What sourcing signals actually predict a hire

We looked back across a set of Director-and-up searches we’d closed — roughly forty mandates — and sorted the candidates by which early signals they showed, then checked those signals against who actually converted to a hire. The result cut against instinct. A perfect title match, a fast reply, an impressive current employer: these felt like strong starts and turned out to be nearly uncorrelated with closing. They predicted a good first conversation, not a completed one.

That matters because sourcing pipelines are usually optimised for exactly those loud signals. They rank on keyword fit and responsiveness — the things that are easy to measure — and in doing so they crowd the top of the funnel with people who are pleasant to talk to and unlikely to move.

The signal that held was harder to see and harder to fake — a concrete, specific reason the person might actually change roles. Not dissatisfaction in the abstract, but a named ceiling: a scope they’d outgrown, a mandate they couldn’t get where they were, a decision they wanted to own and couldn’t. Candidates who could articulate that in the first conversation closed at a markedly higher rate than those who were simply open to a chat.

The practical takeaway is that early qualification should chase motive, not availability. The right question in a first call isn’t “are you looking” — it’s “what would have to be true for you to move.” The clarity of that answer, more than any credential on the page, is what separated the searches that closed from the ones that stalled at offer.