The Starting Point
A staffing agency works with five external vendors to source candidates for its clients.
Each vendor operates under different commission terms — some on a percentage of CTC, some on a fixed placement fee, some per join.
Vendor performance has historically been judged by resume volume: how many candidates each vendor submits per month.
That metric was not chosen because it was the most useful one. It was chosen because it was the one that could be counted manually.
One vendor consistently submits the most resumes and is treated internally as the top performer. That vendor receives the largest share of new roles.
Nobody in the agency can say with confidence whether those submissions actually become hires:
"They send us the most candidates, so they must be our best vendor."
It is a reasonable assumption. It is also completely untested.
The Challenge
The agency needed to evaluate sourcing vendors on hiring outcomes rather than submission counts.
The main challenges included:
- Vendor performance measured only by resume volume
- No visibility into which vendor sourced a candidate who joined
- Candidate source lost as candidates moved through the pipeline
- Different commission terms across vendors
- Manual commission reconciliation at month-end
- Role allocation based on assumption rather than conversion
- No shared performance number to discuss with vendors
The issue was not that vendors were underperforming.
The issue was that the agency was optimizing for the only metric it could see.
What Moved Onto PyHire
PyHire connected candidate source tracking, pipeline progression, and vendor commission terms within one recruitment workflow.
Each candidate's source — including the specific vendor who submitted them — could be retained from first contact through every pipeline stage to joining.
Because the source stays attached to the candidate record, the agency can measure vendor performance at the point that actually matters commercially: the join.
Source Tracking Across the Full Pipeline
Source tracking is only useful if the source survives the whole process.
Many teams record where a candidate came from at the point of entry, then lose it as the candidate moves through screening, interviews and offers — which means the source can be reported against submissions but never against outcomes.
With the source retained throughout, each vendor can be measured across:
- Candidates submitted
- Candidates shortlisted
- Candidates interviewed
- Candidates selected
- Candidates joined
- Source-to-join conversion
This changes the reporting question from how many did they send to how many became hires.
Volume Is Not Conversion
Submission volume and hiring conversion measure different things, and they can point in opposite directions.
Consider two vendors over the same period:
- Vendor A — 100 candidates submitted, 2 joined
- Vendor B — 30 candidates submitted, 8 joined
Measured on volume, Vendor A looks like the stronger partner by a wide margin.
Measured on joins, Vendor B delivered four times the hiring outcome from less than a third of the submissions.
Volume also carries a cost that submission counts never show. Every candidate submitted is screened, contacted, and coordinated by a recruiter. A high-volume, low-conversion vendor consumes recruiter capacity that could be spent on candidates more likely to join.
These figures are illustrative, but the pattern they describe is the reason volume-only reporting can be misleading.
Connecting Commission to Outcomes
Vendor commissions depend on the commercial arrangement in place — a percentage of CTC, a fixed placement fee, a per-join fee, or terms subject to a guarantee period.
When those terms are configured within the recruitment workflow, the applicable commission can be tracked as candidates progress through selection and joining, rather than reconstructed from notes at month-end.
That produces a more consistent basis for two separate conversations:
- What is owed — calculated the same way each time, against the configured terms
- What was delivered — measured against joins rather than submissions
Both sides can look at the same underlying record, which tends to make disputes less frequent and vendor reviews less adversarial.
Reallocating Roles Toward Conversion
Once conversion is visible per vendor, role allocation can follow the data rather than the assumption.
The agency can consider questions such as:
- Which vendors produce candidates who join?
- Which vendors perform best for specific role types?
- Which vendors consume the most recruiter effort per hire?
- Where is commission spend producing placements?
- Which relationships are worth expanding?
This does not automatically mean ending relationships with high-volume vendors. A vendor may convert poorly on one role type and strongly on another, which is itself useful information for deciding what to send them.
The point is that the decision becomes an informed one.
Better Conversations With Vendors
Vendor performance reviews are difficult when each side arrives with its own numbers.
A vendor can reasonably point to submission volume as evidence of effort. The agency can reasonably point to placements as evidence of value. Without a shared record, the conversation becomes a negotiation over whose figures are correct.
A shared, consistently calculated set of numbers changes the discussion from:
"We send you plenty of candidates."
to:
"Here is the conversion across the roles we sent you, and here is where it works best."
That is a more productive basis for improving a sourcing relationship than either side asserting its own view of performance.
What Changed, Directionally
Moving from volume-based vendor reporting to source-to-join tracking changes how the agency evaluates its sourcing partners.
Vendor performance becomes outcome-based
Vendors can be compared on candidates who joined rather than candidates who were submitted.
Assumptions about top performers can be tested
The vendor sending the most resumes may or may not be the vendor producing the most hires — with conversion data, that is a question with an answer.
Commission tracking becomes more consistent
Configured terms provide a standard basis for tracking what is owed, reducing month-end reconstruction.
Role allocation becomes more deliberate
New roles can be routed toward vendors whose candidates convert, and toward the role types each vendor handles best.
Recruiter effort becomes easier to account for
High-volume, low-conversion sourcing has a visible cost in screening and coordination time, not just in commission.
Why Source-to-Join Matters
Most recruitment metrics measure activity. Source-to-join measures result.
Submissions, screenings, interviews and offers all describe work in progress. Only the join confirms that the sourcing decision produced what the client actually needed.
For an agency whose margin depends on placements rather than submissions, that distinction is the difference between measuring effort and measuring outcome.
It also compounds. A sourcing channel that converts well is worth more of the agency's recruiter capacity, more of its commission budget, and more of its client-facing confidence.
The Underlying Lesson
Volume and conversion are not the same signal.
Optimizing for the wrong one is easy when it is the only one visible — and submission counts are visible by default in almost every manual process, while conversion is not.
The agency was not making an error of judgement. It was making a reasonable decision from incomplete information.
Once candidate source is retained through the full pipeline and connected to joining and commission, "who is actually our best sourcing partner" stops being an opinion and becomes a number both sides can examine.
By connecting candidate source, pipeline progression, joining status and vendor commission terms, PyHire is designed to help agencies evaluate sourcing relationships on hiring outcomes.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is source-to-join conversion?
Source-to-join conversion measures the proportion of candidates from a given source — a vendor, job board, referral or direct application — who ultimately join. It evaluates a sourcing channel on hiring outcomes rather than submission volume.
Why is resume volume a misleading vendor metric?
Submission volume measures effort, not result. A vendor submitting many candidates who do not progress can consume significant recruiter screening and coordination time while producing fewer hires than a lower-volume vendor.
How can agencies track which vendor sourced a hire?
The candidate source needs to be recorded at entry and retained on the candidate record through every pipeline stage, so it is still attached when the candidate reaches selection and joining.
How can recruitment software track vendor commissions?
Commission terms can be configured per vendor according to the commercial arrangement — percentage of CTC, fixed placement fee, per-join fee, or guarantee period — and the applicable commission tracked as candidates progress through selection and joining.
Should agencies stop working with high-volume vendors?
Not necessarily. A vendor may convert poorly on one role type and strongly on another. Conversion data supports more deliberate decisions about which roles to send where, rather than a single judgement about the relationship.
What is vendor management software for staffing agencies?
Vendor management software helps staffing agencies manage external sourcing partners — their submissions, candidate outcomes, contract terms, commission arrangements and performance — within a centralized recruitment workflow.
See How PyHire Can Support Vendor Performance Tracking
Choosing sourcing partners should not depend on the one metric that happens to be easy to count.
PyHire helps staffing agencies track candidate source through the full pipeline, measure source-to-join conversion, and connect vendor commission terms to hiring outcomes.
Explore PyHire to see how outcome-based vendor reporting can change where your sourcing spend goes.
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