Decision guide · Care & social care
What it costs to hire in care and social care by salary band, what an advert really draws, how long a search takes — and which of the three routes suits your role. Every figure comes from adverts we placed and the 4 care & social care roles we filled.
Recruiting in care and social care through us costs a flat £1,500–£4,000 +VAT at the salaries we have filled care & social care roles at (£26,000–£60,000), against £5,200–£12,000 at a 20% agency fee, with no commission. Our 4 filled care & social care roles took a median of 63.5 days from brief to hire, against 42 days across all 46 roles we have filled. Advertising it yourself starts at £399 +VAT: across 72 care & social care adverts we placed, the median drew 35 applications in 28 days (31 across all sectors) and 13% drew fewer than five.
| Option | What you pay at £55,000, the middle of the care & social care roles we have filled | What you get | Best when |
|---|---|---|---|
| Advertise it yourself | £399–£599 +VAT per advert | Your advert across the major job boards for 28 days; you screen, interview and chase. Care & social care adverts drew a median of 35 applications. | The role is frontline and your service can interview quickly, check DBS and right to work, and still look after people while you do it. Care adverts at entry-level pay draw volume, so the work is in screening, not in finding applicants. |
| Premium Hire | £3,000 +VAT (£45,000 – £59,999) | A recruiter advertises, headhunts and screens, and presents a shortlist. Our care & social care median: 63.5 days. | The role carries a registration or leads a service through inspection, the pool of people who can hold it is small and already employed, or the volume of unsuitable applications is costing your managers time they do not have. |
| Percentage agency | about £11,000 at a 20% fee | An agency searches and you pay a share of the first-year salary when someone starts. | You would rather pay nothing unless somebody starts, and the percentage is affordable at this salary. |
Fees exclude VAT. The 20% figure is the illustration used across this site, not a quote from any named agency; percentage agencies set their own rates.
| Advertised salary | Adverts | Median applications | Drew fewer than five |
|---|---|---|---|
| £20,000–£24,999 | 2 | Under the reporting floor (fewer than 8 adverts) | |
| £25,000–£29,999 | 38 | 61 | 8% |
| £30,000–£34,999 | 9 | 27 | 11% |
| £35,000–£39,999 | 10 | 21 | 10% |
| £40,000–£49,999 | 8 | 19 | 25% |
| £50,000–£59,999 | 4 | Under the reporting floor (fewer than 8 adverts) | |
| Hidden or not stated | 1 | Under the reporting floor (fewer than 8 adverts) | |
| All care & social care adverts | 72 | 35 | 13% |
| All sectors | 1,141 | 31 | 14% |
Source: TalentFinder UK Job Advert Response Benchmark, Q4 2026, talentfinderuk.co.uk/data/job-advert-response-benchmark — applications per 28-day advert placed through our own advertising account, 2025-10-03 to 2026-09-05. A band with fewer than 8 adverts publishes no figure. Time to first application is not measured.
| Filled roles | Median days | Middle half | Fastest | Slowest | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Care & social care | 4 | 63.5 | 45–82.3 | 27 | 101 |
| All sectors | 46 | 42 | 29.3–68.8 | 14 | 169 |
Source: TalentFinder UK Time to Fill by Sector, Q3 2026, talentfinderuk.co.uk/data/time-to-fill-uk-by-sector — days from the role opening to it closing as filled, across roles we filled and publish individually. It measures roles that were filled, so it is not a fill rate.
| Role we filled | Salary (middle of the range) | Our fixed fee | At a 20% fee | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Operations & Compliance Manager — Adult Social Care | £57,500 | £3,000 +VAT | £11,500 | £8,500 |
| Registered Manager | £55,000 | £3,000 +VAT | £11,000 | £8,000 |
| Senior Support Worker | £30,000 | £2,000 +VAT | £6,000 | £4,000 |
Salary is the middle of the range written on the vacancy; the fee follows the salary agreed. 1 role was paid hourly and is not shown here.
A senior leadership hire inside a provider carrying an Outstanding rating. The rating is the constraint: whoever takes the role inherits responsibility for keeping it, so regulatory depth was not negotiable and neither was cultural fit.
Frontline care attracts applications in volume, and that is the difficulty rather than the relief. The agency is small and family-run, its clients see the same faces every week, and a wrong hire is felt immediately by the people receiving care.
A provider of therapeutic residential care for children and young people aged 11 to 17 with emotional and behavioural difficulties needed a Registered Manager for a regulated children's home. The record required is narrow: two years with BESD children in the last five, a year at senior level, a Level 5 Diploma, and Ofsted inspections managed to at least Good.
A growing care organisation supporting both adults and children wanted a Senior Support Worker to mentor care staff, review care plans and risk assessments, support audits and safeguarding, and help with recruitment and training. Experience across adult and children's services plus a minimum Level 3 qualification narrowed the field considerably in Lancashire.
Regulated roles carry a registration and an inspection history attached to a real person, and the wrong hire is a compliance problem rather than only a performance one. The pool of people who can hold a registration is small and everyone in the region is chasing the same names.
Registration status and any conditions on it, the inspection outcomes of services they have run, DBS and right-to-work before anyone reaches an interview, and whether their experience matches the service type — residential, domiciliary and supported living are not interchangeable.
| Role | Location | Days to fill | Candidates screened |
|---|---|---|---|
| Operations & Compliance Manager — Adult Social Care | West London, office-based with flexibility | 101 | 53 |
| Domiciliary Care Worker | The South Coast | 51 | 58 |
| Registered Manager | Manchester, full time | 27 | 1 |
| Senior Support Worker | Lancashire | 76 | 33 |
Median 63.5 days, slower than our overall median of 42 across 46 filled roles. Full funnels for every one of these are on the care & social care case studies.
A vacancy of that length at the pay currently advertised for a registered manager (£55,000) nets out at about £6,576 in output not produced, less the salary not paid — the cost of vacancy calculator shows every step of the sum. Before you settle on a salary, check what the local market is advertising for the same job title. Our published data covers both halves: how many applications an advert draws by sector and how long a vacancy takes to fill by sector.
| Salary band | Our flat fee | A 20% agency would bill |
|---|---|---|
| Roles up to £30,000 | £1,500 +VAT | up to £6,000 |
| £30,000 – £44,999 | £2,000 +VAT | £6,000 – £9,000 |
| £45,000 – £59,999 | £3,000 +VAT | £9,000 – £12,000 |
| £60,000 – £79,999 | £4,000 +VAT | £12,000 – £16,000 |
The care & social care roles above paid between £26,000 and £60,000, which puts most of them in the £1,500–£4,000 bands. Every band gets a five-point review of the role, a dedicated recruiter and a screened shortlist.
A flat fee by salary band, agreed before the search and unchanged by the salary you agree: Roles up to £30,000 — £1,500 +VAT; £30,000 – £44,999 — £2,000 +VAT; £45,000 – £59,999 — £3,000 +VAT; £60,000 – £79,999 — £4,000 +VAT. There is no commission when you hire, and it starts with a five-point review of your role. The care & social care roles we have filled paid between £26,000 and £60,000, so most sit in the £1,500–£4,000 range against £5,200–£12,000 at a 20% agency.
Across the 4 care & social care vacancies we have filled and publish in full, the median was 63.5 days from brief to hire — slower than our overall median of 42 days across 46 roles. The fastest took 27 days and the slowest 101. We publish the slow ones too.
No. The fee is fixed by salary band before the search starts and does not move with the salary agreed. That is the whole point of the model, and the saving against a percentage grows as the role gets more senior.
Registration status and any conditions on it, the inspection outcomes of services they have run, DBS and right-to-work before anyone reaches an interview, and whether their experience matches the service type — residential, domiciliary and supported living are not interchangeable.
Advertise frontline roles when you can screen and interview quickly yourself — those adverts draw applicants. Use a recruiter for registered and senior roles, where the people who can hold the registration are few, already employed, and approached rather than found on a job board. The tables on this page show both halves: what care adverts drew by salary, and how long our care searches took.
Registration status and any conditions on it, the inspection outcomes of services they have run, DBS and right to work before anyone reaches an interview, and whether their experience matches your service type — residential, domiciliary and supported living are not interchangeable.
Yes. Tell us what the advert drew and we will say plainly whether a search would change the outcome. If the advert runs its full 28 days without a hire, the full advert fee is credited against Premium Hire for the same role (claim within 60 days of close, one credit per role).
Across 72 care & social care adverts we placed between 2025-10-03 and 2026-09-05, the median advert drew 35 applications over 28 days, the middle half drew between 15.8 and 72.3, and 13% drew fewer than five. The median across all 1,141 UK adverts was 31.
Yes, and sometimes you should. A £399 +VAT advert puts the role across the major job boards and sends you the applications. It took a median of 36 candidates worked to make one hire in care & social care, so if somebody in your business genuinely has those hours, advertising is the cheaper route and we will say so.
Tell us the role and we will tell you what it costs and how long it is likely to take — using the 4 we have already filled in this sector, not a guess.
See Premium Hire Talk to a recruiter
Or call 0161 327 2895. Prefer to advertise it yourself? Post a job online from £399 +VAT, or write the advert first with our free job advert generator.
Cost comparison
A salary-band table of what a UK contingency agency bills at 15%, 20% and 25% against the published flat fees for the same search, from £30,000 to £75,000 — with the three cases where the percentage is still the better buy.
Cost comparison
Worked figures for a £45,000 UK hire — what a contingency agency bills at 15%, 20% and 25%, what the published flat fees are, what the real difference is once you count your own screening time, and the three situations where the agency is the better buy.
Benchmarks
The median role we filled took 42 days from brief to close, but the spread runs from 14 to 169 days. The per-sector breakdown, what actually drives the difference, and how to read a time-to-fill promise.
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