Top 10 Recruitment Metrics to Track in 2022

When you run around blindfolded, you either do not move in the right direction or are obstructed by something only to fall down. Similar is the case with recruitment - how? Well, talent acquisition is undoubtedly one of the most crucial pillars of your business and needs to be continuously monitored for improving and triggering growth. 

Recruitment metrics are the standards used for measuring the hiring performance of your company. While numerous aspects contribute to determining the overall quality of recruitment, not all of them are directly related to results. Candidate application/sourcing, engagement, assessment and onboarding – recruitment is concerned with all these practices. The key to enhancing the quality of talent hired is by collating various metrics related to different stages of the recruitment funnel.

Metrics are nothing but data, and leveraging data to extract insights about your recruitment process – helps you make necessary modifications from time to time so that you can make things better for candidates as well as for your hiring team. For example - almost 60% of job seekers quit online job applications mid-way due to their length and complexity. So the complexity of job application becomes a crucial metric to track for the majority. 

A huge number of hiring managers and stakeholders across the world only focus on hiring numbers and time to hire. While these are important metrics, they are certainly not the only ones that need to be tracked. Suppose you achieve your hiring targets and do it in a short span of time. It won’t help if the quality of hires is not good or if it costs you a fortune (much beyond your budget) to acquire talent.

So what are the top recruitment metrics you should be tracking for your organization? What impact do they make on the overall talent acquisition process and results? We will cover all of it, and more – let’s get started.

1. Quality of Hire

First things first, quality of hire matters the most while measuring recruitment success. No other metric would be meaningful if the talent acquired is not qualified enough. Here are the three sub-aspects related to the quality of hire:

• Performance Rating: Average job performance of freshly hired candidates, usually given by their heads – managers, leads or department heads.

• Hire Productivity: Fraction of total new hires crossing the threshold productivity score within a predetermined time period (varies in each organization).

• Retention Rate: Percentage of newly hired candidates retaining in the company for a pre-determined time period (usually 6 months)

Quality of Hire (QoH) =  (PR + HP + RR)/3

Where PR is performance rating score out of 100

HP is hire productivity in %

RR is retention rate in %

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2. Offer Acceptance Rate  

While this metric wasn’t so significant earlier, it has now become primarily important given the hard time recruiters are facing with ghosting cases on the rise. Especially in the last 5 years, the percentage of candidates who have formally accepted the job offer or the offer acceptance rate has declined. All thanks to the rapidly increasing competition, candidates now have multiple offer letters in hand at any point in time. 

‍Offer acceptance rate = (Number of candidates who successfully accepted a job offer/ Total number of candidates who received one) x 100

A high offer acceptance rate suggests your recruitment and compensation are good enough, while a lower rate suggests there are issues that you need to resolve.

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3. Application Drop-off Rate

Tracking the number of applications and how many of those applicants are actually making it through your hiring funnel, is vital to fix your entire recruitment. From the application stage to assessment, interviews and onboarding – organizations see drop-offs everywhere. The aim of this metric is to find out the reason behind dropping off – to find out where and why are candidates leaving the recruitment funnel by their own choice.

A variety of reasons exist for application drop-offs. It might be due to long forms after the screening, complicated online assessment setup, non-availability for interviews, unpleasant candidate experiences and a number of other factors could well affect an applicant’s decision. 

4. Yield Ratio

To track the number of candidates advancing through the recruitment funnel, the yield ratio is one of the significant recruitment metrics. It measures the percentage of candidates passing successfully from one stage of the hiring process to the next. To determine the yield ratio of a stage, say - s:

Yield ratio (s) = (Number of qualified candidates resulting from stage s)/ (Total number of candidates who landed up in stage s)

This metric is used to figure out the efficiency of your recruitment stages and has to be tracked continuously. The larger the decrease in yield ratio, the more efficient your recruitment process becomes.

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5. Time to Hire 

The time required to fill an open position is called the time to hire. Although this metric varies for different verticals, industries and types of businesses – recruiters constantly aim to optimize this as per company requirements. Generally, time to hire covers the duration between the job posting being published and when the right candidate gets hired. 

Measuring the hiring time is not only important for tracking and improving hiring performance, but also for checking the effectiveness of advertisements and marketing efforts done for recruitment. For a majority of organizations, hiring for a single role takes 3-4 weeks of time which is not at all optimal amidst the competitive landscape today. 

Recruiters and companies need to streamline their sourcing, engagement and hiring processes for shortening the average time to hire.

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6. Cost per Hire

^Recruitment costs need to be monitored separately to find out how much it costs to hire each candidate. Job posting sites and marketing campaigns are almost always expensive, and you should track the ROI for each channel to understand how well your money is being spent and what changes you can do to optimize the hiring - both in terms of headcount and quality of talent. 

Cost per hire = Total cost of invested resources/ No. of hires 

The costs usually include:

• Advertising costs
• Cost of human resources - recruiter’s fees/payroll
• New hire training costs
• Candidate expenses and operational costs

Recruiters are always on the lookout for minimizing the hiring costs, without compromising the quality of talent acquired. Here too, the hiring process holds the key - the smoother and faster it is, the drop-off rate and time to hire decrease – hence the costs are cut down too!

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7. Percentage of Open Positions

While job openings always signify ‘game-on’ for recruiters, roles that have been open for a long time easily become a source of stress for hiring managers and stakeholders. The percentage of open positions can be determined by,

the % of open positions = (Number of open positions/Total number of positions) x 100

If this metric is high, it can be either due to 

• The company starting up recently
• In the middle of a fast-growing stage
• A limited supply of talent - difficult for recruiters to acquire

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8. Candidate Experience 

Organizations that invest in candidate experience improve the quality of their hires by 70%. The overall experience of a candidate from the application stage to the onboarding and post-hiring stage is a part of the candidate experience. One of the most popular recruitment trends in the last decade – delivering a positive recruitment experience is all the more vital today in this candidate-driven market. 

No matter the outcome of a candidate along the sourcing, engagement or hiring process - candidates will share their experiences and opinions about your organization publicly. Hence, for attracting top talent and maintaining your positive employer brand – you don’t want the candidates to leave negative comments or post unpleasant experiences while recruiting with your company.

For providing a stellar candidate experience, recruiters need to: 

• Engage with them consistently
• Update them after each stage of recruitment
• Be open to answering queries anytime
• Stay transparent and organized about recruitment timelines

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9. Sourcing Channel Effectiveness

A number of sourcing channels are leveraged to fill a recruitment pipeline. From popular job posting websites to professional and social platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter etc. – this metric helps keep track of the generated results through each sourcing channel. 

Effectiveness of source is measured in both the terms of:

• The number of applications received 
• Number of qualified candidates among them

Sourcing channel effectiveness is important for both enhancing your recruitment marketing efforts and cutting down the cost and time to hire. 

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10. Applicants per Hire

The total number of applications received for each job opening that you post is the measurement of applicants per hire. This metric is quite significant as it conveys what’s your position as an employer of choice and how likely are people in the workforce willing to work with you.

An exceptionally high number of applications per hire suggests that the demand for that role is quite high, or that the mentioned job description is too broad, making things only difficult for recruiters.

On the other hand, if there are too few applications per job role, it is an indicator that the mentioned job requirements are complex or the application form is too long for candidates.

Supercharge Your Recruitment: Improve Time and Cost per Hire with Sourcing Automation

Are you tired of chasing candidates on various platforms, engaging with them via emails, and DMs and putting up too much of your time maintaining the recruitment pipeline?  Do you wish to minimize your time to hire and cut down hiring costs at the same time? A sourcing automation tool is the solution you need for boosting up sourcing and engaging campaigns.

Nurturebox makes talent sourcing, engagement and recruitment pipeline management easier with a comprehensive automation tool. All it takes is a few clicks to add candidates to your campaigns and reach out to them via multiple channels. Nurturebox lets you focus on the human side of recruiting so that you can optimize the most crucial recruitment metrics - time and cost of hiring.