How to Track Recruitment Data and Improve Your Processes in a Data-Driven Way

How can you gather data more efficiently? What do the metrics actually tell us about recruitment, and what are the most important recruitment KPIs? Let’s start with the basics.

Begin with Basic Recruitment Data

Some of the most widely used recruitment metrics are

• Number of recruitments
• Number of filled positions
• Candidate volume

Reporting these numbers gives one side of the story. Knowing how much time and money were invested in securing the results is very important as well. On average, it takes 27 days to fill a position. Do you know your number? How about the cost? The industry average over the past few years was around 4,000 EUR per hire.

It’s pretty normal not to know your numbers—only 41% of companies report the cost per hire. Nonetheless, adding the following metrics to your recruitment data reporting is highly advisable:

• Time to hire
• Cost of hire

It’s good to know how many new employees you hired last year. However, without knowing how many of them were to replace retiring personnel, for example, we’re not seeing the whole picture. Hence, add the following KPI to your reporting:

• Ratio of new hires to replacements

You know what to start measuring, but how can you find this valuable data? Being able to pull the numbers above in real-time requires a concise and coherent data source. If you have a good ATS, you can probably pull most of the data directly from your system and then stitch it together to find your relevant KPIs to steer the group. If not, now is the right time to change to a more modern ATS that supports the most important recruitment metrics.

Move from Quantity to Quality

The traditional metrics listed above are clean numbers that reflect trends on a high level. But what about the quality? Wouldn’t it be beneficial to know the success ratio on a more relevant level? Some of the more soft but sophisticated KPIs that organizations are following are

• Candidate experience
• Application completion rate
• Quality of candidates or number of relevant candidates
• Source of hire
• Withdrawal rate and reason
• Diversity among candidates and hires
• Hiring manager experience

When all this data is available, you are in a position to analyze and improve your recruitment activities in each of the phases.

Improve the Candidate Experience with Data-Driven Recruitment

It goes without saying that increasing the candidate experience and relevance of candidates increases the success ratio for your recruitment. If you’re in a consumer business, you should be even more interested in the candidate experience because a poor candidate experience can negatively affect buying behavior.

By monitoring the candidate experience in real-time, you can quickly make changes to your recruitment process. It is beneficial to know what your candidates actually think about your process. Perhaps your recruitment process takes too long, you do not communicate enough during the process, or your candidates would love to get more feedback about why they were not selected. By collecting feedback, you will know how they feel and what you can improve.

Also, learning why your offers have been rejected may save you from making the same mistakes again and save a lot of time and money in future recruitment efforts. Furthermore, knowing which (paid) channels work best for you increases your chances of finding the match for less money.

Download a guide: 10 biggest challenges in recruitment and how to solve them

Conclusion – Tracking Recruitment Data in Practice

Analyzing recruitment data can help organizations recruit smarter, more efficiently, and with better precision. Every organization must evaluate their relevant KPIs, but the most important thing is to start gathering data.

Want to know how to gather, analyze, and visualize your recruitment data effectively and in real-time with TalentAdore?

If yes, check out our blog post to learn more about our advanced analytics or book a session with our experts right away.