What a placement is worth, from the moment it exists.
Fee, probability and expected month sit on the record itself, not in a spreadsheet beside it. The value of the desk is read, never rebuilt.
Placements and feesEvery recruitment CRM will be AI-native soon enough.
That is a starting line, not a finish.
What lasts is whether the system helps you bill.
Revenue-first, because the number never stops.
Twelve years on recruitment desks across Asia Pacific taught me what a system has to be built around. It is not activity.
The quick answer
The quick answer
Revenue-first means the placement and the fee are the primary objects in the system, and everything else is evidence attached to them. Most recruitment CRMs are built around activity, with revenue derived afterwards in a reporting layer. Signals is built the other way round, so what a desk is worth is visible without anyone assembling it.
The seat I sat in
The seat I sat in
I recruited for twelve years across Asia Pacific. Adecco in Shanghai, then Aston Carter and Allegis, then my own agency.
Every quarter starts at zero. The market turns and takes your desk with it. Business development never stops, because the week you stop is the month you feel it. Roles fall through. Clients change their mind at offer stage, after the candidate has resigned.
Every system I was given measured how busy I had been. None of them helped me see what was actually coming. So Signals puts the fee, the month and the likelihood on the record itself, and treats the activity as evidence for them.
Julio Orr, founder, Signals
What activity measures, and what it misses.
What a legacy CRM records
Calls logged. CVs sent. Interviews arranged. Notes filed against the record the same evening. All of it true, all of it past tense, all of it a record of effort that has already been spent.
What a recruiter is judged on
Placements made. Fees invoiced. What lands this month, what slips to next, and what a manager will ask about on Monday morning without needing a report to be built first.
Effort is not the same as outcome, and only one of them pays.
The hard part
Saving a recruiter time is worth doing, and every serious system will do it soon. It is not the hard part. The hard part is helping a desk see revenue earlier, so a quarter that starts at zero does not stay there by surprise.
BD Signals
The only way a desk grows is more opportunities.
Time saved protects the revenue a desk already has. Opportunities created is the only thing that grows it. Every recruiter knows the roles they win are the ones they heard about first.
That has always meant reading the market manually in the evening, or hearing it by luck. Signals watches for the moments that mean hiring, and puts them on the company record before the job is advertised.
A funding round, a headcount change, a new leader in seat.
On the company record, with the name of the person who owns the brief.
First in the conversation, not third.
The other three
The other three
Targets that roll down and roll up.
Office, desk and recruiter, set once and inherited, so everyone sees the same number. No manager keeps a second version of it.
TargetsWhat actually happened.
Billings, fees and placements, in the language the desk already uses, for the period a manager is asking about.
Billings and reportingWhere the numbers come from.
Signals shows what it can evidence. Placements, fees and billings are recorded as the desk works, so they hold up when someone asks. Reconciled figures and anything your accountant signs off come from your finance system, not from an inference in a CRM. Where the two need to meet, they meet through an integration, not a guess.
Common questions
It means the placement and the fee are primary records rather than a report assembled later. Activity sits underneath them as evidence. A recruiter opens a company or a candidate and sees what the work is worth, when it is expected to land and how likely it is, without exporting anything or asking someone to build it.
A fee is the amount charged for a single placement, agreed with the client, permanent or contract. Billings are the total of those fees invoiced across a period, by a recruiter, a desk or an office. One is the value of a piece of work. The other is the value of a period of work.
Most forecast by stage. They take what sits at offer, at late interview and at CV sent, apply a probability to each and place the fee in the month it should invoice. The difficulty is keeping it current. Signals holds fee, probability and expected month on the placement itself, so the forecast is the pipeline rather than a document beside it.
Yes, at three levels. Targets are set for the office, the desk and the individual recruiter, and they roll down and roll up, so a recruiter's number and the office number are the same number seen at different heights. Set once, inherited, and visible to everyone measured against it, with no parallel version kept by a manager.
No, and deliberately. Signals records placements, fees and billings as the desk works. Reconciled figures and anything your accountant signs off stay in your finance system. Where the two need to meet, they meet through an integration, so what you read in Signals is what it can evidence.
Yes, both. A permanent placement carries a single fee. A contract placement carries a rate, a margin and a duration, so its value accrues across months rather than landing in one. Both sit on the same record with an expected value and an expected month, and both roll into the same billings view.