Staffing and recruitment is more art than science. Finding perfect matches, fostering growth and development, and improving satisfaction and contentment require soft skills, intuition, and a little luck. However, just because the work is intangible doesn’t mean the results can’t be. Here are the tools for measuring recruitment success. 

Recruitment KPIs that Matter

There is any number of recruitment metrics that companies can be tracking, and your needs may vary depending on your company, your industry, and your staffing expectations. Generally speaking, here are the most meaningful recruitment stats to track:

  • Applicants per listing. Measure and track how many applications you recieve for every job listing. 
  • Sourcing channel. Track where your applicants come from in general, and then follow up by tracking where your successful hires came from. 
  • Time to hire. Track the total amount of time it takes from your internal job requisition to a new hire. Track the time for internal processes to create and post a listing, review and interview candidates, make an offer, and hire a new person. 
  • Cost per hire. Measuring cost per hire requires tracking of staff time throughout the recruitment process, then adding costs for external recruiters, job listing advertising, referral bonuses, or any other costs to hire. Include a percentage of fixed costs like the cost of internal recruiters, vendors, recruitment software, etc. Then divide this total by the number of new hires.  
  • Attrition rate. In its simplest form, measuring attrition means tracking how many employees left during a sample time period, and how many new hires were added during the same period. Attrition rate is one of the key factors in measuring retention. 
  • Applicant diversity. D&I is more important than ever before. Track how diverse your applicants are, and cross-reference with their sourcing channel. 
  • New hire diversity. Having diverse applicants is great, but not if they don’t succeed in getting hired. 
  • Time to productivity. Establish a baseline productivity standard for each position, and measure how long it takes a new hire to achieve that standard.

Other metrics that may matter for your organization include:

  • Application completion rate. Some online recruitment tools require a lengthy and complex process, leading to candidates abandoning the application process. This metric can help identify issues in your online recruitment process.
  • Percentage of open positions. Tracking a percentage of open positions, especially by division or department, can help identify recruitment or retention gaps in your company.
  • Offer acceptance rate. If candidates routinely reject employment offers, your offers may not be competitive, or there may be significant differences between the job advertisement and the employment offer. 
  • Candidate and hiring manager satisfaction rates. If you have a high turnover or attrition rate, using surveys to measure the satisfaction of candidates and their hiring managers can help identify the causes. 

How to Use Your Recruitment Data

Gathering this type of data and tracking it over time does not magically generate positive results. Metrics are also not a grading system: there are no right and wrong answers, and you can’t “win” recruitment stats. The most meaningful way to use this data is for comparison. Here are the most meaningful ways to use your recruitment success metrics:

  • Evaluate the competition. You (and job seekers) can use publicly available information to evaluate and compare your recruitment success with other companies in your industry. Sites like LinkedIn, Glassdoor, and Indeed display information about candidate satisfaction, salary, attrition rates, number of openings, employee satisfaction, and more. While you may not be able to compare yourself stat-for-stat with the competition, this type of information can be extremely useful for identifying and solving recruitment problems.
  • Reveal changes over time. Tracking recruitment KPIs and comparing them quarter-over-quarter or year-over-year is likely to reveal trends and changes that you may have missed in your day to day processes. 
  • Set meaningful targets. No company or recruitment process is perfect, and every company has to decide which metrics are most meaningful for them. Recruitment metrics don’t set a standard: they help identify targets. If your measurements reveal a wide range of problems with your recruitment process (high number of vacancies, low number of applicants, high attrition rate, low diversity), it’s incredibly difficult to tackle every challenge at once. Instead, choose one to three metrics, and set a goal for improvement. For example, set a Q2 goal of reducing time to hire by 10%. At the end of Q2, determine what you did and how effective it was, and set a new target. 
  • Facilitate internal communication. In large companies, it may be hard to get the whole team on the same page. Recruitment KPIs can be used to demonstrate the need for change, identify where and how change is needed, and measure the results. For example, a low offer acceptance rate can be used to persuade upper management to increase compensation. High attrition rate can be used to facilitate internal conversations about how to improve the new hire experience. 

When it comes to measuring recruitment success, there is no right number. Every company, industry, department, or hiring manager needs to determine what is acceptable for them. But without gathering critical information, you can’t make meaningful changes and improvements. For more information about how to recruit better and smarter, contact grapefrute today.