A DIY executive search runs 150 to 200 hours across six to nine months, and reaches perhaps a third of the market. These two calculators put your own numbers against that. The first prices your time against the operating output it displaces. The second counts the hours the funnel actually takes.
Every executive who has run a search themselves describes it the same way afterwards: it was not the interviews. Interviews are the part you plan for. It was everything wrapped around them, arriving in fifteen-minute pieces between the work you were actually hired to do.
Two costs come out of that, and neither appears in a budget. The first is what your attention was doing before the search took a fifth of it. The second is the extra weeks a part-time search adds to an empty seat. Both are larger than the fee they are being weighed against, in most cases. Set the dials below to your own numbers and see whether that holds for you. If it does not, the page says so.
Payroll is the smallest line. The expensive part is the operating output that stops being steered while a senior operator works a requisition, and the weeks the seat stays empty because a part-time search runs at part-time speed.
Payroll is loaded at 1.30× cash compensation and spread over 46 working weeks. Displaced output is the share of steered revenue that tracks this person's attention, taken at your contribution margin. Deferred growth is the run-rate they do not add during the search, carried across the remainder of the year. The SIG side assumes a 38-day shortlist inside a nine-week search.
The fair objection: you pay that executive whether or not they are recruiting, so the payroll line is not new cash out the door. It is here because it is the line no one budgets. The two lines under it are the ones worth arguing about.
One hire is not one conversation. To make an offer that gets accepted you need a slate; to build a slate you need screens; to get screens you need replies; to get replies you need to review and approach people who are not looking. Every stage above the offer multiplies.
| Stage | People | Minutes each | Hours |
|---|---|---|---|
| Total |
Stage volumes are derived backwards from the seats you want to fill. Minutes per stage include what surrounds the work (scheduling, follow-ups, notes, debriefs), then carry a 1.2× fragmentation allowance, because these hours arrive in pieces between everything else you do, and your practice multiplier on top. At a 10% reply rate you are working the part of the market that answers approaches from strangers. The rest of it is reached by people who talk to it every day.
Published SIG figures. The 38-day average time to a curated shortlist and the 3 to 5 candidate slate are SIG's own search data, 2022 to 2024. The 150 to 200 hours, six to nine months, and 20 to 30% market reach for a self-run search are from our article on DIY executive search.
How the two line up. The published 150 to 200 hour range assumes someone who runs searches regularly. Calculator Two reaches it on the "I run searches constantly" setting. The default here, a few searches a year, carries a 1.25 multiplier, which is why it reads higher.
Estimates you should overwrite. Reply rates, offer acceptance, and minutes per stage are starting points drawn from senior search work generally. Every one of them is a dial. If your own numbers are better, use them, and the model follows.
What these calculators are. Illustrations for a decision, not a quote. Fees vary by role, level, and scope, and the fee slider here is a range you set. Nothing on this page is an offer of terms or a guarantee of outcome.
Twenty minutes with a SIG partner is enough to say whether the seat you are filling is worth a search or a referral. No obligation either way.
Book a 20-Min Call →Or email us directly: info@joinsig.com · 310.455.6139