21 Recruitment Metrics to Track and Improve Your Hiring Process

Hiring the right talent takes work. With the perfect recruitment plan, however, you can ensure higher retention levels and find the ideal candidate more quickly. To do so, you need to calculate and track various recruitment metrics and build a long-term hiring strategy accordingly.

What are recruitment metrics? Recruitment metrics, also known as hiring metrics or staffing metrics, are parameters used for tracking hiring success and optimizing the recruitment process. When implemented correctly, these metrics help evaluate an organization’s recruitment process, its hiring strategy success, and whether it is recruiting the right talent. 

Without tracking recruitment metrics, employers would be unaware of whether they are heading in the right direction, attracting the right people, and how to make their hiring process more efficient.

Let us understand some of the key recruitment metrics that every company should track.

What Are Recruitment Metrics?

Let us look at the top recruitment metrics in HR that can help optimize your recruiting process. 

1. Time to Fill

   Time to fill is nothing but the average time a company takes to find a suitable candidate for an open position. 

   The formula for calculating the time to fill is

   

   There are several factors that determine the time taken to fill a position by a company. These include the ratio between the demand and supply for certain jobs, the speed at which the recruiters operate, the complexity of the job, geographical jobs, the availability of the skills demanded by recruiters, and others. 

   Time to fill is essential while designing your recruitment plan as it provides a realistic view to managers on the time it would take to attract and onboard replacements for departing employees. Besides, the more time it takes to find a candidate, the more is the recruiting costs.

2. Time to Hire

   One of the most common recruitment metrics, time to hire is calculating the number of days that passed between a candidate applying for a job and accepting the job offer. It is also known as turnaround time, or TAT, in HR.

   The formula for calculating time to hire is as follows

   

   TAT in recruitment is considered an important recruiting metric since it provides information about two recruiting processes – recruiting efficiency and candidate experience. The faster a company can hire a candidate, the greater its recruiting efficiency. Moreover, the hired candidates experience a higher level of satisfaction as they don’t have to wait for long to accept the offer and start working.

3. Source of Hire

   Source of hire, abbreviated as SoH, provides a breakdown of the different sources from where your hires entered the pipeline, calculated as a percentage. These sources can include job posting boards, campus recruiting metrics, job boards, placement agencies, referrals, social media channels, career fairs, and others. 

   To compute the source of hire, you can either choose to track individual sources or their broader categories. It is also important to decide whether you want to only track hired candidates or collect data on candidate sources as well. 

4. First-Year Attrition
   

   First-year attrition, or new hire turnover, is a key indicator for measuring the success of your organization’s recruitment strategy. 

   Here is how to calculate first-year attrition

   

   Candidates who leave within the first year of onboarding usually fail to become productive and cost a lot of money and time. There are two types of employee attrition – managed and unmanaged. Managed attrition indicates that the company terminated the employment contract. On the other hand, unmanaged attrition or voluntary turnover implies that the employee left of their own accord.

   Often, the reasons for managed attrition are poor employee performance or a bad fit with the team. Unmanaged attrition can be attributed to a mismatch between the candidate’s job expectations and the actual job role or the position being oversold by the hiring manager.

5. Quality of Hire

   Quality of hire indicates the value that new employees provide based on productivity KPIs. Hiring quality includes various other indicators, such as employee engagement, performance appraisals, management satisfaction ratings, and cultural fit. 

   Also known as the success ratio, the quality of hire in an organization can be evaluated by first determining your company’s business goals. You can then choose the metrics that will help you better understand the quality of hires in the company. A high success ratio signals that most of the hired employees perform well and vice-versa.

6. Hiring Manager Satisfaction

   As a recruitment metric, hiring manager satisfaction aims to understand the quality of hiring and if the hiring process meets the hiring manager’s needs and objectives. 

   The formula to measure hiring manager satisfaction is

   

   Typically, surveys are used to gauge the satisfaction levels of recruiters. These surveys should be highly comprehensive and include questions related to employee productivity, engagement levels, skills, customer service, culture fit, and so on.

7. Candidate Job Satisfaction

   Another top recruitment metric to track is candidate job satisfaction. It helps you determine whether your employees are happy. This recruiting metric is commonly used to understand how workers at your organization perceive factors such as company culture, benefits, job responsibilities, and the hiring process. 

   Here is how to calculate candidate job satisfaction

   

   Similar to hiring manager satisfaction, employee satisfaction levels are measured by conducting surveys. These surveys are usually administered through HRMS platforms and are sent out once every 30 days to find out how employees feel about the job application process, interviews, and onboarding activities.

8. Applicants Per Opening

   Applicants per opening calculate the number of candidates who have applied for a single job opening. 

   The formula for calculating applicants per opening is as follows

   

   A large number of applicants per opening indicates a high demand for the job or that the job description is too broad. Companies can reduce the applicant pool without compromising on the qualified candidates number by posting a more detailed job description.  

9. Selection Ratio

   The selection ratio, or submittals to hire ratio, is defined as the number of hired candidates compared to the number of total candidates. 

   The formula for computing the selection ratio is

    

   The selection ratio is quite similar to the applicants per opening metric. Whenever there is a large pool of applicants, the selection ratio approaches zero. The lower the ratio the better, since it indicates a selective recruitment process. 

   On the other hand, a higher selection ratio might signal a smaller pool of quality candidates or a highly competitive market for the job.

10. Cost Per Hire

    Cost per hire, or cost to fill, measures the expenditure involved in filling a single job opening. Recruitment costs can be typically categorized into internal and external costs. Internal recruiting costs comprise administrative expenses, compliance costs, training and development, and hiring manager expenses. External recruiting costs, on the other hand, include performing background checks on applicants, travel expenditures, marketing costs, and sourcing expenses.

    Cost per hire is an excellent metric that demonstrates improvements in the hiring process and how it ties to the company’s objectives.

11. Candidate Experience

    Candidate experience is a method by which job seekers perceive a company’s recruitment and onboarding process. It is often measured using a candidate experience survey and keeps a net promoter score to identify areas of the hiring plan that can be improved. 

    Here is how you can gauge the candidate experience of your organization

    

    To get a better understanding of how employees perceive your workplace, you should conduct surveys at regular intervals. Moreover, the survey should not just be limited to successful candidates but also be extended to unsuccessful applicants. 

12. Offer Acceptance Rate

    Offer acceptance rate is one of the best recruitment metrics in HR that help you identify how many candidates successfully accepted the job offer as compared to the number of applicants who received them. 

    The formula for calculating the offer acceptance rate is

    

    A low offer acceptance rate can indicate dissatisfaction with the compensation provided, a mismatch between the candidate’s and recruiter’s expectations, or negative perceptions about the employer.

13. % Of Open Positions

    The % of open positions indicates the number of available vacancies in a company versus the total number of positions. Hence, you can calculate this metric as 

    

    You can use this metric to measure not only the number of vacancies in the organization as a whole but also for each department. A high percentage of open positions can either imply a high demand for those posts or a low supply of workers for such positions.

14. Application Completion Rate

    Application completion rate is a recruitment metric that shows the number of candidates who finished and submitted a job application. This metric is particularly important for companies that have an elaborate application process. As a result, firms with a low application completion rate should look for ways to make their job application shorter and easier.

15. Recruitment Funnel Effectiveness

    A recruitment funnel includes all the steps companies take to fill vacant positions, such as posting the job, searching for passive candidates, contacting previous applicants, and building your brand as an attractive workplace.

    To calculate the effectiveness of your recruitment funnel, you can start off by identifying the different steps involved and tracking their efficacy individually.

16. Sourcing Channel Effectiveness

    Sourcing channel effectiveness gauges the number of applicants each recruiting channel brings in and their conversion rates. You can then compare the percentage of applications with the percentage of impressions of the job posting to evaluate the success rate of each recruiting channel.

17. Sourcing Channel Cost

    Sourcing channel cost is a recruitment metric that helps you calculate the cost efficacy of each hiring source. 

    The formula for calculating sourcing channel costs is

    

18. Cost of Getting to Optimum Productivity Level (OPL)

    The cost of getting to the optimum productivity level (OPL) is the total cost involved in getting a candidate up to speed. These costs usually include onboarding costs, employee training costs, costs of supervisors, co-workers involved in on-the-job training, and so on. Typically, a percentage of the employee’s salary is included in calculating OPL.

19. Time to Productivity

    Time to productivity measures how many days from the day of hiring it takes to bring a new employee up to speed. 

    You can calculate time to productivity using the formula below

    

    This metric can also help you gauge the effectiveness of your company’s screening, interviewing, onboarding, and training process. You can calculate this recruiting metric by collecting feedback from managers and employees to understand the competency levels of the workers.

20. Adverse Impact

    Adverse impact refers to the negative effect that biased or unfair employment practices have on members of minority or protected groups. These include prejudices in hiring, training, performance appraisals, or promotion of employees belonging to the protected sessions. 

    According to this metric, the recruitment rate of protected groups should be 80% or greater than the selection rate of non-protected or majority groups to avoid malpractices against the former.

21. Recruiter Performance Metrics

    Recruiter performance metrics help you understand how well your recruitment team is performing. This can be measured by focusing on the channels commonly used by recruiters to communicate with potential and existing employees, such as email and phone.

Wrapping Up

Recruitment metrics are key to measuring your company’s success. They help you search for the right candidate, identify areas of improvement, and find ways to make the hiring process more efficient. While there are some recruitment metrics in HR that every company must track, this also depends upon the industry, type, and size of your organization.

Khyati Sagar

Khyati Sagar is a seasoned HR and payroll expert with over a decade of experience in the field. She has worked with businesses of all sizes, from small startups to large corporations, helping them optimize their HR and payroll processes. As a passionate advocate for technology-driven solutions, she is always on the lookout for the latest advancements in HR and payroll software. When she’s not working, you can find her hiking or playing basketball with her friends and family.