ROI Calculator
Your numbers
Annual recruiter salary
Average screening time
Monthly applicants screened
Your estimated savings
$115,385
$9,615
Saved per month
4,000
Recruiter hours reclaimed per year
Plus
We've been using TextWork for 4 months
1. Did more interviews than all of last year
2. Fixed our onboarding
3. Halved our vacant positions
— Service business owner, Akron, OH
Screening cost = monthly applicants × minutes per screen ÷ 60 × 12 months × (recruiter salary ÷ 2,080 work hours). We take the minutes a recruiter typically spends on a first-round screen, multiply by how many applicants you see in a month, and annualize that against the salary you entered.
Example: 1,000 applicants a month at 20 minutes each is 4,000 hours a year. At a $60,000 salary ($28.85 an hour) that is about $115,000 in recruiter time. That is the work TextWork runs over SMS instead. The Starter plan shown is the current public tier that covers that monthly volume.
Most first-round phone screens run 15 to 30 minutes, and recruiters usually budget another 5 to 10 minutes for scheduling, no-shows, and notes. The calculator defaults to 20 minutes per screen; move the slider if your team runs shorter knockout calls or longer structured interviews.
TextWork asks the same knockout questions over SMS in a few minutes of the candidate’s time and zero minutes of the recruiter’s.
At 20 minutes per screen, a recruiter who spends half of a 40-hour week on first-round screening gets through roughly 250 applicants a month. High-volume hourly roles routinely generate 500 to 2,000 applicants a month per requisition group, which is why most of those applicants never get a first call.
Screening every applicant over SMS removes that ceiling: the response goes out the moment someone applies, at any volume.
Cost per screen = minutes per screen ÷ 60 × hourly recruiter rate. A 20-minute screen by a recruiter earning $60,000 a year ($28.85 an hour) costs about $9.62 in recruiter time before any overhead, tooling, or the cost of the candidates who were never reached.
TextWork Starter plans work out to roughly $1.00 to $2.00 per conversation depending on volume, and every applicant gets screened rather than only the ones a recruiter had time to call.
TextWork texts every applicant the moment they apply, asks your screening questions, and sends a structured report back to your team.
Recruiters spend their hours on qualified people instead of chasing first-round replies.
The headline figure is recruiter time reclaimed. We also show the matching Starter plan and the net number after that subscription, so you can see both sides. At the default inputs that is about $115,000 in recruiter time against a $999/mo Starter plan, or roughly $103,000 a year net.
Most teams put them into submissions, hiring-manager conversations, and the candidates who actually need a human — not more first-round phone tag.
Yes. Book a demo and we will walk the calculator with your requisitions, screen length, and current process — then show a live conversation end to end.
