Recruiting Pipeline Template for Agencies (Free Kanban Board)
Every recruiting agency starts with the same chaos: candidates in spreadsheets, candidates in emails, candidates in someone's head. The first inflection point of operational maturity is when you commit to a single pipeline and force every candidate through the same stages.
This is the pipeline template we use at placement.solutions and the one we have seen converge across dozens of mid-sized agencies. Steal it. Customize it. Just commit to it.
The 8-stage recruiting pipeline
| Stage | What it means | Exit criteria | Typical days |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Sourced | Candidate found, not yet contacted | First outreach sent | 0 to 2 |
| 2. Contacted | Outreach sent, awaiting reply | Candidate replies (positive or negative) | 1 to 7 |
| 3. Engaged | Reply received, interest confirmed | Screening call scheduled | 1 to 5 |
| 4. Screened | Internal screening call complete | Decision: submit or pass | 0 to 3 |
| 5. Submitted | Candidate sent to client | Client decision: interview or pass | 2 to 10 |
| 6. Interviewing | Active in client interview process | Final round complete | 7 to 30 |
| 7. Offer | Client extends offer | Candidate accepts or declines | 1 to 7 |
| 8. Placed / Closed-Lost | Terminal | n/a | n/a |
That is it. Eight stages. Most agencies that have 12+ are over-engineering. Most agencies with 4 or fewer are losing data.
Why these specific 8 stages
We have tested longer pipelines (12, 15, even 20 stages) and shorter ones (5). The 8-stage version wins for three reasons:
It maps cleanly to the candidate funnel. Each stage represents a real-world transition that takes time and effort. Stages that just represent state changes ("waiting on resume", "ready to send") add noise without adding insight.
It produces useful conversion metrics. With 8 stages you get 7 conversion rates (Sourced → Contacted, Contacted → Engaged, etc.). That is enough to spot bottlenecks. With 15 stages you get conversion rate paralysis.
Recruiters can hold it in their head. Eight is the upper bound of what humans reliably remember without checking documentation. If your pipeline has 15 stages, your recruiters skip stages or use them inconsistently.
Stage-by-stage exit criteria (the part most agencies skip)
Defining stages is easy. Defining when a candidate moves to the next stage is where most pipelines break down. Here are the bright-line exit criteria we recommend.
Sourced → Contacted
Move when: outreach sent (email, LinkedIn InMail, SMS).
Do not move when: you have only added the candidate to a list.
Contacted → Engaged
Move when: candidate replies and the reply is not "no thanks."
Do not move when: candidate opens an email but does not reply.
Engaged → Screened
Move when: screening call is complete.
Do not move when: screening call is scheduled but not held.
Screened → Submitted
Move when: candidate has been sent to client (with full submission package).
Do not move when: you have decided internally to submit but have not actually sent.
Submitted → Interviewing
Move when: client confirms interview will happen.
Do not move when: client says "interesting, will get back to you."
Interviewing → Offer
Move when: written offer is extended (verbal "we want to hire" is not enough).
Do not move when: client says "we are leaning toward an offer."
Offer → Placed
Move when: candidate signs offer letter and confirmed start date.
Do not move when: candidate verbally accepts.
If you enforce these definitions, your pipeline data becomes useful. If you do not, your conversion rates are garbage.
The Kanban board layout
The standard physical layout: 8 columns left to right, in order. Sourced furthest left, Placed furthest right. Closed-Lost is a parallel terminal column (not part of the linear flow).
A few layout rules that matter:
- Limit each column to 30 cards on screen, paginate the rest. Otherwise the board becomes unreadable.
- Color-code by client (not by stage). The stage is conveyed by column position; the client identity needs another visual channel.
- Surface "stuck" candidates: highlight any card that has been in the same stage longer than its typical SLA (use the right column of the table above as the threshold).
- Show a count at the top of each column. Recruiters glance at counts before they glance at cards.
How to handle "back to a previous stage"
Some candidates regress. They withdraw, then re-engage. They get rejected, then the client comes back and asks for more candidates with similar profiles. Two patterns work:
Pattern A (cleaner): Once a candidate hits Closed-Lost, they are terminal. If they re-engage, create a new candidate-job pairing.
Pattern B (messier but reflects reality): Allow regression. Track the regression in an audit log so you do not lose context.
We use Pattern A. It keeps the funnel math clean. The activity log preserves the regression history.
Sub-statuses (when to use them)
Sometimes a stage has multiple meaningful sub-states. The two stages where sub-statuses earn their keep:
Submitted: "Awaiting client review", "Client viewing", "Client interested - scheduling".
Interviewing: "First round", "Second round", "Final round", "Reference check".
Anywhere else, sub-statuses are a sign you should split the stage.
Conversion rate benchmarks
These are the median conversion rates we see across legal recruiting agencies on placement.solutions:
| Conversion | Median | Top quartile |
|---|---|---|
| Sourced → Contacted | 100% (every sourced candidate gets outreach) | 100% |
| Contacted → Engaged | 12% | 22% |
| Engaged → Screened | 65% | 80% |
| Screened → Submitted | 55% | 75% |
| Submitted → Interviewing | 40% | 60% |
| Interviewing → Offer | 25% | 45% |
| Offer → Placed | 75% | 90% |
End-to-end conversion (Sourced → Placed): about 0.4% median, 1.5% top quartile.
If you are below median on any of these, the column to the left is probably your bottleneck. Below median on Submitted → Interviewing? Your submissions are off-target. Below median on Engaged → Screened? Your engagement quality is shallow.
How to build this in a Kanban tool
If you want to ship this today without a recruiting platform:
- Trello or Asana: 8 columns, add cards per candidate-job pairing. Free, but no automation.
- Notion: Database view as Kanban, with custom properties for client, role, salary, stage entry date. Better for reporting.
- Airtable: Same as Notion but with more native automation. Trigger emails when stages change.
- placement.solutions: This pipeline ships out of the box, with auto-stage-transitions when a candidate replies to an email or a client clicks "advance" in the portal. See the demo.
Automation that earns its keep
Once you have the pipeline, the automation tax is low and the upside is high. The four automations that pay back fastest:
- Auto-Slack on stage changes: when a candidate moves to "Submitted" or beyond, post in #placements.
- Stale candidate alerts: any candidate in Engaged for more than 7 days, ping the recruiter.
- Client portal sync: any submission auto-published to the client portal.
- Calendar sync for screenings: when a screening is scheduled, auto-block the recruiter's calendar.
If you have placement.solutions, all four ship with the pricing tier. If you build it yourself in Notion plus Slack plus Calendly, expect 2 days of integration work.
Common pipeline mistakes we see
- Too many stages: agencies start with 8, then add "ready to submit" and "client-side review" until they have 14. Stop. The originals worked.
- Skipping screening: in tight markets, recruiters skip the internal screen and go straight to submission. Conversion drops 15 to 30 points. Always screen.
- Calling candidates "Placed" before signed offer: this inflates win rates and makes forecasting fiction. Wait for signed.
- No regression audit: when candidates withdraw, the team does not log why. Six months later, you cannot answer "why did our offer-accept rate drop?"
What this looks like in placement.solutions
Our Kanban board ships with these 8 stages by default, color-coded by client, with stage-time SLAs and stuck-candidate highlighting baked in. You can sign up free and have a working pipeline in 2 minutes.
About placement.solutions: Built for legal and professional services recruiting agencies. 11,000+ live law firm jobs auto-scraped daily. Semantic AI matching plus the 8-stage pipeline above, ready to use the moment you sign up. Try free.