Scoring built for agency economics: live vacancy count, terms of business signed, fee basis, exclusivity, brief depth, and whether the hiring manager will take your call.
Quick answer
By whichever brief arrived most recently and sounded most excited. A hiring manager rings on Tuesday, a consultant drops everything, and two weeks of sourcing later the role is filled internally or four other agencies were working it in parallel. The agency model punishes this harder than most: unpaid effort is the entire downside of contingent recruitment, and it is spent before anyone knows whether it will be recovered.
A signed set of terms is the difference between a job order and a conversation. The fee basis then tells you what the work is worth, and whether the assignment is exclusive, retained or contingent against five competitors tells you your realistic odds before the first CV is sent.
A brief that names must-haves, the interview process and a start date came from someone who has approval. A client who cannot offer interview slots for three weeks is telling you the urgency is not real, whatever the brief said.
Speaking to the person who will run the interviews changes everything about the speed of feedback. And an account you have placed into before carries evidence that no new prospect can match.
Account and role attributes set the starting position. Client behaviour, terms opened, feedback given, interviews scheduled, moves it. Silence decays it. The list reorders itself as feedback lands, so the role where a shortlist moved yesterday sits above the one that has been quiet since the brief.
| Signal on the account | Why it predicts here | Effect on score |
|---|---|---|
| Terms of business signed | You will be paid if you fill | Strong lift |
| Exclusive or retained mandate | No race against four agencies | Strong lift |
| Hiring manager on the brief call | Fast, undistorted feedback | Strong lift |
| Interview slots already offered | Process is genuinely live | Moderate lift |
| Placed with this client before | Proven working relationship | Moderate lift |
| One-line brief, CVs requested | Fishing, not hiring | Drop |
| Five agencies briefed | Long odds on unpaid effort | Drop |
| No feedback on shortlist in 14 days | Requirement may be paused | Decay |
Track terms of business as a field with dated states, not as an attachment. Record exclusivity and the number of competing agencies honestly, even when the answer is uncomfortable. Capture vacancy reason and interview availability at briefing. Then log why roles were lost or withdrawn in categories your consultants would recognise, because vague lost reasons are the fastest way to make scoring useless.
Scoring orders your business development effort. It does not judge candidates, it cannot tell you whether a client will pay on time, and it has no view on whether a relationship is worth keeping through a slow year. It needs history before it beats a good manager with a whiteboard, and in a small agency that history takes a couple of quarters. Consultants override it whenever they know something the record does not, which is often.
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Consultants chase every incoming brief equally, then discover four agencies were briefed and the client never signed terms with any of them.
Terms status, exclusivity and the number of competing agencies are captured at qualification and weighted, so speculative sourcing is visible before anyone spends a day on it.Assignment qualification
Business development sits in one spreadsheet, live job orders in another, and nobody can see which client accounts are actually worth a call this week.
Client accounts and job orders live in one pipeline with a single score, so the account with three unfilled roles and a signed agreement rises above dormant prospects.Unified client pipeline
A role goes quiet for a month and stays on the board, inflating the pipeline and hiding the fact that nothing is moving.
Job orders decay without shortlist activity or client feedback, and stalled roles are surfaced for a decision rather than left to pad a forecast.Stale role detection
Consultants working from client sites and coffee shops update the CRM two days later, if at all.
The mobile app carries the same scored list, so client meetings, feedback calls and new briefs are logged where they happen and the pipeline reflects today.Mobile updates
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