Funnel leak

A funnel leak is the spot where your hiring funnel loses the most good people. Every funnel loses people at every step, that's normal. The leak is the one step that loses way more than it should, and that's the one you fix first.

The reason I talk about it like this is because of what most companies do when there aren't enough applicants. Everybody's first instinct is "we need more budget". But if the leak is further down, more budget just pours more people into the same hole. Picture a bucket with a hole in it: you can keep filling it faster, or you can fix the hole.

Finding it isn't complicated. Measure every step, from impression to click, to landing on the ad, to starting and finishing the application, to first contact, interview, offer and hire. Then look for the biggest drop. That's your leak. The full step by step is in The Hiring Funnel Leak Map.

Example

A company is about to double the budget for a hard-to-fill role. Before they do, they look at the numbers step by step. Lots of clicks, plenty of people starting the application, but most of them quit on the page where they have to create an account. That's the leak. They remove the account step first, and only then decide if they still need more budget.