What are recruitment metrics?
Metrics for recruitment measure the effectiveness of your company’s hiring process. These statistics help you evaluate current methods and how well they work for attracting, hiring and retaining candidates. Performance metrics for recruiters also clearly identify room for improvement in the hiring process.
16 types of recruitment metrics
Recruiting metrics fall into several categories, all of which give you a closer look at different aspects of your hiring process. Use these 16 recruitment metrics to better evaluate your methods’ success.
1. Hiring manager satisfaction
Hiring manager satisfaction measures the quality of hires by utilizing surveys to gauge how they feel about new team members. Ask hiring managers about the competency and performance levels of new hires, and then consider ways to improve your methods based on their responses. These changes might include revising job postings, using new phone screening questions or conducting talent assessment tests.
2. Cost per hire
Recruiting staff determines how much money your company spends hiring new employees via the cost per hire metric, which reveals the economic efficiency of your process. This measurement also helps you identify how many new hires you can bring on within a given fiscal year based on your budget.
Calculate this recruiting metric by picking a given time frame, adding your total internal and external recruiting costs within it, and then dividing the result by how many employees you hire during that period.
3. Time to hire
The time to hire metric tells you how long the hiring process takes, evaluates productiveness levels among your recruiting staff and demonstrates your recruiting strategy’s general effectiveness. For example, if your company hires slowly and you’re losing key employees faster than you can replace them, consider advertising techniques and recruitment procedures that speed up the process.
Calculate time to hire by subtracting how many days passed between a candidate applying and you filling the position. This shows you how long the job sat open and unfilled.
4. Offer acceptance rate
The percentage of candidates that accept your job offer determines your offer acceptance rate. This metric demonstrates the success rate of recruitment tactics designed to attract and secure talented professionals. If calculations show an initial high interest but low acceptance, consider factors that might cause candidates to decline the job.
Calculate this metric by dividing the number of accepted job offers by how many jobs you offered during the same period, then multiply by 100. The percentage you get represents candidates’ likeliness to accept open positions.
5. The new hire turnover rate
The new hire turnover rate reflects how many new employees resign within certain time frames. This metric measures turnover during arbitrary time periods, such as a month or several months. If you have a high turnover rate, review exit interview documents with your HR department to understand the factors leading to quick departures.
Calculate new hire turnover by dividing the number of departures by the number of people hired during the same time. Multiply the result by 100 for a percentage. For instance, if you hired 50 people in a 3-month period and 10 of them quit, divide 50 into 10 to get 0.2. Then, multiply that result times 100 to get a 20% new hire turnover rate.
6. Quality of hire
The quality of hire metric includes factors like an employee’s culture add, management abilities and overall performance relative to cost. Due to the subjective nature of this metric, it may be difficult to measure, but quantifying key performance factors such as job performance and productivity on a scale may help. Rate these factors based on a scale from 1 for poor to 10 for excellent, and add them up to see whose numbers reflect a quality hire.
7. Candidates per hire
Determine the effectiveness of your recruitment process—and the performance of hiring staff—with the candidate per hire metric. Derive this measurement by looking at how many candidates you interviewed before finally hiring one for the position. Improving this recruitment metric saves you time on interviews and better aligns hiring criteria with potential candidates.
To calculate this metric, note how many interviews recruiters conducted before hiring someone. For instance, if your hiring manager interviews 12 people for open positions and hires four, divide four into 12 for a candidate per hire rate of three.
8. Candidate callback rate
When looking at talent acquisition metrics, your candidate callback rate measures how many candidates recruiters contacted versus how many called back. This metric shows how email, phone and in-person applications perform so you can make pitches more appealing.
Calculate this statistic by dividing how many candidates you contacted by total applicants, and then multiply the result by 100. For instance, if your company receives 100 applications and only 15 respond, you have a 15% candidate callback rate.
9. Candidate experience
Also known as net performer score, the candidate experience metric quantifies how a candidate perceives their recruiting experience, qualifying your recruiting tactics from an external viewpoint. For example, you might ask candidates to score your recruiting performance across several metrics, such as responsiveness, interview competence and communication skills.
Calculate candidate experience by subtracting satisfied candidates from the unsatisfied ones. For example, ask candidates to rate their interview experience via a survey, with ratings from 1 to 10, with 6 and over being a positive response. Responses from 100 candidates give you 65 ratings of 9 or 10, 15 ratings of 6-8 and 20 ratings of 0-5. Since you have 80 positive and 20 negative results, your candidate experience rate sits at 80%.
10. Sourcing channel effectiveness
Sourcing channel effectiveness measures what each hiring method, such as outreach campaigns and recruitment ads, contributes to your overall hiring process. The successful recruitment metrics you derive from each channel let you know which require optimization.
Quantify this metric by counting how many successful candidates each channel generates over an equal number of outreach attempts. Compare each source by their totals to see which ones perform better.
11. Sourcing channel cost
Sourcing channel cost measures how much each hiring avenue costs in labor expenses, ad spends or other monetary outlays per successful candidate. Calculate this metric by dividing sourcing platform costs, such as social media ads, by how many candidates you hired during that time frame.
For instance, you pay $500 for ads and hire 10 people that respond. Divide $500 by 10 to get a cost of $50 per hire.
12. Retention rate
One of the more important key performance indicators (KPIs) to monitor, employee retention rate measures your ability to keep employees. High employee turnover means something doesn’t work well inside your organization or your hiring process needs improvement.
Calculate the retention rate by dividing how many employees stayed for a time frame by the total number who started at the beginning of the period, and then multiplying by 100. For instance, you hire 100 employees and 80 remain at the end date, giving you 0.8, or an 80% retention rate.
13. Fill rate
Your organization’s fill rate helps you decide between using your organization’s recruiting process or relying on an external agency. Find the sweet spot by assigning an equal number of positions to both sources, giving both the same fixed period of time to fill the positions.
Calculate this metric by dividing the total jobs filled by the total jobs assigned, and then multiplying by 100 for a percentage. For instance, you assign each source 50 jobs, and 15 get filled externally and 20 get filled internally. This gives you a 30% fill rate for recruiters and a 40% fill rate for your hiring managers.
14. Application completion rate
The application completion rate effectively measures your job application process’s performance and quality. This metric pits the number of candidate engagements with your application platforms against the number of completed applications.
Calculate this by dividing submitted application numbers by the total applications started, and then multiply the results by 100. For example, you receive 50 completed applications, but applicants started 200 applications, giving you a total of 0.25. When you multiply this by 100, it reflects a 25% application completion rate.
15. First-year attrition
Similar to retention and turnover rate recruiting metrics, first-year attrition measures employee turnover by seeing how many employees finish a year of employment after their hire dates.
Calculate this KPI by dividing how many first-year employees left the organization by the number who started during the measurement period, then multiply the result by 100. For instance, you hired 50 workers and 40 remained a full year, giving you 0.80. Multiply this by 100 for a first-year attrition rate of 80%.
16. Selection ratio
The selection ratio measures the competitiveness of job offerings in a wider market. If your open positions consistently generate high volumes of applicants relative to the number of new hires, it indicates your business’s or position’s attractiveness to job seekers.
Calculate the selection ratio by dividing how many candidates you hire for specific positions by all the applications you receive. For example, you get 50 applications and hire 10 people from them. Divide 50 into 10 for a 0.2 result, and then multiply by 100 for a 20% selection ratio.
Recruiting metric best practices for employers
Consider these best practices when using recruiting metrics to streamline hiring processes.
Delegate metrics measurement to team members
Use recruitment metrics regularly for the most accurate look at how well your recruiting strategies work. Divide responsibilities for using recruitment metrics among HR team members to maintain efficiency.
Use ATS and data technologies
Applicant tracking software (or ATS) helps you monitor recruiting metrics and streamline your hiring process. For example, some ATS software tracks status changes for candidates moving through the recruitment process so you can pinpoint slow points in the hiring process and take appropriate action to reduce the time to hire.
Set a time frame for metric calculations
The time frame allotted for each metric before making calculations also deserves consideration. For example, a hiring manager reviews the timeline for recruitment metrics in January. After consulting with their team, they decide not to calculate some metrics such as cost per hire until December of the next year but still calculate the offer acceptance rate biannually.
Establish both qualitative and quantitative goals for improvement
Continually revising the hiring process and adopting new methods helps hiring managers achieve goals. Using talent acquisition metrics keeps your staff motivated while ensuring your company implements cost-effective hiring tactics to onboard professionals.
Recruitment metrics FAQs
Who should I involve in recruitment metric tracking?
In order to maintain accurate and timely data for future hiring initiatives, it’s a good idea to get the help of multiple departments and leaders at the company. Involve the recruitment team, talent acquisition staff, human resources and even your CEO. These individuals each have their own role in the hiring process, and working with them can be useful in helping your company reach its hiring goals.
How are recruitment metrics calculated?
Recruitment metrics are calculated differently depending on the metric. For example, certain metrics simply require you to total the amount of data gathered during a given time frame, like the number of days it took to fill a job or how many new employees left the company within the span of a year.
On the other hand, other recruitment metrics are more complex and require you to use formulas. For example, in order to calculate how much money each new employee costs your company, you would use the following formula:
Cost per hire = internal recruiting costs + external recruiting costs / total number of new hires
How do you set KPIs for recruitment?
The total volume of HR-related data in your organization can easily become overwhelming if it’s not carefully categorized and qualified with specific measurements about what does and doesn’t work. This is why each recruitment metric comes with its own unique key performance indicator to ensure that a specific measurement of its effectiveness is being made and can be tracked over time.
These recruitment metrics themselves serve as crucial performance indicators of your recruiting process. The KPI for each of them lets you consistently monitor how well you’re hiring and managing employees.
