Recruitment Metrics: Measuring Hiring Success

The employment landscape remains challenging for many organizations as the workforce becomes increasingly competitive. As such, your company should always refer to reliable recruiter metrics when gauging the effectiveness of your hiring efforts. In this helpful guide, our employment specialists give you the low down on the top figures to monitor for optimizing your talent acquisition campaigns.

Time-to-fill Ratio

Time-to-fill refers to the recruiter metrics that monitor the time or number of days it takes to hire an individual for a job vacancy. You can calculate time-to-fill by dividing the number of days to fill a position by the total number of positions filled for that hiring campaign. 

It is important to manage the time-to-fill for your campaigns as it affects the costs involved in the hiring process. For example, positions that remain vacant for extended periods could compromise your organization’s overall productivity. The prolonged vacancy period could also result in additional workload and stress on the existing employees, affecting their workplace satisfaction and potentially leading to high turnover. 

Quality-of-hire Metrics

Your campaign’s quality-of-hire recruiter metrics cover the overall success of acquiring an employee. These metrics may include retention statistics, employee appraisal ratings, promotion rates, and other performance indicators. Consider including qualitative and quantitative information when calculating your quality-of-hire metrics for an accurate and holistic assessment of recruitment success. For example, you could conduct employee reviews (qualitative) to assess the cultural fit of a hire while tabulating the cost of hiring (quantitative). 

Source of Hire Analysis

Recruitment channels abound, and your organization needs to identify the most efficient ones to drive cost-effective recruitment strategies. Your source of hire analytics should leverage your quality-of-hire metrics in determining the most successful recruits. Quality source of hire analytics enables your company to optimize resource allocation when filling a job vacancy.

Ultimately, identifying the top sources of hire helps your company boost recruiting ROI by reaching out to the most interested and dedicated talent. Doing so helps to improve other metrics, such as minimizing the time-to-fill and contributing to more strategic planning across your workforce. While the optimal source of hire differs according to your company’s size, culture, and industry, Indeed identifies the following talent sources as top choices:

• Employee Referrals – These referrals usually offer quality hires since existing employees understand the demands and culture of your company. As such, they are more likely to recommend the most suitable people for the job. 
• Social Media Platforms – Online platforms like LinkedIn enable your company to streamline recruiting efforts with targeted advertising while broadening your outreach for improved results and candidate responses. 
• Recruitment Agencies – Partnering with an experienced recruiting professional enables you to tap into exclusive industry expertise for shortlisting the most suitable hires tailored to your company profile. Your partner can help you reach a wider talent pool, fine-tune screening techniques, and drive results based on the latest hiring benchmarks. 

Applicant Drop-off Rates

Industry research shows that most hiring companies experience a staggering 80% drop-off rate in the application process. These rates refer to the number of applicants who start a job application process but give up amidst the process. 

You can calculate your recruiting drop-off rate by dividing the number of incomplete applications by the total number of applications multiplied by 100. A high drop-off rate usually indicates bottlenecks in your job application process that prevent you from attracting quality hires. 

Some potential job application issues leading to drop-off include:

1. Non-mobile-friendly interfaces – Almost 70% of job applications originated from mobile devices. It is important to ensure that your forms cater to most job seekers and keep them engaged until the end of the application. 
2. Lengthy or complex questions – Redundant or wordy job applications could lead to candidate disengagement and drop-off. Industry surveys show that 60% of candidates quit during the application process due to its wordiness and complexity. 
3. Lack of Transparency – Candidates may discontinue a job application if they perceive security risks and concerns in the online application process. 

Cost-per-hire Calculations

Your cost-per-hire (CPH) is a critical recruiting metric that reveals the cost-effectiveness of talent acquisition. You can assess the CPH of your campaigns by dividing the total recruitment cost by the total number of hires. A company’s recruitment cost covers every expense of getting a candidate onboard. These costs usually include agency fees, the scheduled time and venue bookings for interviews, recruitment tools/services, and training resources. 

When in doubt, you could contact your recruiter to discuss a comprehensive breakdown of the expenses incurred in your campaigns. Dividing the components into direct and indirect costs provides a clearer perspective for optimizing your budget. Particularly, you should consider identifying the indirect/hidden costs that reduce the profitability of your hiring efforts. These may include background check costs and the subscription fees of application tracking systems (ATS).

Takeaway – Boost Talent Acquisition With Recruitment Metrics

Ultimately, recruitment metrics provide the critical data for driving impactful decisions in securing your next big hire. Tracking this information offers measurable and consistent insights into various areas of improvement to ensure an optimized hiring process every time.