A client calls on Thursday afternoon to ask how the search is going, and the recruiter spends twenty minutes scrolling through emails to find out. Another client receives a long update one week and nothing for the next three, and starts sending the same vacancy to a second agency. A hiring manager says that “nobody has been sent yet”, while three candidates are waiting for his feedback. None of this means the work is not being done: the pipeline exists, but the client never sees it in a clear and regular form. This article explains how to send clients a weekly vacancy progress report from your Applicant Tracking System: why ad-hoc updates go wrong, what a progress report is and is not, what to put in it and what to leave out, how to build it from the pipeline instead of from memory, how to log it on the client record, how the approach differs per segment, and how to check with your own data whether the reports actually help.
Progress reports matter in every segment, in different forms. Recruitment agencies report to clients on each vacancy they work on, and a regular report is often what separates them from the agency that only calls when it has a candidate. Executive search firms report on a mandate in more depth, because the client pays for the process as well as the result. Staffing desks report on filled and open shifts or positions, often per location. Secondment firms report on proposed consultants and upcoming assignment ends. In-house recruitment teams report to hiring managers and management, who are internal clients with the same questions. In every case the question is the same: does the client know where the search stands, what is expected of them, and what happens next, without the recruiter writing it all from scratch?
Why ad-hoc updates go wrong
- Updates depend on who has time this week, so some clients hear a lot and others hear nothing
- Each recruiter writes them in a different format, so a client with several vacancies receives several kinds of update
- Figures are counted by hand from emails and notes, and do not match what is in the pipeline
- Open questions for the client, such as feedback or a missing decision, are buried halfway through a long email
- The update is sent from a personal inbox and is not stored on the client, so a colleague who takes over cannot see what was promised
The result is clients who feel uninformed even when a lot is happening, recruiters who spend hours on updates, and agreements that are lost as soon as someone is on holiday.
What a progress report is and is not
A progress report is a short, regular overview per vacancy of where the search stands, built from the stages and activities that are already recorded in the pipeline. It is not a sales pitch, a replacement for a conversation or a place to share full candidate details. It shows the client what has happened since the last report, what is waiting on them, and what the recruiter will do next. It starts from the vacancy brief and the target fill date agreed at the start, so the client can see progress against what was agreed rather than against a feeling. The report is only as good as the pipeline behind it: if stages are not updated, the report is wrong, which is a good reason to keep the pipeline up to date.
What to put in the report
Keep it to what a client can read in two minutes:
- Status in one line — on track, needs attention or at risk, with one sentence of explanation
- Candidates per stage — how many candidates are in screening, submitted, in interview and at offer, counted directly from the pipeline
- What happened this week — new submissions, interviews held, candidates who withdrew, with a short reason taken from the recorded withdrawal reason
- Waiting on the client — submissions without feedback, with the response deadline that was agreed, and any decision that is needed
- Next steps — what the recruiter will do before the next report, and the planned interview dates
- Market observations — only when relevant, such as candidates asking for a higher salary than the brief allows or a shortage of a certain certificate
Use one standard layout for every client, taken from your shared message templates, so a client with several vacancies receives one familiar format and can compare them.
What to leave out
Do not include candidate names, contact details or full profiles of candidates the client has not yet been presented with; the report counts candidates, it does not introduce them. Candidates who have been submitted can be referred to by the same name or reference the client already received, and only with the consent the candidate gave for that submission. When you work with anonymised profiles, keep the report anonymised as well. Leave out internal notes, opinions about colleagues of the client and anything you would not want forwarded. Do not show figures you cannot explain, and never present estimates as if they were counts.
Build it from the pipeline, not from memory
Let the system put together a draft per vacancy from the data it already holds: stage counts, submissions and their response deadlines, interviews planned with their scheduling owner, withdrawals and their reasons. The recruiter then reads the draft, adds the status line and any observations, corrects what is out of date and sends it. This takes minutes instead of an hour, and the figures in the report are the same as the figures in your own weekly pipeline review. Agree a fixed day per client, so the report arrives at the same moment every week, and let the owner of the vacancy be the person who sends it.
Log the report on the client record
Store every sent report on the vacancy and the client in your client relationship records alongside the pipeline, with the date, the sender and the version that was sent. When the client replies with feedback or a decision, record it on the candidate or the vacancy, not only in the inbox. When a vacancy is handed over to another recruiter, the new owner reads the last reports and knows exactly what the client has been told and promised. When a vacancy is put on hold or closed, the last report shows the client the reason and review date or the close reason, so nothing ends in silence.
Differences per segment
Agencies usually send one report per vacancy per week, or a combined report for a client with several vacancies, and use it to raise feedback that is overdue. Executive search firms report on a mandate every week or two, often with the longlist and the number of people approached and interested, and discuss the report in a short call. Staffing desks report on filled and open positions per location or per shift, and on candidates whose availability is confirmed for the coming period. Secondment firms report on proposed consultants and on assignments that end soon, so the client can decide on an extension in time. In-house teams send hiring managers the same kind of report, and give management a combined overview of all open vacancies.
Let the system help
Much of the work around progress reports repeats and suits automation: preparing a draft per vacancy on the agreed day, counting candidates per stage, listing submissions that have passed their response deadline, adding planned interviews, setting a task for the owner when a report has not been sent, and saving the sent report on the client record. An artificial intelligence helper can summarise the week’s activity into a few sentences, suggest a clearer status line or point out a vacancy that has had no movement for some time. The recruiter reads every report and decides what is sent; artificial intelligence does not replace recruiters and does not send reports to clients on its own.
Common mistakes to avoid
- Reports that are too long — a client who has to search for the point stops reading
- Figures counted by hand — numbers that do not match the pipeline cost trust as soon as a client notices
- Only reporting good news — a search at risk needs to be raised early, with a proposal, not hidden until the target date has passed
- Candidate details in the report — a report is easily forwarded; it should never introduce candidates without consent
- Reports outside the record — a report in a personal inbox cannot be found by a colleague or checked later
Questions teams ask
- How often should we report? — Weekly for most vacancies; every two weeks for long search mandates, and more often when a decision is close
- Should we report when nothing happened? — Yes; a short report that says what you did and why there is no movement is better than silence
- Can the report go out automatically? — Let the draft be prepared automatically, but have the recruiter read and send it
- Should a client with five vacancies get five reports? — Many teams send one combined report with a short section per vacancy
- Who sends the report? — The owner of the vacancy; when they are absent, the colleague who covers their vacancies
Check it with your own data
Count from your own records, per team, per segment and per client: how many active vacancies received a report in each of the last weeks, how many reports were sent on the agreed day, how long clients took to give feedback on submissions before and after you started reporting, how many submissions passed their response deadline, and how many vacancies were closed because the client filled them elsewhere or stopped the search. Look at whether the time between submission and client feedback changes, and keep those figures next to your time-to-fill. Report the number of vacancies behind each figure. Do not compare with industry averages; how your own clients respond to your own reports is the number that matters.
A practical start
- Agree one short report layout with the sections above and save it as a shared template
- Choose a fixed reporting day per client and make the vacancy owner responsible for sending
- Build every report from the pipeline, and update stages before the report is prepared
- Put what is waiting on the client at the top, with the agreed response deadlines
- Save every sent report on the vacancy and the client record
Regular reports, fewer surprises
A short weekly progress report per vacancy shows clients that the search is moving, makes clear what is waiting on them, and saves recruiters the hours they now spend on updates written from memory. Build it from the pipeline, keep it short and free of candidate details, send it on a fixed day, log it on the client record and use it to raise problems early. Explore the product or book a demo — we show how progress reports, response deadlines and client records work together in BoldATS for your segment.