £30,747 a year at the median, and £32,747 with the recruitment cost in the first year. A laptop, an ATS seat and the first slow weeks come on top, and on the advertised average the sum is higher again. The same items for any employee, with the rules behind each, are set out in what it costs to employ anyone in the UK.

What does a resourcer cost?

A resourcer is advertised at an average of £29,998 a year, according to Reed.co.uk's salary checker on 3 October 2026, from only 35 adverts. The ONS has no entry for the title. It codes the nearest ones, recruitment researcher and recruitment assistant, to unit group 3571 with HR officers and recruitment consultants, whose full-time median for 2025 is £35,194: a grade above the resourcer who supports them, so a ceiling rather than a guide. At the advertised average the employer adds £3,750 in National Insurance and £713 in pension, which makes £34,461 a year and £36,461 in the first year with the CIPD's recruitment median. Adverts may add a bonus or commission on placements, which these figures leave out.

What does a recruitment administrator do all week?

Adverts for the job describe it the same way. The administrator keeps candidate records and the CRM up to date, posts the adverts and screens the applications. They schedule interviews, relaying times between the hiring manager and the candidate, send the confirmations and the instructions, and chase the feedback. They prepare offer documents and confirm start dates. In an agency that supplies temps the same desk often collects the compliance documents and chases the timesheets before the payroll cut-off, and the chase matters: in Great Britain an employment business must pay a temp for the hours worked whether or not the hirer has authorised the timesheet. Under the Conduct Regulations it must also confirm a work-seeker's identity, experience and qualifications before supplying them. All of it is done between the phone calls that interrupt it, which is why the ATS drifts away from what is happening on the desk.

Can AI do part of a recruitment administrator's job?

An AI worker can take the relays and the records. In a recruitment agency an AI worker can take on candidate pipeline and ATS upkeep. Working from the applicant file a person exports, it can log each applicant in your ATS, check them against the records already there, attach the CV, set the pipeline stage and post a summary in Microsoft Teams. Routine records can go in under a standing instruction, if you choose to give one; anything else it writes waits for a person to confirm it. CV screening and shortlisting reads every application against the criteria the consultant approved for the job and returns a ranked list with a reason for each person. The right-to-work checks role asks each new temp for a share code or says which documents to bring, tracks what is outstanding and diarises the follow-up dates. Interview scheduling and timesheet chasing take the email relay, the confirmations and reminders, and the weekly chase before the cut-off.

What stays with your people

The phone stays with them, because an AI worker works in writing, so the call to a candidate who has gone quiet, the hiring manager who prefers to talk and the temp whose hours are disputed are theirs. So does sourcing on LinkedIn, which does not permit software to act on its site: a person searches and exports, and the AI worker starts from the file. The right to work check itself stays with a person on your team, who carries it out on the documents the AI worker has gathered, because the Home Office holds the employment business responsible for it. Any decision about a candidate, which the ICO's guidance treats as having a significant effect on them, is a consultant's: the agent can rank and give reasons, and a consultant decides. And every conversation with a candidate about a role, an offer or a rejection stays with your people.

Should you hire, or split the job?

List the administrator's week and mark each line as a relay or a record, or as a call or a conversation. If the first list is the longer one, an AI worker can take it. If you still need a person, you need one for the second list, which is a different advert from the one you were about to write. Our comparison of AI staff with hiring an administrator sets the two side by side. The general case is made in what it costs to hire an administrator and, for your sector, in how to scale a recruitment agency without hiring more staff. Our starting price is on the homepage.

In an agency an AI worker would take the relays and the records in the ATS you already use, and every call and every decision about a candidate would stay with your people. Make the records that slip while the desk is on the phone the first thing you talk to our agent about.