The conversion cascade from candidate to employee
Recruitment is a funnel. Sourcing generates a large pool of candidates. Screening applies filters: does the resume look relevant? Do they pass an initial phone call? Interviewed candidates move to more intensive conversations: technical interviews, team interviews, culture fit discussion. Offers are extended to those who pass all gates. Accepted offers convert to hires when the person starts work.
Each stage has a conversion rate. If you source 100 candidates and 30 pass screening, your screening conversion is 30 percent. If 10 of those 30 pass interviews, your interview conversion is 33 percent. If 8 accept offers, your offer conversion is 80 percent. The overall funnel conversion is 8 percent: 100 sourced to 8 hired. To hire 10 people, you need to source roughly 125 candidates.
Bottlenecks and improvement levers
The hiring funnel reveals where process improvements have the highest leverage. If screening conversion is 10 percent (very low), improving your screening criteria or interviewer training can boost it to 20 percent, cutting total sourcing needs in half. If interview conversion is low, it might signal that your interview bar is unclear or your offer is not competitive. If offer-to-hire conversion is low, the problem is often the recruiting close: insufficient recruiter attention or a weak offer package.
Understanding the funnel also helps with capacity planning. If you need to hire 20 people and your sourcing-to-hire conversion is 5 percent, you need to source 400 candidates. If you have two recruiters and each can manage 50 sourced candidates at a time, you need 4 cycles. Teams that track their funnel conversion can predict hiring timeline and diagnose which stage is constraining the pipeline, then focus improvement effort there instead of uniformly pressuring recruiters to work faster.