12 Key Recruiting Metrics You Should Track in 2024

Recruitment metrics is the cornerstone of effective hiring practices. It isn’t just an advantage but a necessity. And companies agree with this. Around 82% of companies think that data is imperative to make informed decisions about talent acquisition. Question is what are these recruiting metrics you need to keep track of for effective hiring? There are n number of metrics. You can’t keep track of them all if you want to actually find the time to recruit. In fact, you don’t have to.

There is a list of recruitment metrics in HR (Human Resource), you must know in order to figure out the ones relevant to your business and follow only them, accordingly.

Recruiting Metrics Definition

Recruiting metrics are a set of data that can help track, manage, and optimize hiring candidates for an organization. Following the right metrics can increase the efficiency of the recruitment process, as the data provides insights into several aspects of recruitment, and enhance the hiring strategies, identifying areas for improvement and make better decisions.

The hiring process will be diverse, inclusive, and fair to all candidates which is exactly what you need to maintain company productivity.

Why Is It Essential to Track Recruiting Metrics?

Recruiting metrics in HR are essential to make effective and right decisions to advance your talent pipeline. But it also depends on who and how the hiring managers extend the offer to. The goal is to ultimately hire someone who could contribute effectively to the organization and drive ROI.

Monitoring the recruiting metrics, you consider essential enables you to gauge the effectiveness of your hiring choices by assessing the employee lifetime value, which encompasses factors such as quality and performance, for each individual you hire.

For example, you may be looking to hire for positions of different hierarchical levels, one department may be looking for a C-suite level candidate while the other may just be on the lookout for junior associates. With this in mind, you must realise what’s important for the growth of the company and have your goals cut out in your mind and only then set talent acquisition benchmarks.

By benchmarks we mean reduce recruitment costs, improve candidate experience and enhance employee retention rate and increase the chances of higher engagement with applications for job postings.

Some of the questions you need to ask yourself while setting benchmarks are-

• How well have we met out hiring goals when compared to the last quarter?
• How far along have we come in reducing hiring costs?
• How are our attrition rates?
• Are our sourcing techniques and channels fetching us results?
• Changes in offer acceptance rates?

You can add a couple more metrics depending on your company’s hiring needs and requirements.

What Recruitment Metrics to Track?

There are various metrics of recruitment, but you don’t need to keep track of them all. Some of the important recruitment metrics that are relevant to your business are the ones you must watch out.

1. Time to fill

The number of days you require to find and hire a new candidate, right from sourcing them to offer acceptance stage is called time to fill. Some factors impacting the time to fill are.

• Supply and demand for that specific job.
• How fast is your recruiting team operating.

The time to fill metric is useful as it gives the manager an approximate timeline for hiring a candidate which could be useful in business planning.

2. Time to hire

Now we know it sounds the same as the first metric, but do not get confused. This metric represents the time it takes for a candidate to get through all stages of the hiring process until the job offer acceptance stage. Depending on the complexity of the role you are hiring for the time to hire could vary.

3. Source of hire

One of the most important things of your recruitment cycle is knowing where your top candidates are being sourced from. This metric helps in focussing more on those sources driving the best results in your candidate sourcing efforts. You may look at the different channels you’ve made your job postings to realise where your top candidates are coming from.

4. Diversity of Candidates

A diverse workforce is not just essential but is also mandate for companies. Recruiting teams may not always pay attention to this metric like how they do with ones like time to hire, but let us tell you, that it’s necessary if you want a mix of innovative and creative workforce in your organization. Look closely at the data around the diversity of your candidate pipeline. You can gather this data and measure this metric by leveraging things like EEO dashboards, candidate surveys, hiring feedback, and more.

5. Attrition rate

How fast are you losing your employees is what defines this metric. Attrition is just a concern that is related to recruitment. Replacing top talent that you are losing is way harder. Your recruiting expenses go way beyond to bring in new recruits who are equally good. Tracking this metric will give you an idea as to where you need to be looking in your recruitment cycle. For example, are your job posting communicating the clear expectations of the job role, are your employees provided with the right resources, are they happy with their work-life balance? These are some questions you need answers to, to reduce attrition rates.

6. Quality of hire

How has the new hire performed in their first year of employment? How well have the adjusted to the work environment and are making most out of it to enhance their performance? These can somewhat assess the quality of hire you make. Remember that it’s not only about how fast you fill the position it’s also about the quality of the candidate. A bad hire can cost companies a thousand of dollars annually, which is why the tracking the quality metric is crucial.

7. Applications for a role

It’s important for recruiters to gauge the number of job seekers interested in the role. Focussing on this metric will give organizations an idea about the demand the role has. Data like applicants per role, location or hire can help assess the best ones for the role. You may also want to look at how many applicants are not choosing to apply for the role.

8. Cost per hire

Hiring a candidate is associated with certain costs. Cost per hire specifically is the amount you spend on recruitment per year by the total number of hires you make in that period. To make most out of this metric you must analyse how much you have spent on a particular hire, internal and external costs. Reducing cost per hire is a priority for every company.

9. Offer acceptance rate

You may make an offer to a number of candidates but not all would accept it. This metric tells you how many have accepted the offer versus how many received the offer. Some of the factors that impact the acceptance or decline of an offer are salary, benefits, flex work and other employment benefits. Its best to include the pay range in job description along with company culture and working styles in job descriptions to ensure you get applicants who would truly be interested in.

10. Number of open positions

Consider monitoring the ratio of filled positions to total positions to gauge your hiring strategy’s effectiveness. For specific departments or teams, this can offer insights into the efficiency of your recruitment efforts.

A surplus of open roles could signal challenges in attracting candidates or mismatches between job requirements and market demand. Conversely, a dwindling number of open positions may suggest successful recruitment efforts and high demand for your organization’s roles, particularly during periods of growth.

This metric is invaluable for teams engaged in high-volume hiring or facing the need to rapidly fill multiple roles, allowing you to track the pace at which positions are being filled and make adjustments as needed.

11. Completion rate of applications

The time in which an application process reaches completion helps understand how streamlined your hiring process. It isn’t necessary that you get to the end of your application process quickly because some applications may need more assessments and interviews to ensure a good hire. But just make sure that your application process only includes the required elements and no unnecessary steps.

12. Effectiveness of sourcing channels

Just as you analyse the source of hire, evaluating sourcing channel effectiveness allows you to pinpoint the most fruitful job boards, social media platforms, and professional networks for your recruitment endeavours.

This metric focuses on tracking conversions per channel, shedding light on which avenues yield the highest return on investment (ROI).

However, before delving into these metrics, it’s essential to establish clear goals for each sourcing channel. This enables you to accurately assess their performance and ascertain which channels warrant continued investment of time and resources. Moreover, setting goals enhances the precision of conversion rate data, particularly when presenting findings to executives or collaborating with other teams.

These metrics of recruitment form the basis of recruitment analytics. And to know if you have the results, you are looking for, you can set internal recruiting metrics benchmarks, track your progress, and/or compare results to standard industry benchmarks.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. How can the Cost per Hire be reduced?

You can reduce cost per hire by offering employees incentives to recommend potential candidates is an effective and commonly used technique that will reduce costs, time to hire, and even turnover of employees.

2. Why is Quality of Hire considering a significant recruiting metric?

Quality of hire is a key recruiting metric as it represents the value a new hire adds to your company, or how much a new hire can contribute to your company’s long-term success.

3. How is the Applicant to Hire Ratio helpful for recruiters?

This metric can also help you understand your company’s role in the market in terms of desirable workplaces for candidates. For example, if your company has a reputation for being a good place to work, you may have a higher-than-average applicant-to-hire ratio.

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