Recruitment can be a fast-paced, chaotic process. It’s hard enough to focus on finding the right hire, let alone auditing the recruitment process as you go. However, taking the time to gather and analyze recruitment metrics can help you perfect your hiring process in the long term.
We’ll walk you through the main metrics your company should monitor and evaluate consistently.
What Are Recruitment Metrics?
Recruitment metrics are statistics that help you measure the efficiency and effectiveness of your recruitment process. They help your company learn more about its success (or struggles) when it comes to attracting, hiring, and retaining employees.
8 Key Recruitment Metrics to Consider
- Time to hire. Are you wasting time during the recruitment process? Are your candidates waiting for long stretches of time between interviews? Tracking how much time passes between the day you post an open position and the day a candidate is hired can help you find out where the bumps in the road are so that you can speed up your hiring process.
- Number of applicants vs. number of hires. This metric is pretty self-explanatory- but don’t forget to monitor these numbers to ensure that you’re hiring from a large enough talent pool.
- Average time-to-interview. This is a common area where companies find inefficiency in their process, so don’t forget to monitor how long it takes for applicants to get from one interview stage to the next.
- Cost per hire. Measuring cost per hire helps you figure out how many employees you can afford to hire each year. This figure reveals how economically efficient your hiring process is.
- Offer acceptance rate. Are your candidates accepting your offers? If your metrics show that many candidates are interested in your positions initially, but few accept your offer, you need to discover why your roles are being turned down.
- Return on investment (ROI). This is one of the most important metrics to track. 64% of recruiters expect their budgets to grow in the next 6-12 months. Tracking ROI is important when it comes to advocating for new hiring technology and resources.
- Quality of hire. This metric can be tricky, but many companies assign their employees scores from 1-10 or 1-100 in order to measure qualitative aspects such as job performance, productivity, and social engagement. Dividing the final sum by the number of aspects measured will give you a hire’s overall quality score.
- First year attrition. Are your new hires staying with the company long-term? Find out your attrition rate by dividing the number of first-year employees who left the company by the number of first-year employees at the start of the measurement period. Multiply this number by 100 to get your percentage.
How to Monitor Your Recruitment Metrics
Now that you know what to measure, it’s time to think about how to measure and how to manage the data. Consider the following ways to help manage your recruitment metrics:
- Utilize Applicant Tracking Software (ATS): tracking the status changes of candidates throughout your hiring process helps you discover inefficiencies in the process. You can learn more about ATS here.
- Delegate: monitoring metrics can be a team effort for an HR department- not an overwhelming task for one person.
- Set a practical time frame: do you want to monitor metrics every quarter? Every year? Consider the timing of budget discussions and annual reports.
Conclusion
All of the metrics and measurement strategies above will help you keep tabs on the efficiency, cost, and success of your hiring process.
Interested in learning more from professional recruiters? Contact Lucas James.
This article was originally published on April 7, 2022 ; it has since been updated and republished on September 28, 2023.