Recruiting funnel
A recruiting funnel is the sequence of hiring stages, from application to the first months on the job, with the number of candidates who pass each stage.
What it is
Hiring works like sales: many people enter at the top, few reach the end. The recruiting funnel makes that visible. It shows how many candidates you need at the start to fill one seat, and where most of them drop out.
How it looks in practice
Typical stages: application, screening, first interview, test task or trial shift, final interview, offer, first day, end of probation. An illustrative funnel for a sales team over a month: 200 applications, 80 passed screening, 40 came to an interview, 20 did the test, 8 got an offer, 6 started, 4 passed probation. Conversion from application to a person who stayed is 2%.
The useful numbers are conversion between stages, time from application to offer, cost per hire and the share of hires who stay after three months.
Why it matters
When a team has high turnover, hiring never stops, and a weak funnel becomes a constant shortage of people. The funnel tells a manager what to fix: too few applications is a sourcing problem, many interviews but few offers is a selection problem, many offers but few starts is a problem with the offer or the speed, many starts but few who stay is an onboarding problem.
The typical mistake
Measuring success at the moment of hire. A funnel that ends with “accepted the offer” looks fine while half the newcomers leave in the first month. Another mistake is a slow process: good candidates take other offers while the company schedules a third interview. Extend the funnel to the end of probation, measure time between stages, and review the stage with the biggest drop every month.
More in Signals
- Hiring through Telegram and WhatsApp: how to run candidates in chat and not lose themTo run candidates in Telegram and WhatsApp without losing them, answer fast, mark out the funnel and keep the history with the company rather than in a recruiter's phone. A first message, short screening, a specific invitation and reminders cover the path. Mailings to a candidate list should be relevant, varied and paced. A good candidate is gone within days if your team is slow.
- How to hire a salesperson who sells in chatA salesperson who will sell in chat is judged by how they write, not by their résumé: a short practical task in chat before the interview shows speed, spelling, how they handle an objection and whether they set a next step. Then comes an interview about real cases and a 2–4 week probation with a mentor, chat reviews and criteria known from day one. The new rep writes to clients from a company work number starting on the first day.