Source of Hire
What source of hire means, how staffing agencies track which job boards, referrals and walk-ins produce hires, and how to work out cost per hire by source.October 3, 2026
2 min read
ATS & Recruiting
Written by the NextCrew team
Definition
Source of hire is the channel a hired candidate came from, such as a job board, a referral, the agency's website, a walk-in or a job fair. Tracked across all hires, it shows which channels produce people who actually get placed, not just applications.
What it means in practice
Count hires, not applications. A job board can send hundreds of applications and few hires, while referrals send a handful and most of them work. Comparing hires by channel, not applications, tells you where to spend.
- Capture it at the start. Ask how the candidate heard about you, or record the channel automatically when they register.
- Compare by stage. Look at applications, completed profiles and hires for each channel side by side.
- Add cost. Cost per hire by source equals what you spent on a channel divided by the hires it produced.
Example
Illustrative example: in a quarter, a job board produces 600 applications and 30 hires on $3,000 of spend, while referrals produce 40 applications and 20 hires on $1,000 of referral bonuses. Cost per hire is $100 from the job board and $50 from referrals.
How NextCrew fits
NextCrew records a referral source for each candidate and shows the mix on a Referral Sources dashboard widget, alongside a weekly registration trend by source. See the ATS for staffing agencies page.
Related terms
- Candidate pipeline: the stages to compare channels across.
- Applicant tracking system (ATS): where the source is recorded.
- Talent pool: where every channel's hires end up.
Go deeper
See the ATS for staffing agencies page.