Source of hire tracking: a taxonomy, attribution rules and a report you can trust

Source of hire tracking records, for every hire, the channel that brought them into your process, and then compares channels on hires, conversion, cost and outcomes. The tracking is only as good as the rules behind it: a fixed list of sources, a rule for which source wins when a candidate arrived through two, and a quarterly check that the data matches reality. Without those, the report mostly measures which option sits at the top of the ATS drop-down.

This page gives a two-level taxonomy, attribution rules, the data fields to capture, a worked 50-hire report and the checks that keep it honest. To turn source data into cost figures, see the cost per hire formula.

A two-level taxonomy

Use a short list of channels for reporting, and a detail field underneath for specifics. Channels stay fixed for years; details can be added whenever you try something new.

Two points trip teams up. First, LinkedIn is a company, not a channel: a candidate can come from a paid LinkedIn job post (job board), a recruiter's InMail (recruiter sourced) or an employee sharing a post (possibly a referral). Record the mechanism, not the website. Second, the careers site is where most people apply, not why they applied. Reserve "careers site" for applicants with no other traceable source, or it will swallow everything.

Attribution rules for conflicting sources

Candidates regularly arrive through more than one route. Decide the precedence once and publish it to the team:

1. Agency submittals follow the agency agreement. If the agreement says an agency owns a candidate submitted first, the source is that agency, because the fee depends on it.
2. A referral wins if it was recorded before the candidate applied. A referral logged after the application usually means the employee heard the candidate had applied.
3. Recruiter sourced wins if the recruiter's first contact came before the application. Use the date of the outreach message, not the date the profile was viewed.
4. Otherwise the first recorded source wins. Record any later source in a secondary field.

First-source attribution fits recruiting better than last-source, because the question is usually "where should we spend to find people like this again?" A candidate who first saw your job on a niche board and later applied through the careers site was found by the niche board.

The fields to capture

CANDIDATE SOURCE FIELDS (set at the first touch, locked after the hire)
SourceChannel     one of the level-1 channels
SourceDetail      board name, agency name, referrer, campaign
SourceDate        date of application, referral or first outreach
SecondarySource   any later route, for information only
SelfReported      candidate's answer to "how did you hear about us?"
SetBy             system / recruiter / candidate

Lock the source once the candidate is hired, and keep the self-reported answer separate from the recorded source. Candidates often name the last place they saw the job, so the self-report is supporting evidence, not the record. The candidate pre-screening questionnaire template is a natural place to collect it.

Worked example: a 50-hire year

Invented data for one company. "Candidates" means everyone who entered the process through the channel: applicants for inbound channels, candidates who replied for outbound ones.

Channel spend here is only the money traceable to the channel (board contracts, referral bonuses, sourcing tool licences, agency fees), not recruiter time. The table invites three readings:

• Job boards produce the most hires but the lowest conversion. 1,800 applicants for 18 hires means recruiters screened roughly 100 applications per hire. The spend per hire looks low, but the screening time behind it is large.
• Referrals convert at almost 13 times the job-board rate. Nine hires from 70 referrals is a strong case for growing the programme; the employee referral program template covers how.
• Agencies are expensive and precise. $22,000 per hire, but 12% conversion. The useful question is which roles they filled and whether those roles could have been filled another way.

Add outcomes: which channels produce hires who stay?

A channel that fills seats quickly with people who leave in six months is not cheap. Join source data to retention and quality of hire for the same hires once they have been in the job long enough:

Groups this small are indicative only; one leaver moves the agency row by 25 points. Keep adding cohorts and look for differences that persist. For the score itself, see how to measure quality of hire; for the retention side, first-year attrition rate.

Keeping the data honest

Source data degrades quietly. A quarterly audit takes an hour:

1. Pull the last quarter's hires with their recorded source, secondary source and self-reported answer.
2. Check disagreements. Where the recorded source and the self-report differ, ask the recruiter which is right and correct the record if the rules say so.
3. Check the "Other" bucket. If it holds more than a small share of hires, the taxonomy is missing a channel or recruiters are not choosing.
4. Check defaults. If one channel's share jumped, find out whether a form or integration started filling it automatically.
5. Check referrals. Confirm each referral hire had a referral recorded before the application date, since bonuses depend on it.

For recruiter-sourced candidates, the source is only as good as the outreach records. A recruiter who finds candidates through LinkedIn searches should log the first message in the ATS the day it is sent; how to source candidates on LinkedIn covers the workflow.

How to report it

SOURCE OF HIRE, FY2026 (50 external and internal hires)
Rules: first recorded source; referral wins if logged before
application; agency per agreement. Audited Q4: 3 records corrected.

Channel          Hires  Share  Conv.   Spend/hire   12-mo retention*
Job boards         18    36%   1.0%     $1,500        75% (16)
Careers site       10    20%   1.1%       n/a         80% (10)
Referral            9    18%  12.9%     $2,000        88% (8)
Recruiter sourced   8    16%   5.0%     $1,500        86% (7)
Agency              3     6%  12.0%    $22,000        75% (4)
Internal            2     4%  13.3%       n/a           n/a
* prior-year cohort, hires in brackets

Decision: referral bonus budget +50% for FY2027; agency use limited
to roles open more than 60 days.

End with a decision about spend. Source of hire exists to move money and recruiter time towards the channels that produce people who stay; a report that ends without a decision is just a pie chart. Carry the result into the recruiting budget template for the next year.

Common mistakes