Characteristics of the best recruiting dashboard

There are many key performance indicators you can track through data analysis software. The problem is that with so many metrics, the most important information could be lost in a sea of data. You want your hiring dashboard to provide a snapshot of the information you can use to determine how effective your recruiting strategy is so that you can make adjustments. For example, you might want to know how many applications you need to filter through on average before coming to your final candidates.

This data can also be used to calculate the true cost of hiring a new employee, from the cost of placing a job listing to setting up interviews and onboarding the employee after the offer is accepted. Here are three characteristics of an effective recruiting dashboard.

Learn more: Creating a Recruiting Plan for Your Business in 12 Steps

It’s direct and to the point

Remember that sometimes less is more, and this is especially true when preparing your dashboard. An overly complicated dashboard can harm your business through decreased productivity if the people reviewing the information don’t understand how the metrics apply to their tasks or can’t find the information they need. The best policy is to stick to basics and leave the advanced data analysis to the departments that require it.

It highlights the data you need

HR staff and managers should be able to review the dashboard and access the KPIs they’re interested in. If you include too many data points, your team will spend more time filtering through the data than using the information they glean from the statistics. For example, your manager may want to immediately know what it’s going to cost to hire and train a new graphic designer and doesn’t want to sift through additional metrics to decide whether the department can afford the investment.

While the other data might be important for a recruiter who’s looking to streamline the hiring process and reduce costs, it isn’t as relevant for others. Make sure your recruiting dashboard presents the data efficiently.

It’s easy to navigate

Set up your data with charts and graphs so that people who make decisions based on what they see can identify key trends. You can include additional information that supports the primary metrics in case they want to see how the results are impacted over time, but the most vital information should be laid out so that the people who use your dashboard can easily identify it and navigate it in steps.

For example, showing that the total cost of hiring a new employee is $4,000 helps management determine whether there’s enough money in the budget to recruit new talent and helps them decide where to place job listings. Conversion data shows recruiters where they should focus their efforts next time.

Learn more: What is the Cost of Hiring an Employee?

What programs can you use to make a recruitment dashboard?

Depending on your primary goals, you don’t always need fancy software to create or import data into a hiring dashboard. You could use the software you already have to create visualizations or aggregate metrics into a format that’s easy to use and interpret. You can use the following types of software to create your dashboard.

Spreadsheets

Programs such as Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets are popular and easy to use for tracking data. These programs have visualization features that allow you to translate information into charts and graphs so that others can interpret them at a glance. When it comes to designing your template, you have a few options:

• Download a free template from the internet that can get you started
• Purchase a premium template that’s designed for the KPIs you’d like to track
• Create your own template

Many other forms of business software allow you to import data from spreadsheets, so you can integrate your spreadsheet software with other services as well if you’d like.

HR management software

If you’re already using an HR management system, it could offer a feature that helps you build dashboards that track attendance, recruitment and employee engagement. If you choose to use an HR management system to create your dashboard, check to see if it integrates with your other business software. One of the disadvantages of these programs is that quite a few of them won’t integrate with your other tools and they may not provide all the metrics you might want to track.

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Business dashboard programs

The primary benefit of these programs is that they allow you to track a comprehensive range of metrics from numerous sources. They usually integrate all of your information across the other tools you’re using to help you build dashboards for multiple purposes. There are a few disadvantages to consider when deciding whether a business dashboard is the way to go.

• Business dashboard programs aren’t cheap and they may require a regular maintenance fee once you’ve launched them
• You may need to hire a professional to set up the software and roll it out to your team
• Some business dashboard programs aren’t very intuitive, so teaching your team members how to use them could require additional resources and time

How to create your hiring dashboard

Now that you’ve decided you want to create a recruiting dashboard for your business, you may be wondering where to start. Here are the steps to creating the perfect hiring dashboard.

Define the key function of the dashboard

There are several reasons you might need a recruitment dashboard, so before you design yours, you may want to consider what its primary use is going to be. An operational dashboard shows data that applies to real-time issues and decisions so that managers know where they are in the process. An analytical dashboard allows you to see past and current trends so that you can determine how well your resources are managed over time.

Most people decide to create a hybrid dashboard that has elements of both. Your team can see where they are in the process of filling a new position while your recruiters can review data that’s instrumental in streamlining the recruiting and onboarding " data-mce-lingo="en_us">onboarding processes.

Ask questions that provide relevant data

Each metric can be paired with specific data points, so determine which questions are most relevant. Some examples include the following:

• How much does it cost to hire a new employee? This is resolved by dividing the number of recruits by the amount of money you’ve spent on recruitment.
• What is our retention rate? This is resolved by comparing the number of employees that left your business within a year with those that stayed.
• Which recruiting platforms are producing the most qualified candidates? This is resolved by dividing the number of new hires from each platform by the number of applications you receive.

It’s important to provide the relevant metrics for each question you ask. Once you determine which questions are most important to your business, you can move on to the next step.

Decide what metrics you want to track

Some examples of metrics you might want to review are the amount of time it takes to hire a new employee, the cost of hiring and onboarding " data-mce-lingo="en_us">onboarding, employee retention and how many people accept job offers. Remember that overcomplicating your dashboard can slow your team down, so you might want to take time to determine which metrics are the most relevant before moving forward with the next steps.

Import the data you need

If you’re using multiple tools to source your data, gather it into one location so it can be processed and analyzed. This is a matter of saving data in file formats that are compatible with whatever software you’ve chosen to use for your dashboard. Common file types include .CSV, .XLSX, .XLS and .ODS. When importing data from other applications, here’s the most important data you need:

• Recruitment data from your applicant tracking system
• Training and onboarding data
• Information from your Learning Management System
• Employee attendance and engagement data
• Performance and productivity statistics
• Compensation and benefits analysis

Once you’ve imported all the important data you need, you can move on to designing your recruitment dashboard.

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Design the dashboard

There are quite a few ways you can lay your data out, but the easiest method for people to understand includes a brief summary of the data at the top followed by charts and graphs that visualize the data. When importing and placing the charts into your dashboard, try to create a progression that leads the reader from one conclusion to the next.

For example, if the question is, “How effective is our recruitment strategy?” then you might want to display charts that show how many new recruits you hired over a defined time period. Then you can show the average cost of each new hire in the next charts. As you progress, the person reading the data can answer follow-up questions as they go.

While real-time data can be useful for reviewing your progress, it’s often distracting and causes stress. Another good idea is to try to limit the amount of real-time data so that your team doesn’t become anxious or discouraged.

Implement your recruitment dashboard

After you’ve created your dashboard, it’s time to implement it. Keep in mind that there may be a learning curve when your team members first access the hiring dashboard. Spend some time training your staff on how to access the dashboard, import data and navigate the software so they can access the information they need.

The bottom line

There are a lot of templates and examples you can refer to on the internet when setting up a recruitment dashboard. If you’re not very experienced or have very specific KPIs you’d like to track, you can outsource the creation of your dashboard to an analytics expert who will provide you with a custom solution.