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Hiring Activity

Hiring activity indicators are the core of Client Discovery. They tell you not just which companies exist, but which companies are actively hiring right now. This is the difference between cold-calling a company that may or may not need you and reaching out to a company that demonstrably has open roles to fill. Timing your outreach to coincide with a company’s active hiring is the single most effective strategy for recruitment business development.

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What Hiring Activity Indicators Mean

Recruitier tracks several dimensions of hiring activity for each company:

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Active Job Count

The number of currently open job postings at a company. This is the most basic indicator — a company with 15 active jobs has more hiring needs than one with 2. You can filter by minimum and maximum job count to target companies with a specific volume of openings.
By default, the search requires a minimum of 1 active job. Companies with zero active postings do not appear in search results. This ensures every company in your results has at least some current hiring activity.

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Hotness Score

The hotness score normalizes hiring activity by company size. It is calculated as: 
hotness_score = active_job_count / employee_count
A hotness score of 0.10 means the company has open roles for 10% of its current workforce. A score of 0.01 means openings for just 1%. Higher scores indicate more intense hiring relative to the company’s size. What different hotness scores mean in practice:
ScoreInterpretationTypical Scenario
0.20+Extraordinary hiring intensityStartup in hypergrowth, or company rebuilding a team
0.10 - 0.20Very high intensityRapid expansion, likely overwhelmed internally
0.05 - 0.10High intensityActive growth phase, good outreach window
0.01 - 0.05Moderate intensityNormal hiring activity, steady needs
< 0.01Low intensityRoutine replacement hiring
Companies without employee count data cannot have a meaningful hotness score and default to zero. These companies are included in search results but their hotness score will be minimal. Use the employee count filter (minimum 1) to focus on companies with known sizes if hotness score accuracy is important for your prioritization.

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Posting Recency

The “posted within” filter lets you find companies that have posted jobs recently. This is one of the most strategically valuable filters because it identifies companies in the early stages of a hiring initiative:
TimeframeFilter ValueBest For
Last 24 hours24 hoursFinding companies that just posted today — freshest opportunities
Last 48 hours48 hoursCatching companies from the last two days — still very timely
Last 7 days168 hoursWeekly prospecting sessions — good balance of volume and freshness
Last 14 days336 hoursBi-weekly reviews — capturing recent activity with broader coverage
Last 30 days720 hoursMonthly market reviews — broader view of hiring activity
The posted-within filter checks the job’s list date (when it was published), falling back to the record creation date if no explicit list date is available. This ensures that even jobs without a clear publication date are included based on when Recruitier first discovered them.

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The Hiring Intensity Visualization

In the search results table, each company’s hiring intensity is represented visually with flame icons and color coding. These provide an at-a-glance indication of how intensely a company is hiring:
IndicatorScore ThresholdMeaning
Three flames (red)>= 0.10Very high hiring intensity — this company is hiring aggressively relative to its size
Two flames (orange)>= 0.05Moderate hiring intensity — active hiring but not exceptional
One flame (yellow)>= 0.01Some hiring activity relative to company size
Gray indicator< 0.01Minimal hiring activity relative to company size
The number of flames is derived from the hotness score, making it a relative measure that accounts for company size. A small company with a few jobs can show three flames while a large enterprise with many more total jobs shows only one.
Three-flame companies are prime targets for recruitment outreach. They are hiring at a rate that likely exceeds their internal recruitment capacity, making them more receptive to external support. Focus your initial outreach on three-flame companies in your niche for the highest conversion rates.

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Filtering by Hiring Activity

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Minimum Jobs Filter

Set a minimum job count to exclude companies with very few openings. A minimum of 3-5 jobs is often a good starting point — it indicates sustained hiring rather than an occasional single role. Companies with multiple openings are more likely to need ongoing recruitment support rather than a one-off placement.

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Maximum Jobs Filter

Set a maximum to exclude very large companies with hundreds of openings. This can help you focus on companies where your impact would be more visible and the relationship more personal. It also helps filter out potential aggregators that were not caught by automatic detection.

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Posted Within Filter

This filter is one of the most strategically valuable. By filtering for jobs posted within the last 24-48 hours, you can identify companies that are just ramping up a new hiring initiative. Being the first recruiter to reach out at this moment gives you a significant advantage because:
  • The company’s internal team may not have started sourcing yet
  • They have not engaged other external recruiters yet
  • The urgency is highest at the start of a hiring push
  • Your relevance is clear — you are responding to a visible, immediate need

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How to Spot Companies Ramping Up Hiring

Several signals indicate a company is in the early stages of a hiring ramp-up:
1

Recent Posting Surge

Use the “posted within” filter set to 48 hours and sort by job count. Companies that just posted multiple jobs in a short period are likely starting a new hiring initiative. Three or more jobs posted in 48 hours is a strong signal.
2

High Hotness Score with Moderate Job Count

A small company (50-100 employees) with 8-10 open roles has an unusually high hotness score. This suggests a growth phase where they need to significantly expand their team — they are growing by 10-20% of their current headcount.
3

New Companies Appearing

If you have saved a search with notifications enabled, Recruitier alerts you when new companies appear in your results. A company appearing for the first time means they just started posting jobs in your target segment.
4

Hiring Trend Analysis

On the company detail page, the hiring trend chart shows posting frequency over the past 6 months. A sharp upward trend indicates acceleration in hiring. See Hiring Trends for more detail.

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Why Timing Matters for Business Development

Timing is critical in recruitment business development:
  • Too early — If you reach out before a company has real hiring needs, your message is irrelevant and forgettable. You become just another cold call.
  • Too late — If you wait until the company has been hiring for months, they likely already have recruitment partners in place. You are competing against established relationships.
  • Just right — Reaching out when a company is just starting to ramp up hiring is the sweet spot. They have immediate needs but may not have engaged recruiters yet. Your outreach arrives at the moment of highest relevance.
The hiring activity filters help you identify the “just right” window. Companies posting their first batch of new jobs are in the early stages of scaling and are most likely to be open to new recruitment partnerships.
A single job posting does not necessarily indicate a recruitment need worth pursuing. Companies post individual roles regularly as part of normal turnover. Look for companies with multiple recent postings or a high hotness score as more reliable indicators of genuine recruitment demand that justifies external recruitment fees.

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Using Hiring Activity to Prioritize Outreach

Here is a practical framework for prioritizing your business development outreach based on hiring activity:

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Tier 1: Immediate Outreach

  • Hotness score in the top 10% of your results (three flames)
  • Multiple jobs posted in the last 48 hours
  • Company is in your target industry and location
  • Action: Contact within 24 hours. These are time-sensitive opportunities.

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Tier 2: Near-Term Outreach

  • Above-average hotness score (two flames)
  • Active job postings (5+)
  • Company fits your specialization
  • Action: Contact within the current week. Good opportunities that are not as time-sensitive.

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Tier 3: Watchlist

  • Some hiring activity but not exceptional (one flame)
  • Posted jobs recently but only 1-2 roles
  • Company is interesting but not urgently hiring
  • Action: Track the company and set up saved search notifications. Reach out when activity increases.
You can use the saved search feature combined with notifications to monitor Tier 3 companies and get alerted when their hiring activity increases, automatically promoting them to Tier 1 or 2.

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Combining Hiring Activity with Other Filters

CombinationStrategy
Activity + SkillsFind companies that just posted Python jobs this week — highly targeted and timely
Activity + SizeFind growing startups (small size, high hotness) — ideal for agencies specializing in startup recruitment
Activity + IndustryFind healthcare companies ramping up hiring — sector-specific opportunities
Activity + LocationFind companies near you that started hiring today — geographic and timing alignment
Activity + All of the aboveThe ultimate targeted search: specific industry, skills, location, size, and recent activity
The hiring activity data is updated as new jobs are scraped and processed. There may be a short delay between when a job is posted on LinkedIn and when it appears in Recruitier’s database. Typically this is within a few hours for actively monitored job boards.

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Reading the Numbers

When evaluating a company’s hiring activity, consider these contextual factors:
  • Seasonality — Some industries hire more at certain times of year. Retail ramps up before holidays, accounting firms before tax season, tech companies often in Q1 after budget approval.
  • Industry norms — A tech company with 20 open roles may be normal operations, while a manufacturing company with 20 open roles may signal significant expansion.
  • Job types — A company posting 10 senior engineering roles has different recruitment needs than one posting 10 internship positions. Senior roles are typically higher-fee placements.
  • Historical context — A company that went from 2 jobs to 10 jobs in a month is growing faster than one that has consistently had 10 jobs for six months.
The hiring trend chart on each company’s detail page helps you understand these patterns. See Hiring Trends for more on interpreting trend data.

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Advanced

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How the Hotness Score Is Calculated Under the Hood

The hotness score computation happens dynamically in the search query, not as a stored value. For each company in the result set: 
hotness_score = CASE
  WHEN employee_count IS NULL OR employee_count = 0 THEN 0
  ELSE job_count / employee_count
END
The critical detail is which job_count is used:
  • No job-level filters active (no skills, location, recency, or job function filters): Uses the total_job_count_subquery — the count of all active jobs at the company.
  • Job-level filters active: Uses the matching_job_count_subquery — only jobs that satisfy the active filters.
This switch means the hotness score adapts to your search context. When you filter for Python jobs, the hotness score reflects how intensively the company is hiring Python developers specifically, not their overall hiring volume.

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How the Posted-Within Filter Works

The recency filter uses a date comparison: 
COALESCE(list_date, created_at) >= (NOW() - INTERVAL posted_within_hours HOURS)
The COALESCE function falls back to created_at (when Recruitier first scraped the job) if the job does not have an explicit list_date. This ensures that jobs without publication dates are still filtered by when they were discovered, which is usually close to when they were published.

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Connection to Other Features

  • Hiring Trends Chart: The hiring activity filters provide a current snapshot, while the hiring trends chart on the company detail page shows the trajectory over 6 months. Use the filters to find companies, then check their trends to understand the pattern.
  • Saved Search Notifications: When hiring activity filters are part of a saved search, the notification system re-runs the exact query periodically. New companies appearing in results (because they posted new jobs or their hotness score increased) trigger notifications.
  • Job Count Display: When recency or other job-level filters are active, the results table shows “matching / total” job counts. This dual display is powered by the two parallel subqueries running simultaneously.
  • Aggregator Detection: Extremely high job counts relative to employee count can trigger aggregator detection (before the hotness score is calculated), removing suspicious entities from results entirely.

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Power User Tips

  • Use posted-within as your weekly prospecting tool: Set it to 168 hours every Monday morning to see what changed since last week. This is the most efficient way to identify new outreach targets on a regular schedule.
  • Combine posted-within with hotness sort: This puts the most intensely hiring companies with recent postings at the top — the intersection of urgency and intensity.
  • Track companies when hotness is high: A company’s hotness score fluctuates as jobs are posted and filled. If you see a company with a high score now, track it immediately rather than bookmarking it for later — the window of maximum receptivity is temporary.
  • A spike in jobs from a previously quiet company is the strongest signal: Use the posted-within filter to catch companies that go from zero to multiple postings. This transition point is when they are most likely to need external recruitment support.
  • Watch for hotness score deflation with filters: When you apply skill or location filters, a company’s hotness score may drop significantly if only a fraction of their jobs match. A company with a hotness score of 0.15 unfiltered but 0.02 filtered means their hiring intensity is mostly in areas outside your filters.

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Business Logic Rules

  • The minimum job count defaults to 1 — companies with zero active jobs never appear in results.
  • Hotness score = 0 when employee_count is NULL or 0, not an error or infinity.
  • The posted-within filter uses COALESCE(list_date, created_at) for date comparison.
  • Hotness score is computed dynamically per query, not stored on the company record.
  • The flame display thresholds are: >= 0.10 (3 flames/red), >= 0.05 (2 flames/orange), >= 0.01 (1 flame/yellow), < 0.01 (gray/minimal).