Hiring signal

How hiring signals work

A hiring signal starts with a job post. When a company advertises a role, it tells the world that a position exists, that someone approved the cost and that a team will change soon. Sellers whose product is used by that team treat the post as a reason to get in touch.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics offers a useful test for what counts as a real opening. Its JOLTS survey counts a job as open only if a specific position exists, the work could start within 30 days and the employer is actively recruiting from outside the location 1. Positions open only to internal transfers are excluded, and so are roles with start dates more than 30 days out 1. A post that fails those tests is a weak signal even if it is still visible online.

Teams read several layers from a post.

• The role shows which function is growing, such as sales, data engineering or customer success.
• The seniority shows whether a team is being built or backfilled. A first head of a function often means new budget and new tools.
• The volume of posts at one company shows scale. RichAPI's playbook notes that a company posting several RevOps roles is building a team and that somebody now owns a new problem 2.
• The location shows where the company is expanding.

A hiring signal is a fact about staffing and does not prove a purchase. RichAPI's hiring playbook says a job post indicates hiring activity only and that it makes no claim that a hiring company is in a buying cycle 2. Most teams treat it as one input among several buying signals, next to fit data such as firmographics.

Collecting hiring signals at scale is a job search run on a schedule. The results roll up to companies, the companies are matched to the people who own the budget, and those people are enriched with a verified email. The steps that follow are standard B2B contact data work.

What makes a hiring signal reliable

Four variables decide whether a hiring signal leads to a useful conversation.

Recency matters most. Some companies leave a role open for months or run a permanent always hiring listing 2. RichAPI's hiring playbook advises filtering hard on recency at search time and checking the post again before it appears in a message 2. Its signal playbook suggests expiring job signals after a month 3. Stale posts are a form of data decay.

The poster matters next. A recruiting agency can post on behalf of a client, and enriching the agency teaches a seller nothing about the real employer 2. Drop companies whose posting volume looks like a staffing business.

The buyer is not the hire. The person being hired is the future employee, while the person who approved the role holds the budget. RichAPI's playbook gives the example of a VP of Sales hiring three SDRs, where the VP is the buyer and the new SDRs are not 2. Search for the titles that sign.

Fit still applies. A fast-hiring company outside the target profile is still a poor account. Filter on fit first, then use hiring to rank the accounts that pass, as part of lead scoring or a simple priority list.

Example of a hiring signal turned into a contact list

A team selling sales enablement software wants accounts that are building sales teams this month. It follows RichAPI's hiring signal recipe, which chains a job search, a roll-up to companies, an employee search and email finding with verification 2.

1. linkedin_job_search                 role keywords, location, recency filter
2. roll up to companies                one company with six posts is one account
3. linkedin_company_employees_search   titles that sign, three to five of them
4. email_finder, then email_verifier   finder misses return billed false

The playbook prices one run with the counts written down. The job search returns 100 results at 0.1 credits each, which bills 10 credits 2. Those results roll up to 40 companies 2. Pulling 5 people at each company returns 200 employee results at 0.1 credits each, or 20 credits 2.

The email step is where most credits go. The team runs 200 email_finder calls at 5 credits each and gets 120 hits, which bill 600 credits 2. The 80 misses cost nothing, because email_finder is a waterfall endpoint, and the playbook notes they would have cost 400 credits on a non-waterfall endpoint 2. Verifying the 120 hits at 2 credits each costs 240 credits 2.

The searches bill differently. Both search calls charge per result returned on any successful response, so a vague keyword across many countries is a real cost 2. The playbook recommends three to five titles per company for the employee search 2.

Each rep then opens with the job post. The post is public, dated and checkable, so the buyer can confirm it in a few seconds. A line about a new sales team being staffed works better than any claim about intent 2.

Hiring signal vs job posting data

The two are closely linked. Job posting data is the raw feed of postings, while a hiring signal is the reading a seller takes from one company's posts.