9 Recruiting Metrics To Keep Track Of And Their Importance

Recruitment can be tough. If you want to maintain a successful recruitment rate, staying ahead of the curve is essential. But do you wonder how to do that? The answer lies in recruiting metrics. You need to understand these are not just numbers; they are like the compass that guides your hiring process, the yardstick through which you can measure your achievements, and the blueprint that will help refine your recruitment approach.

With a myriad of performance metrics, you might be wondering which ones to prioritize. And why are they so important? Today, we will demystify key recruiting metrics that every HR professional and recruiter should monitor.

What Are Recruiting Metrics?

Recruiting metrics, also known as talent acquisition metrics, are a collection of measurements used to evaluate and monitor the effectiveness of the recruitment process. They provide data-driven insights that can improve the efficiency and success of hiring efforts. It will help determine if you are hiring the best candidate for your business. Moreover, you can even use these metrics to ensure the process is inclusive, diverse, and equitable.

If you are looking for good recruitment software, visit our recruiting software category page to explore the top platforms that will suit your organization’s requirements and needs.

Why Should You Track Recruitment Metrics For Your Hiring Process?

Recruitment metrics can serve as a mirror to reflect the effectiveness of your hiring process. They will help provide a clear picture of what is working and which areas need improvement. Through these hiring metrics, you can gain insights that will streamline your recruitment procedure. 

Here are some other reasons why you need to track metrics:
  • Identify bottlenecks in your hiring process
  • Improve the quality of your hires
  • Reduce hiring costs by making the process more efficient
  • Enhance the candidate experience, which can improve your brand
  • Make data-driven decisions that can lead to better hiring outcomes

Important Recruitment Metrics For HR And Recruiters To Track

There is no doubt that recruitment is an essential function in any organization. It is not about filling empty roles. In fact, it is about finding the right people who will contribute to your company’s success. To ensure the effectiveness of your hiring process, it’s essential to measure and monitor key recruitment metrics. Here are some of the most important ones:

First on the list of HR recruitment metrics is the time to fill. Simply put, it refers to the gap between the opening of a job requisition and the candidate's acceptance of the job offer. Calculating the number of days it takes to find and hire a candidate will help determine the efficiency of your hiring process. There are numerous elements that will affect time to fill metric. For instance, the demand and supply dynamics for the position or how quickly your recruitment team works. This will enable recruiters and managers to assess how much time it will take to fill the post and create a recruitment plan accordingly.

Hiring manager satisfaction is another recruiting metric that you can use to analyze the effectiveness of your process. This will allow you to easily measure the quality of hires through surveys to determine how the hiring manager feels about new team members. You can ask the hiring managers about the performance and competency of the newly hired members, and based on their responses, you can improve your methods.

One of the most critical recruiting metrics to track is the source of hire. This will help determine where the candidate found the job post. Mostly, the candidates look for job openings through external job boards, paid advertisement channels, career pages, and social media accounts. Once you have identified the channel where your top applicants are coming from, you can incorporate it into recruitment marketing. Also, you can track which sources and channels drive the highest return on investment (ROI) and allocate resources accordingly.

To track the progress of your hiring process, you need to pay attention to the performance and contributions of newly hired employees within the first year. You can consider elements like how they are adjusting to the company culture and team, how satisfied the hiring manager is with their performance, employee acclimation, etc. You should pay attention to the quality of the hire, as a poor hire can cost your company a lot. According to the United States Department of Labor, a bad hire can cost your company 30% of the employee’s first-year earnings.

An excellent way to track how successful the hiring process is through candidate job satisfaction. The candidate job satisfaction performance metric can help you assess whether the expectations of the recruitment process are realistic. It can be measured through regular check-ins, surveys, or one-on-one meetings with new hires. If you have low candidate job satisfaction, it means there is mismanagement or incomplete job description. To improve job satisfaction, you can provide a realistic job preview so you can set accurate expectations.

Other recruitment metrics to track include the time to hire. Also known as ‘Time to Accept’, it refers to the total time taken from the moment a candidate applies to the moment they accept the job offer. In simple words, it means the time applicant takes to move through different stages of the hiring process. This is a clear indication of how well your hiring team is performing. A short time to hire means recruiting better candidates. It is not surprising that no candidate likes a time-consuming recruiting process. So, the shorter the time to hire, the better the candidate experience. Moreover, this will help you identify bottlenecks in the recruiting process and work on streamlining it.

Another key recruitment metric that you need to pay attention to is cost per hire. It represents the total cost invested in recruiting divided by the number of candidates hired. It will help you understand how much hiring for each role costs and set budget-friendly goals. This metric consists of several cost structures, which can be categorized as internal or external costs. The internal cost includes training and development, administrative costs, hiring manager costs, and compliance costs. On the other hand, the external costs include souring expenses, marketing costs, background checks, and travel expenses.

First-Year Attrition is another crucial recruitment metric. It measures the ratio of employees who resigned within the first year of employment. Such candidates are typically not worth the financial investment as they fail to reach the productivity level expected from them. There are two types of attrition: managed and unmanaged. Managed attrition is when the employer terminates the contract and is an indicator of bad fit or poor performance. Unmanaged attrition is when the employee leaves on their own, and it could be because of unrealistic expectations or a disparity between the actual job and the job description.

If you wish to have an efficient hiring process, it is essential to evaluate the performance of your recruiters. You can achieve this through various metrics, one of which can be focusing on the communication channel that was used. For instance, if you communicate with the candidate via email, you can track the email open rate, which informs about the percentage of emails that candidates have opened. Another good recruiter performance metric is the conversion rate. It refers to the percentage of emails that result in interviews.

Recruiting Metrics Template And Tools To Help You Out

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If you are looking for recruiting metrics examples, then you are at the right place. We know how daunting tracking and analyzing recruitment metrics can be, especially when you are new to it. To help you, we have shared the recruiting metrics template to simplify the process.

Here is the template that you can download and edit according to your requirements.
In addition to the template, we have also shared some tools that will assist you in your recruitment journey. Some of the recruitment software include:

Simply put, tracking recruiting metrics are crucial for any successful hiring process. The metrics will help you make informed decisions, improve your strategies, and ultimately hire the best talent. You can start by using a simple template to track these metrics. You can also invest in software that can help streamline the process. If you need any help, feel free to contact us at (661) 384-7070.