What it is
Fill rate is the percentage of job orders a desk or agency actually converts into a placement, calculated simply as job orders filled divided by job orders received over a given period. A desk that takes on twenty job orders in a quarter and places twelve against them has a fill rate of sixty percent. It is tracked at several levels: per role, per consultant, per client account and, on enterprise panels, per supplier competing for the same requisitions.
Fill rate is easy to confuse with two other numbers it sits next to. Time-to-fill measures how fast a vacancy closes once it opens; fill rate measures whether it closes at all. Win rate measures how many BD conversations turn into a signed brief in the first place; fill rate measures what happens after that brief becomes a live job order. A desk can have an excellent win rate and a mediocre fill rate if it says yes to briefs it then struggles to deliver against.
Winning the job order is the easy part. Fill rate is what the client remembers you by.
Why it matters
Fill rate is one of the few numbers that follows an agency around a panel. On a Preferred Supplier List or inside an MSP-run programme, fill rate against the job orders you actually accepted is exactly what decides whether you keep your slot at the next review. A supplier with a strong win rate but a fill rate stuck well under half its job orders looks unreliable no matter how good the relationship is, and panels reallocate volume to whichever supplier on the list is actually closing roles.
The cost of a low fill rate is not just the fee you did not earn. Every job order you accept and fail to fill uses up a slice of the client's patience and a slot on their vacancy list that a competing supplier would have closed instead. Agencies that consistently convert well under half the job orders they take on burn trust faster than agencies that simply decline briefs they cannot realistically deliver.
How boilr handles it
boilr does not run the search or make the placement, but it shapes the two inputs that decide whether a job order gets filled at all. ICP-matched targeting means the accounts and briefs reaching a consultant are ones the desk has a genuine right to win, rather than opportunistic orders taken on hope. Talent pooling keeps warm, previously engaged candidates on file in the Company Brain, so a search does not start from zero the moment a job order lands.
Every job order boilr helps win is tracked as a live stage in the BD pipeline, so a consultant or desk lead can see which mandates are stalling before the client has to ask. Silver medalists and past search history are resurfaced automatically against briefs that resemble ones the desk has filled before, giving a slow-moving order a warm shortlist rather than leaving it to a cold search. The result is a pipeline built from job orders the desk can actually close, not just win.
