Build Your Own ROI Worksheet Before You Pay for Job Search Help

A five-column worksheet that turns any job search service's price tag into a number you can actually evaluate before signing a six-month contract.

You're staring at a sales page, a Calendly invite already booked, and a contract asking for a six-month commitment before you've sent a single application. Somewhere in the pitch was a phrase like "give yourself an edge" or "we know what works" — and no number you can actually check your own math against. Wanting proof before you pay isn't distrust. It's the correct instinct.

Full disclosure up front: F1Jobs sells a job search service to international students and professionals on OPT and H-1B, so we have a stake in how you answer this question. That's exactly why this post isn't a pitch. It's the worksheet we'd want you to run on us, too, before you sign anything — because the honest answer to "is this worth it" isn't a number a company can hand you. It's arithmetic you can do yourself in about twenty minutes, with a pen, before you call anyone back.

Why "ROI" is the wrong question by itself

Return on investment implies you can measure the return. In this category, you mostly can't — not honestly. No job search service, F1Jobs included, can guarantee you an interview or an offer, and F1Jobs' own terms of service state plainly that it does not guarantee employment outcomes. Any company that tells you otherwise is giving you a reason to hang up, not a reason to sign.

So the useful question isn't "will this get me a job." It's narrower and more answerable: what does this service replace, and what would replacing it myself actually cost me? A service might replace hours of your time, information you don't know how to find, or discipline you're struggling to maintain on your own. All three have a real price. None of them require you to trust a marketing claim to calculate.

The five numbers you need before you compare anything

Before you open a spreadsheet, pull these five numbers from the contract or the sales call. If a company won't give you a straight answer to any of them, that's data too.

1. The total cost over the full commitment period — not the monthly figure the sales page leads with. If the plan requires six months, multiply the monthly fee by six before you compare it to anything.
2. The itemized deliverables — what specifically happens each week or month. "Support" and "guidance" aren't line items; a stated number of mock interviews, resume revisions, or curated employer lists are.
3. What you'd spend to replace each deliverable yourself — in dollars where there's a real substitute (a professional resume review, a paid interview-prep session) and in hours where the substitute is free but time-consuming.
4. A realistic hourly value for your own time, especially if you're on OPT and the unemployment clock is running. Time isn't free just because it doesn't show up on a receipt.
5. The cancellation and refund terms — what happens to the money you've already paid if the service isn't delivering by month two or three.

Build the worksheet, five columns at a time

Lay out every deliverable a service is offering you next to what it would take to do it yourself. Most of this column is genuinely free — it just costs time and initiative.

Once this table is filled in with your own numbers, the price of any paid service should be measuring up against a real DIY total — not against nothing.

What the market actually charges, verified 2026-07-27

You can't finish a cost-benefit comparison against a number the company won't publish. Here's what's actually on the record as of this writing.

A few things fall out of that table on their own. The spread between providers is large — a one-time $199 bundle and a $5,995-a-month tier are not comparable services, and neither is automatically the better buy; cheaper is a fact, not a verdict on value, and the reverse is equally true. Second, a service that won't publish a price is a service you can't run this worksheet against until you're already on a call with a salesperson, which is worth noticing on its own. For a deeper breakdown of what's typically bundled at each price point across the category, see how job search services compare on price and the full six-month cost broken out by category.

The math a service cannot fix for you

Here's the number that changes how you should read every pitch you get: as of NFAP's analysis released 2025-11-17, only about 28,277 US employers were approved to hire even one new H-1B worker in FY2025 — roughly half of one percent of the roughly 6 million employer firms in the country — and 61% of those employers sponsored exactly one person. That's not a resume problem. It's a targeting problem, and it's the reason "we'll apply to more jobs for you" is a weaker pitch than it sounds. Volume against a pool that thin doesn't compound the way it would in a job market where sponsorship wasn't a filter at all.

That reframes what you should actually be paying for, if you pay for anything: not more applications, but better-targeted ones, sent to the roughly 1-in-200 employers who have recently filed H-1B petitions or otherwise demonstrated sponsorship willingness. Our earlier breakdown of the salary and volume math walks through this in more depth, and our step-by-step ROI framework covers how to evaluate a service against outcomes it legally cannot guarantee. If a service's entire pitch is "we submit more applications on your behalf" without any mention of how they screen or target those applications against employer sponsorship history, ask that question directly before you sign.

Filling in the worksheet with a real pitch

Say a sales rep tells you a package includes "weekly application batches, two mock interviews a month, and a target company list," for $449 a month over six months — $2,694 total. Here's how the worksheet handles that claim:

• Target company list. Compare it against the free employer directory, which shows actual petition history. If the paid list isn't meaningfully more current or more filtered than what's already public, that line item is worth less than it sounds.
• Two mock interviews a month, twelve over six months. Price what twelve hours of mock-interview time would cost you to arrange through a career center or peer network — likely free, but requiring you to schedule and show up consistently, which is its own kind of cost if you're prone to letting it slide.
• Weekly application batches. Ask how the batches are targeted, not just how many go out. A service that applies to 40 employers a week without cross-checking sponsorship history is optimizing for volume in a pool where volume alone doesn't move the odds much, per the targeting math above.

Once you've priced each piece, you have an honest number to weigh against $2,694 — not a feeling, and not the sales rep's framing.

Common mistakes

• Comparing the monthly number instead of the full commitment total. A $449/month headline reads very differently once you've multiplied it by the six-month minimum most of these contracts require.
• Pricing your own time at zero. If you're job searching while your OPT unemployment clock is running, hours spent chasing employer data manually are not free — they're borrowed from a limited window.
• Treating a vague deliverable as a real line item. "Support," "guidance," and "personalized strategy" aren't things you can price against a DIY alternative. Ask for specifics before you fill in that row.
• Skipping the refund and cancellation terms entirely. The worksheet is incomplete if you don't know what happens to your remaining balance if the service isn't delivering by month two.
• Treating any guarantee language as a selling point. A promise of guaranteed interviews or guaranteed placement isn't a value signal — it's a claim no legitimate service in this category can back up, and reviewers on sites like Trustpilot and Reddit's r/JobScams regularly flag it as a pattern worth walking away from.
• Assuming a service that won't publish its price is being discreet rather than avoiding comparison. If you can't get a number without a sales call, you can't run this worksheet on it until you're already in the conversation.

Frequently asked questions

What is a job search ROI worksheet? It is a simple worksheet where you list every dollar a service charges over its full commitment period, what each line item includes, and what it would cost you in time or money to do yourself. Comparing those two columns tells you whether the price buys something you genuinely could not build on your own.

How do I calculate the real cost of a job search service? Multiply the monthly fee by the full commitment length rather than looking at the monthly number alone, since most services in this category require a multi-month minimum. Add any setup or application fees, then divide by the specific deliverables you were promised to get a per-item cost you can compare across providers.

Is a paid job search service worth it while I am on OPT? It depends on what the service replaces for you, how much your own time is worth against your unemployment clock, and whether the deliverables are specific and itemized rather than vague. No legitimate service can promise you a job offer, so run the worksheet against your own situation instead of any outcome claim in the pitch.

What should I compare when weighing career service cost against benefit? Compare the full commitment-period total rather than the monthly headline, the specific deliverables included, whether the company publishes its pricing at all, and its refund or cancellation terms. Treat any guaranteed-interview or guaranteed-placement language as a reason to slow down, not a value signal.

How much do job search services cost in 2026? Verified pricing across the category as of 2026-07-27 ranges from about $199 as a one-time bundle up to $5,995 a month at the highest tier, and several well-known providers do not publish a price at all. F1Jobs' own three plans run $349 to $499 per month with a six-month minimum, totaling $2,094 to $2,994 over that period.

If you fill this worksheet out honestly and still have questions about what a specific F1Jobs plan includes, F1Jobs is happy to walk through the deliverables with you before you commit to anything.