Top 10 Recruitment Metrics in 2021

Data-driven recruitment is a crucial part of strategic recruitment. But what recruitment metrics should you follow? Relying on the number of applications and people hired is not enough. You need much more detailed information to plan your recruitment processes in a data-driven way.

Here are the top 10 recruitment metrics we think you should measure in 2021.

1. Candidate Experience

• What do your candidates think of your recruitment process?
• What do they think has worked well, and where could you improve?

It’s good to collect both numeric feedback (e.g., ratings from 1–5) and open comments. In the best-case scenario, you’ll gather the feedback on the spot in real-time and not through a questionnaire several weeks after the recruitment process has ended.

2. Efficiency of the Recruitment Process

• What is your average application processing time?
• What was the slowest processing time? How about the fastest?
• Which steps in the recruitment process take the longest?

Efficiency is one of the most important recruitment metrics you can measure because it affects your candidate experience and recruitment costs. For example, candidates may get frustrated if they wait too long for the hiring decision.

3. Recruitment Marketing

• How effective are your ads? What are the conversion rates?
• From which sources do you get applications?
• Which of the channels perform the best?

When you know which channels work best for you, you can allocate your recruitment marketing budget much more wisely. Maybe you are using some channels that do not perform at all. With recruitment metrics like these, you will find out.

4. Career Page and Job Ad Performance

• How many views does your career page or job ads get?
• How many people who visit your career page or job ads apply for a job?
• What devices (mobile, desktop, tablet) do your candidates use to apply?

By monitoring your career page’s performance, you may be able to find out why you aren’t getting as many applications as you would like. Perhaps your content is not meaningful, or maybe your candidates start the application process but do not finish because your application form is too complex and takes too long to fill out.

5. Application Data

• How many positions do you open, and how many of them do you fill?
• How many applications do you get per position?
• How many people do you hire and reject?
• How many candidates withdraw from your process? Why do they withdraw?
• How many candidates accept your job offer?

Basic recruitment metrics, such as the number of applications, are valid, but they are not enough on their own. When you know how many applicants you have, it is important to know how many of them are relevant. Withdrawal rates and offer acceptance rates are also super valuable because they give you information about your candidate experience and employer brand.

6. Relevance and Quality of Candidates

• How many candidates get to the interview phase? That is, how many candidates do you consider so relevant that you want to interview them?
• How relevant are your candidates in general (based on your evaluations, for example)?
• How diverse are your applicants and the people you hire?

We all want to attract relevant candidates only. Thus, a big number of applications is not the best criteria to tell you if your recruitment process has been a success or not. Relevancy tells you more.

7. Recruiter and Hiring Manager Happiness

• What does your recruitment team think of your hiring process?
• What would they like to improve?
• How efficient is your internal communication?

Measuring candidate satisfaction matters, and so does measuring the satisfaction of your hiring team. Improving your internal efficiency and communication during the hiring processes benefits not only the employees but also the candidates.

8. Cost of Recruitment

• How much do you spend on recruitment marketing, such as ads and job boards?
• How much does it cost to hire one candidate?

You can measure all kinds of costs in your recruitment process. The ones mentioned above are just a few examples.

9. Talent Community and Referrals

• How many referrals do you receive, and how many of them lead to a hire?
• How many people do you have in your talent community or pool, and how many of them stay or drop out?
• How do you communicate with your talent? For example, how many messages do you send?

It’s beneficial to know how the talent community affects your recruitment process. You may find that you could save a lot of time and money by recruiting directly from your community.

10. Employee Experience

• How do the hired candidates feel after they have been working for your company for a while?
• How do the hired candidates perform in their jobs?
• How long do they stay at your company?

What happens after the recruitment process ends and a candidate is hired is also vital information. It’s good to know if the experience is the same as promised during the recruitment process.

Note: Remember to follow the changes happening in your recruitment processes. How have the KPIs changed since the previous month or year? Also, compare the results to your goals. Are you performing as well as you have estimated?

How to Measure Recruitment Metrics in Practice

We at TalentAdore believe in data-driven recruitment and offer advanced analytics as part of our recruitment software, TalentAdore Hire. For example, you can easily collect feedback from your candidates and measure the candidate experience in real-time.

If you are interested in modern recruitment software that can handle the end-to-end recruitment process and provide you with valuable data, request a demo.