Sourcing KPIs: Build Your Agency Funnel Scorecard

Most recruiting teams measure time-to-hire and cost-per-hire. Those numbers matter, but they only describe what happened after a candidate entered your pipeline. They say nothing about the sourcing work that put that person there in the first place.

For agencies and staffing desks, outbound sourcing is part of how placement pipelines grow. Yet activity counts alone do not show which stage of the funnel needs attention.

A thin placement count could come from weak outreach, poor targeting, slow client feedback, or candidates dropping out mid-process. Each cause needs a different fix. Without stage-level metrics, you are guessing.

This guide gives you a sourcing KPI scorecard you can build from your own funnel. Each metric comes with a plain formula, the minimum data you need, how to read the result, and the next action to take. It covers the stages that matter to a recruitment desk: contacted, positive reply, qualified submission, client interview, and placement, plus the time each stage takes.

One boundary first. This scorecard diagnoses sourcing-stage quality, speed, and conversion. It does not put a euro or dollar figure on your hiring. For the money math, cost-per-hire, and a full agency revenue forecast, use our recruitment ROI guide. Read the two together: this page shows you where your funnel leaks, and the ROI guide shows you what fixing it is worth.

What a sourcing scorecard measures, and what it does not

Sourcing metrics sit at the top of your funnel. They measure how well you find, reach, and engage candidates before a formal hiring process begins. That makes them different from downstream hiring metrics like offer acceptance or first-year retention, which describe what happens much later.

The scorecard below follows a candidate through five gates. First you contact them. Then some reply with real interest. From those, you qualify and submit a shortlist to the client. The client interviews some of your submissions. And a share of those interviews turn into a placement. Between every gate, candidates drop out. Your job is to know exactly where.

A quick word on benchmarks. You will find plenty of articles quoting a “good” response rate or an average time-to-hire. Treat those with caution. Rates can vary by role, seniority, market, channel, sample, and how each metric is defined.

The reliable comparison is your own history. Measure each stage the same way every week, then watch the trend. An improving number can indicate that your change helped, but compare enough similar roles before drawing a conclusion. A number that slips shows you which stage to investigate first.

Stage 1: Are you contacting enough of the right people?

Candidates contacted is the simplest metric on the scorecard and the denominator for everything below it. It counts how many distinct people you reached out to for a given role in a given week.

Candidates contacted = distinct people you sent a first message to, per role, per week.

The minimum data you need is a way to mark first outreach, usually a pipeline stage or a tag applied the moment you send message one. Then read this number in two directions.

If it is low relative to the volume your roles require, check whether you need a larger list and use AI talent sourcing to refine it. If the number is high but everything downstream is weak, targeting is one factor to investigate. Compare performance by role, segment, and list before changing your outreach volume.

Stage 2: Positive response rate, the top-of-funnel truth

Total replies flatter you. The metric that matters is the positive reply rate: how many people answered with genuine interest, not an out-of-office or a polite decline.

Positive response rate = positive replies ÷ candidates contacted × 100.

You need two counts: people contacted for the role and replies that showed real interest or asked a next-step question. Track it per channel and per template.

A low positive reply rate can come from the message, the list, the channel, or the role itself. Compare those variables in your own data before changing one. Our guide on how to message candidates on LinkedIn and our passive talent sourcing playbook can help you test the first two. If one channel consistently earns better conversations across similar roles, consider shifting more effort there.

Stage 3: Qualified submission rate, where agency sourcing proves out

For a recruitment desk, interest is not the goal. A vetted candidate in front of the client is. The qualified submission rate measures how much of your outreach turns into a shortlist you are confident enough to submit.

Qualified submission rate = candidates submitted to client ÷ candidates contacted × 100.

To read your screening more tightly, divide submissions by positive replies instead. That isolates how well you convert an interested candidate into a qualified one. You need a clear submission event in your workflow and a shared definition of “qualified” with the client.

When positive replies are healthy but submissions are thin, candidate fit and screening drop-off are two places to check. Compare rejection reasons and screening notes, then decide whether to recalibrate the role profile with the client before the next outreach batch.

Stage 4: Client interview rate, the client-fit check

This is the metric that tells you whether your shortlist actually matches what the client wants. The client interview rate measures how many of your submissions the client chose to meet.

Client interview rate = candidates interviewed by client ÷ candidates submitted × 100.

You need to log two events: each submission and each client interview it triggers. A low rate can indicate a calibration gap, but check client timing, role changes, and submission feedback too. If the feedback points to fit, confirm the must-have criteria, the deal-breakers, and one or two example profiles the client would accept before doing more sourcing.

Stage 5: Placement rate, the number that pays the desk

Placement rate is where the funnel meets revenue. Measure it two ways: against interviews to judge closing strength, and against contacts to judge the whole funnel end to end.

Placement rate (close) = placements ÷ client interviews × 100.

Placement rate (overall) = placements ÷ candidates contacted × 100.

The close rate tells you how well interviews convert to signed placements. If it is weak, investigate late-stage factors such as offer handling, candidate drop-out, client speed, and role changes. The overall rate summarizes your funnel’s yield, so track it alongside the stage rates that explain where movement happened. If an upstream change is effective, compare the overall placement rate before and after across similar roles to see whether that gain carried through.

Time per stage: where your funnel actually stalls

Conversion tells you how many candidates get through. Speed tells you how long each gate takes, so it can expose delays worth investigating.

Average time in stage = total days candidates spent in a stage ÷ number of candidates who passed through it.

Log the date a candidate enters and leaves each stage, then average across recent roles. Resist the urge to compare against a generic industry number. Build your own baseline from your last ten or twenty placements, then work to beat it.

Do not assume where the biggest delay sits. Compare time in sourcing, screening, interviews, and client feedback in your own data. If the longest gap is between a first client interview and feedback, you can ask the client for faster decisions with evidence instead of a hunch. For the wider view of how sourcing feeds the rest of hiring, see our breakdown of the talent acquisition process.

Which channels and messages earn the reply?

Not every channel or message earns its keep. Once your stage metrics are stable, split them by channel to see where your best conversations and placements come from.

Channel effectiveness = placements (or positive replies) from a channel ÷ candidates contacted through that channel × 100.

You need each contact tagged with the channel you used, whether that is LinkedIn, email, WhatsApp, or a phone call. Compare initial outreach against follow-ups too. The point is not to crown one channel forever. It is to reallocate your time toward the combinations that convert for the roles you actually work. Test a blended multichannel outreach sequence against your single-channel approach, then use your own positive reply and placement rates to decide which works better.

Build your sourcing scorecard in a week

You do not need a data team to run this. Start with one simple table, one row per stage, updated weekly. The five rows are contacted, positive reply, qualified submission, client interview, and placement, with a sixth column for average days in each stage.

Stage	Formula	Minimum data you log
Contacted	Count per role, per week	First-outreach date or tag
Positive reply rate	Positive replies ÷ contacted × 100	Reply interest flag
Qualified submission rate	Submissions ÷ contacted × 100	Submission event
Client interview rate	Client interviews ÷ submissions × 100	Interview event
Placement rate	Placements ÷ interviews × 100	Placement event
Time per stage	Days in ÷ candidates through	Entry and exit dates

If you already work inside a recruiting platform, some of these rows can fill themselves. Leonar’s pipeline analytics tracks the stages you configure, showing conversion between stages, average time in each stage, reply rates by channel, and placements.

On the Professional plan and above, those figures update automatically as you move candidates through the pipeline. The funnel rows stay current without a manual export. You still log the client-side definitions and any costs yourself, because those depend on your contracts, not the software.

Which sourcing KPIs should a small agency start with?

Do not try to track everything at once. Pick the two metrics closest to your biggest pain, get them clean, then expand. If you send plenty of messages but hear little back, start with positive reply rate and channel effectiveness. If candidates reply but few reach the client, focus on qualified submission rate and time per stage. If your placements feel slow rather than scarce, watch time per stage and the client interview rate first.

Once those two rows are reliable, add the rest one at a time. After several weekly updates, you will have a fuller scorecard built on your own numbers and a clearer view of which stage to investigate next. That is the whole point: not a wall of metrics, but a practical way to find where a placement may be stuck. To see how a recruiting platform turns this diagnosis into a working system, explore Leonar’s analytics and sourcing tools for agencies or compare plans on the pricing page.

Frequently asked questions

What are the most important sourcing KPIs to track?

Track the conversion between each stage of your funnel: candidates contacted, positive reply rate, qualified submission rate, client interview rate, and placement rate. Add the average time each stage takes. These five conversion metrics plus stage speed tell you where your sourcing leaks, which is more useful than any single vanity number like total messages sent.

How do you calculate positive response rate in sourcing?

Positive response rate equals positive replies divided by candidates contacted, times 100. A positive reply is one that shows real interest or asks a next-step question, not an out-of-office or a polite no. You need two numbers: how many people you contacted for a role and how many replied with interest. Track it per channel and per message template so you can see which combination earns the most real conversations.

What is a good sourcing conversion rate?

There is no universal figure that fits every agency, role, or market. The better test is your own trend. Measure each stage with the same definitions every week, then compare this month against your past performance. A rising rate can indicate that a change to targeting or messaging helped. A falling rate shows you which stage to investigate first. Chasing a generic benchmark hides more than it reveals.

How is a sourcing scorecard different from recruitment ROI?

A sourcing scorecard measures funnel quality, speed, and conversion: how candidates move from first contact to placement. Recruitment ROI puts a money figure on that work, weighing the value of a hire against the cost of the search. Use the scorecard to find where your funnel leaks, then use the recruitment ROI guide to price what fixing it is worth. They draw on the same activity but answer different questions.