What it is
A propensity-to-hire score is a predictive estimate of how likely a company is to open new roles in the near future. It is built differently from a buying signal, which is a single observed event, a funding round, a new executive, a headcount spike. Propensity is modelled from a wider pattern of weak indicators observed together: funding history, headcount trend, leadership churn and the seasonality a company has shown in its own past hiring. No single input proves anything on its own. Combined, they resemble what other companies looked like shortly before they started hiring.
The distinction is direction. A signal describes something that already happened. A propensity score describes something likely to happen next, often before there is any discrete event to point to. It is recalculated continuously as new data arrives rather than produced once and left to go stale.
A buying signal tells you a company is hiring now. Propensity to hire tells you which company is hiring next.
Why it matters
Waiting for a signal means reacting only after something becomes publicly visible, at which point several agencies usually notice it at the same time. A propensity score moves the moment of outreach earlier, into the window where a company is not yet aware it is about to hire but is already showing the pattern that precedes it. That earlier window is where the quietest, least competitive conversations happen.
The honest caveat is that propensity is a probability, not a certainty, and it only becomes reliable once there is enough history behind both the company and the agency's own past outcomes. A high score means an account resembles others that hired before, not that this particular one definitely will. Used without verification it just points a consultant at more accounts to check; it does not replace judgement, it only moves that judgement earlier.
How boilr handles it
boilr builds a propensity-to-hire score for every company it tracks from the same history it already holds in the Company Brain: funding pattern, headcount trajectory, leadership churn and each company's own past hiring seasonality. The score is not a one-off snapshot. It updates as new data and new outcomes arrive, and it sharpens as your agency's own placements confirm which patterns actually convert into mandates rather than staying theoretical.
Propensity does not replace buying signals, it extends them. An account with an active signal still moves fastest through your task inbox. An account with no live signal but a high propensity stays visible instead of disappearing, feeding into lead scoring so the quiet, not-yet-triggered accounts worth watching do not fall out of view until the signal that confirms them finally fires.
