What are the best candidate sources for recruitment agencies?

Which candidate sources produce placements for a recruitment agency?#

A recruitment agency's best candidate sources, in working order, are its own database, referrals, LinkedIn, people databases, job boards and niche sources. The order follows cost and warmth: the first two cost nothing new, and the people in them know you or someone you placed. It is a judgement, because no public study ranks sources by agency placements.

The data on agencies is thin. The UK Report on Jobs from KPMG and the Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC) was published on 8 October 2026. Based on a panel of around 400 UK recruitment consultancies, it says candidate availability kept rising in September, at the slowest pace in three years. The American Staffing Association's Staffing Index for October 2026 puts US staffing jobs 2.4% above a year earlier. Neither report splits placements by where the candidate came from.

The closest figures come from in-house hiring. Ashby analysed nearly 250,000 hires from January 2021 to June 2025 in its inbound report of October 2025. Inbound applicants made 43% to 52% of hires, referrals about 18% and sourced candidates about 16%.

A new role can move through the sources in five steps. Each step links to its play in hyreflow, an AI sourcing and business development tool for recruitment agencies that runs inside Claude and ChatGPT.

1. Search your own ATS or CRM

   Check who you already hold before paying for anyone new. The play find the candidates already sitting in your own ATS ranks them on their full history with you.

2. Ask the people you placed

   The people you placed often know who else is good. The play ask the people you placed for referrals finds where each one works today and drafts the ask.

3. Search the people databases with one query

   You write the brief once and get one list back, with duplicates removed. The play run one candidate search across every people database shows each database's count before it pulls anyone.

4. Add the niche source the role needs

   That means GitHub for engineers, a public register for regulated roles or a specialist board for a sector. Run it beside the database search.

5. Find contact details for the people who pass

   Pay for personal emails and mobiles only after you have screened the list. Work emails are a different job, done by a different provider.

Why should a recruitment agency search its own database and network first?#

A recruitment agency should search its own database first because those candidates cost nothing new to find and already know you. No public dataset measures how many agency placements come from an agency's own records, so count yours.

hyreflow searches a connected ATS or CRM through your own account, for example Loxo, JobAdder, Vincere or Recruit CRM. The play put a dormant candidate database back to work re-qualifies an old segment one slice at a time. It filters on your own fields first, before any paid lookup.

Referrals are the next layer. In Ashby's referrals report of May 2025, covering 38 million applications from 2021 to 2024, 40% of referred candidates reached interview. Of those interviewed, 16% got an offer.

An agency's referrals come from the people it placed and from its team's connections. The play find the warmest path through your team's LinkedIn network shows which teammate knows each person on a shortlist. It needs the Essential plan or above (pricing, checked 30 Oct 2026). The case for the network itself is in why your LinkedIn network is the warmest list a recruiter owns.

How much of the market can a recruiter reach on LinkedIn without a Recruiter seat?#

A recruiter can find and read LinkedIn profiles through people databases without a Recruiter seat, but cannot InMail those people. LinkedIn says it has more than 1.4 billion members (About LinkedIn, checked 30 Oct 2026). People databases carry LinkedIn profile links, so the search works without a LinkedIn licence; the message does not.

In our run below, every one of the 37 profiles came back with a LinkedIn profile link. Open each profile before you call, to confirm the person has not moved since the database last updated the record.

InMail to people outside your network still needs LinkedIn's own product: hyreflow replaces the search, and InMail needs a LinkedIn licence. What a seat costs and when it pays is in is LinkedIn Recruiter Lite worth it for an agency. For search strings on LinkedIn and Google, see Boolean search for recruiters.

hyreflow does not connect your LinkedIn account itself. It searches your connections from the export LinkedIn lets you download, on the Essential plan or above (pricing, checked 30 Oct 2026). A connected HeyReach account sends LinkedIn outreach from your own profile.

What does one search across several people databases return?#

One search across two people databases returned 37 different people for a Manchester data engineering role, and none of them appeared in both. We ran the steps below through hyreflow's connector on 30 October 2026. hyreflow credits paid for every step except the Prospeo search, which ran on the workspace's own Prospeo account. The costs below price that step at hyreflow's rate.

The brief: Senior Data Engineer in Greater Manchester, at least five years of experience. The search used five title variants and four place names (Manchester, Greater Manchester, Salford, Stockport).

Four of the people who matched, anonymised:

• Senior Data Engineer, car manufacturer, Manchester (Prospeo)
• Lead Data Engineer, travel company, Manchester (Prospeo)
• Senior Data Engineer, streaming company, Manchester area (AI Ark)
• Data Engineer, analytics company, Salford (AI Ark)

Requiring Python and SQL as skills cut AI Ark's count from 832 to 250, because a skill filter only finds people who list the skill. "Manchester" also matched a town in Connecticut, so check the country on every row.

Prospeo showed a masked work email for 23 of its 25 profiles. Revealing one costs 0.4 credits (30 Oct 2026). That is a work address, which is what Prospeo finds; a passive candidate needs a personal one, which other providers find.

Most searches charge for the people they return, and some methods charge per call (credits and billing, checked 30 Oct 2026). Prospeo's people search costs 0.4 credits per page of up to 25 profiles (pricing tables, 30 Oct 2026). Search was the cheap part here: 19 on-target profiles for 1.0 credit at hyreflow's rates. The contact details cost more than 25 times as much.

Apollo, a sales contact database, joins the search only through your own Apollo account, which needs the Essential plan or above (pricing, 30 Oct 2026). Our workspace had none, so Apollo was skipped. What Apollo itself costs a recruiter is in Apollo pricing for recruiters.

Other sourcing tools for recruiters, such as Juicebox, hireEZ and SeekOut, are compared with hyreflow in the comparison hub. Start with Juicebox vs hyreflow, hireEZ vs hyreflow or SeekOut vs hyreflow.

Where do job boards, GitHub and other niche sources fit for an agency?#

Job boards bring active applicants, and niche sources such as GitHub, public registers and specialist boards reach people a general database describes badly. The job site Indeed reports 685 million job seeker profiles worldwide, counting accounts with a unique, verified email (About Indeed, checked 30 Oct 2026). hyreflow does not search job-board CV (resume) databases; its catalog had no such tool on 30 October 2026.

Job adverts matter to an agency in a second way: each one is a client that is hiring. Turning adverts into hiring managers is covered in how to find the hiring manager behind a job ad and in recruitment business development. The play turn a niche job board into employers and hiring managers does it for a sector or regional board.

For engineers, GitHub shows the code behind the job title. GitHub reported more than 180 million developers in its Octoverse report of 28 October 2025. In our run, a search for Manchester and Python returned 1,484 accounts for 0 credits.

GitHub matches the location a developer typed on their profile and the language most of their repositories use (GitHub Docs). That count is not screened by role. The play source engineers on proof of work instead of job titles merges that leg with a database search.

Clinicians and other registered professions are often thin in people databases. hyreflow's sourcing guidance for these roles is to run the database search and also find the employers, then the people at each. The play map a market that lives on a public register builds that employer list from a register such as a list of NHS trusts. For clinical research, ClinicalTrials.gov shows which sponsors run trials, with no key or credits needed in hyreflow (30 Oct 2026).

Events and communities build relationships, but we found no data that measures them as a candidate source, and our run did not test them.

How do recruiters find personal emails and mobiles for passive candidates?#

Recruiters find personal emails and mobiles for passive candidates with contact-data providers that look up a person from their LinkedIn profile. hyreflow searches its own data providers for you. It asks several in turn and stops at the first that returns an address, a set-up called a waterfall. For personal emails it asks LeadMagic, then Wiza, then FullEnrich (provider order on 30 Oct 2026).

Prospeo finds work emails only, in hyreflow's catalog on 30 October 2026. A passive candidate's work inbox belongs to the employer, so an approach there can reach the wrong reader. The play find personal emails for candidates who are not looking refuses any address on the current employer's domain and never guesses one.

In our 30 October 2026 run, the waterfall found personal emails for 9 of 10 people in 2 minutes 16 seconds, for 25.9 credits. That day, LeadMagic found 1 (1.1 credits), Wiza 2 (1.0 each) and FullEnrich 6 (3.8 each); the one miss was free. That is about 2.9 credits per address found.

Mobiles, or cell numbers in the US, were harder. In the same run we tried only the first provider of hyreflow's eight-provider mobile waterfall, to keep the spend down. It found 2 mobiles in 10 lookups on 30 October, at 0.332 credits each, and the misses were free. The other seven providers were not tried, so 2 in 10 measures that one provider only.

How do you measure which candidate sources produce your placements?#

You measure which candidate sources produce placements by recording the source on every placement in your CRM and counting placements by source each quarter. That count is the only ranking that fits your own desk and market, and it shows which subscriptions earn their fee.

In-house talent teams call this source of hire and track it in their ATS. Ashby's reports, for example, group every application into inbound, sourced, referral, agency and internal. In its inbound report, sourcing was the top driver of hires on jobs with few inbound applications. Tech jobs leaned on sourcing more than business jobs: 24% of hires against 18%.

Ashby's figures also show where agency candidates stand with in-house teams. In its referrals report, 42% of agency candidates reached interview. Of those interviewed, 8% got an offer, against 16% for referred candidates.

For an in-house team, hyreflow posts roles to an ATS such as Ashby or Lever through your own account; those connectors do not write candidate records (hyreflow tool catalog, 30 Oct 2026). The sources and the order above apply to your own hiring too, minus business development. A sourcer works these sources full time; the role is described in what is a sourcer.

For where these tools sit in an agency's set-up, see the recruitment agency tech stack. For the category hyreflow belongs to, see what is an AI recruitment assistant, and for the setup, how to source candidates with Claude.

Questions recruiters ask about candidate sources#