Every recruitment agency has a pipeline, whether it lives in an ATS, on a whiteboard or in a consultant's head. The difference between a pipeline that helps you and one that just looks busy comes down to how the stages are defined. Clear stages tell consultants what to do next, show owners where roles are getting stuck and give you the raw material for an honest revenue forecast. This guide explains how to set up recruitment pipeline stages that work for an agency, how to define the rules for each stage and how to turn the pipeline into numbers you can act on.
What a recruitment pipeline actually tracks
In an agency, the pipeline does two jobs at once. It tracks candidates moving towards a placement on each role, and it tracks the role itself moving from a client brief towards an invoice. In house recruitment teams mostly care about the first job. Agencies care just as much about the second, because the pipeline is where future revenue sits.
That is why an agency pipeline should connect to the client, the contact who briefed the role and the fee you expect to earn. When a candidate moves forward, the value of that role moves with them. If the pipeline only tracks candidate status, you lose the commercial view that matters most to the business. Our guide to ATS vs CRM for recruitment agencies explains why the candidate side and the client side work best in one system.
A practical set of pipeline stages
There is no single correct list, but most agencies end up with something close to this.
- Brief taken. The client has given you a role with enough detail to start work, including salary range, fee terms and timeline.
- Sourcing. You are searching your database, advertising and approaching candidates.
- Screened. A candidate has been spoken to, qualified against the brief and is interested in the role.
- Submitted. The candidate's CV has been sent to the client with their consent.
- Interviewing. The client has agreed to meet the candidate, whether for a first, second or final interview.
- Offer. The client has made an offer and you are managing the negotiation and acceptance.
- Placed. The offer is accepted, the start date is set and the fee is ready to invoice.
Seven stages is a comfortable number for most desks. Fewer and you lose visibility of where things stall. Many more and consultants stop updating the pipeline because it feels like admin.
Define exit rules, not just stage names
The most common pipeline problem is not the wrong stage names. It is that every consultant understands them differently. One person moves a candidate to Submitted when they email the CV. Another does it after the client confirms receipt. A third forgets to move anyone until the interview is booked.
Fix this by writing a short exit rule for each stage. An exit rule describes what must be true before a record moves forward. For example, a candidate can only move to Submitted when their consent is recorded and a branded CV has gone to the client. A role can only move to Offer when the client has confirmed the offer in writing. Keep each rule to one or two sentences and share the full list with the team.
Exit rules make the pipeline consistent across consultants, which is what lets owners compare desks fairly and trust the totals.
Keep closed and lost outcomes visible
Roles do not always end in a placement. Clients cancel, fill internally or choose another agency. Candidates withdraw or accept a counter offer. If those outcomes simply disappear from the pipeline, you lose some of your most useful information.
Record a clear outcome and a reason for every role and candidate that leaves the pipeline without a placement. Over a few months, patterns appear. You might find one client cancels a large share of roles, or that candidates often drop out between interview and offer. Those are fixable problems, but only if the data exists.
Turn the pipeline into a revenue forecast
Once stages are consistent, you can use them to forecast revenue. A weighted forecast gives each stage a probability of turning into a placement, multiplies it by the expected fee and adds the results together. Roles at Offer carry a high probability, while roles at Sourcing carry a low one.
You do not need perfect probabilities to start. Pick sensible estimates, then compare them with what actually happens each quarter and adjust. Contingent and retained roles often deserve different probabilities, because retained work usually has a higher fill rate. Our guide to recruitment revenue forecasting explained walks through the method in detail, and retained vs contingent recruitment covers how each model behaves in the pipeline.
Watch GP margin as roles move
A pipeline full of roles is not the same as a profitable pipeline. Two roles with similar fees can produce very different gross profit once advertising, assessments, checks or contractor costs are counted. When fees and direct costs are recorded against each role, you can see the expected GP margin on the pipeline, not just the total fee value.
This helps owners make better decisions earlier. If a client's roles keep carrying low margins, you can renegotiate terms or rethink how much consultant time they receive. For the method, see how to track GP margin per placement, or test your own figures with the placement fee calculator.
Use stage automations to cut admin
Every stage change usually triggers a small task. Send a confirmation to the candidate. Update the client. Book an interview. Request references. When those tasks rely on memory, they get missed on busy days, and candidates or clients notice.
Stage automations handle the routine parts for you. Moving a candidate to Interviewing can send the confirmation and create the calendar event. Moving a role to Placed can prompt the fee details and notify the team. The consultant still controls the relationship, but the repetitive steps happen consistently every time.
Pipeline metrics worth reviewing every week
A good pipeline answers a handful of questions in seconds. Review these in your weekly meeting.
- How many active roles sit at each stage, by consultant and by client?
- Which roles have not moved in the last two weeks, and why?
- How many candidates move from Submitted to Interviewing, and from Interviewing to Offer?
- What is the weighted forecast for this month and next month?
- What is the expected GP margin across the roles at Offer and Placed?
These are conversion and value measures, not activity counts. Our guide to recruitment KPIs for agency owners explains how they fit alongside the other numbers worth tracking.
Common pipeline mistakes
- Too many stages, so consultants stop updating them.
- Stage names without exit rules, so every desk means something different.
- Stale roles that never close, which inflate the forecast.
- Lost roles deleted instead of recorded with a reason.
- Fees and costs kept in a separate spreadsheet, so the pipeline shows activity but not value.
How Klose Recruit helps
Klose Recruit is all in one recruitment software built in Brisbane by Australian recruiters, with the ATS and CRM in one database. Every role runs on a visual seven stage pipeline with automations on each stage change, including client and candidate communication, and every job stays linked to its client and contact.
Because the pipeline and the money live in the same place, placement fees, GP margin by client and a weighted revenue forecast update live as deals move. More than 30 prebuilt reports, a custom report builder and a live sales dashboard give owners a clear view of every desk, and CV branding keeps submissions polished. Explore the financial insights or see the recruitment CRM built in Australia. Pricing starts from A$75 per user per month on annual plans, or from A$89 per user per month on monthly plans.
The takeaway
Recruitment pipeline stages only help when everyone uses them the same way. Keep the list short, write a clear exit rule for each stage, record why roles and candidates drop out and connect every role to its fee and costs. Do that and your pipeline stops being a to do list and becomes the most reliable view of what your agency will earn next month.