6 Recruiting Metrics that Matter...6 Recruiting Metrics that Matter pg 3 101 Eishenhower Parkway,...

6 Recruiting Metrics that Matter

pg 1101 Eishenhower Parkway, Suite 300 Roseland, NJ 07068

800.797.6160 • recruitingdivision.com


101 Eishenhower Parkway, Suite 300 Roseland, NJ 07068 800.797.6160 • recruitingdivision.com




Do you wonder why you should measure your recruiting per-formance? Do you know how to measure it, and what to do with the information gathered and reported in recruit-ing metrics?

Do you want to know why recruiting metrics matter?

Albert Einstein said “Not everything that can be counted counts” and that certainly applies to recruiting. Some recruiting metrics will be more valuable to you than others, depending on your company’s goals and strategic plans, resources, and recruiting needs. There are traditional metrics to measure the basics of candidate sourcing, attraction, hiring, and retention, and there are myriad ways to develop metrics for specific business factors that are important to your business. Not all recruiting metrics will apply to every business, but there are a few important guidelines for recruiting metrics that will help any recruiter or employer improve recruiting practices that result in better hires.

• Effective recruitment metrics are predictive and actionable with current and accurate informa-tion and statistics.

• Recruitment metrics tracked over time generate internal benchmarks to analyze internal perfor-mance.

• Recruitment metrics that include quantitative and qualitative aspects such as time and cost, productivity, efficiency, retention, candidate performance, and manager satisfaction contribute the best information to inform and improve your recruiting process.

• Recruiting metrics fall into three categories:

• Historic metrics – based on last-year’s data; year-over-year snap shot; a look back• Real-time metrics – recent and current data calculated from the last quarter or month• Predictive metrics – future focused; measure what could happen if upcoming events or

activities take place such as a competitor going out of business or a big new competitor entering your industry

Metrics Measure ResultsConstantly collecting data to evaluate what’s working and what isn’t and then making adjustments in response is a good formula for continuous improvement. That’s what recruiting metrics do for your re-cruiting processes, budgets, and success rates – collect data to analyze and act on. But more than that, recruiting metrics measure the results of your recruiting efforts.




In a hypercompetitive job market and global marketplace, the quality of your recruiting process can mean the difference between whether you stay in business to compete another day or languish and falter until you have to close your doors for good. Solid recruiting metrics allow you to evolve and adapt your recruiting practices to achieve necessary outcomes and respond to changing conditions.

The metrics you use depend on the recruiting results you want to improve. For example, if you are expe-riencing high turnover in your IT programming department along with difficulty finding quality candidates and it’s costing you extra money, time, and effort to hire new employees, you’ll probably want to use metrics such as a sourcing metric, a candidate experience metric, and a hiring manager satisfaction met-ric to pinpoint what is wrong and how to address it in the recruiting process.

Deciding what recruiting measures matter most in your organization and in your recruiting process is the first step in measuring recruiting performance. This is one of the most important parts of recruiting met-rics, because creating metrics involves gathering information from different sources and ongoing atten-tion, so you want to be sure you are dedicating this effort where it is most useful.

The decision about what recruiting results to measure, where the data will come from, who will collect it, and how to use the information to make improvements should be made with input and direction from hiring managers and executives and parallel corporate goals and strategic plans. Meaningful and action-able recruiting metrics must include information that helps decision making.

Once you know what you will measure, find the industry standard for that measurement for similar companies to use along with your metrics builds a good comparison tool into the process. Use this as a baseline for improvement goals. If the industry standard for number of applicants for a job opening in your geographic location is 350 and your recruitment sources are producing significantly under or over this number, some part of your sourcing strategy may be off base and needs further analysis.

What Metrics Should You Use?Popular recruiting metrics include number of applicants per opening, candidate sources (your company career page, social networking platforms, job search sites, advertising, employee referrals), cost-per-hire, time-to-hire, and quality of hire. Use these if they are areas that you want to control and improve, and investigate metrics for any other recruiting areas you want to report on and address in your workforce. If you have a problem that needs to be addressed, increasing sales department by five percent over the next year, start with a target goal, such as “find 15 quality sales candidates in the first six months of next year,” and then create metrics that measure the progress toward recruiting goals.

You should use traditional metrics that measure and illustrate cost-of-hire and time-to-hire for a basic efficiency measure of your recruiting, but for metrics that drive the recruiting behaviors that result in suc-cessful hires and improved recruiting processes, you need more meaningful measures. You need metrics that measure things like manager satisfaction, where your best candidates come from, and the impact of recruiting on your business.




These types of metrics will quickly highlight gaps in your recruiting process so you can make the neces-sary adjustments to get the recruiting results you need. For example, a measure of manager satisfaction can point recruiters away from inferior sources of candidates and push them to recruit better qualified and motivated applicants. Using a recruiting ROI metric will show you where your recruiting dollars are being spent so you determine whether other avenues would produce the same or better results with less money or effort.

…for metrics that drive the recruiting behaviors that result in successful hires and im-proved recruiting processes, you need more meaningful measures.

Meaningful metrics that drive results include:

• Performance/Quality of Hire• Manager Satisfaction• Source of Hire• Referral Rates• Candidate Satisfaction• Business Impact

Don’t be afraid to develop a recruiting metric in response to an urgent or chronic recruiting problem, especially if the problem interferes with corporate goals or strategic plans.

1st Metric - Performance/Quality of HireIt pays to measure the quality of your hires. Staffing.org’s Recruitment Metrics and Performance Bench-mark Report found a strong correlation between measuring new hire quality and manager satisfaction with new hire quality. Quality of hire is a key recruiting metric and should be considered first even before cost.

Jason Lauritsen of BulletProof Talent believes the quality of hire metric is more a reflection on the hiring decision than the recruiting process. This underlines the need for hiring managers to be involved in the quality of hire metric with input on how they define a quality hire before recruiting ever begins.

Define the standards for a quality hire before recruiting and hiring takes place by verifying with hiring managers, supervisors, and operations managers what core competencies and characteristics they need in employees. Then seek manager assessments of all quality of hire criterion tracked through perfor-mance evaluations and production reports.

The quality of hire metric can be difficult to create accurately. The data for performance/quality of hire metrics comes from performance appraisal ratings and productivity/production measure at 6 and 12 months after the hire as compared to peer performance.




2nd Metric - Manager SatisfactionA hiring manager satisfaction metric measures the percentage of managers who are satisfied with the hiring process and quality of candidates. Hiring manager preferences should be determined before recruiting and used to evaluate hires when they begin work and after they’ve been in the position for six months and a year.

Predetermined hiring and performance criteria should include observable and measurable factors such as level of education, proven achievements in specific areas like sales territory management or specific computer language proficiency. Make sure to develop criteria with hiring managers’ input and agree-ment.

Collect this input via surveys, either hard copy surveys distributed and collected after completion, or with online survey tools such as SurveyMonkey. To develop the most effective hiring manager surveys, make sure the hiring manager satisfaction survey questions and criteria closely match performance evaluation and the company’s strategic plans criteria.

3rd Metric – Source of HireA source of hire metric measures how many candidates are hired from each candidate source. Also con-sider measuring employees with the highest performance and retention rates per source. This metric not only reveals volume from candidate sources but also quality, and allows employers and recruiters to see where their candidates are coming from and where to focus their sourcing efforts for the best results.

With the proliferation of job boards and social media, it may be difficult to determine where your com-pany’s applicants are coming from but it’s worth pursuing, especially if your recruiting budget is limited or scheduled for cuts. When you know where your applicants are coming from, and which sources result in the most quality hires for your company, you have an effective guide for where to focus your recruiting activities.

For example, if you are getting your best hires from one or two universities, you can increase your on-campus recruiting efforts. If your best hires have been from employee referral, you may want to promote your employee referral program more. Calculate what percentage of total hires comes from each of your candidate sources for this metric.

4th Metric – Referral RatesReferral hires are particularly valuable because they are very low-to-no cost and drastically reduce re-cruiting time and effort. It pays to track and nurture referrals. Taking a deeper look at your referral hires, especially if they make up a significant percentage or your overall hire rates, yields valuable information.




Tracking how many referrals from each referral source result in successful hires gives recruiters and em-ployers information about what kind of referrals are best. It allows companies to direct referral requests to the right audiences, such as prospective candidates, new employees, or specific employee groups.

To calculate your referral rate, figure out the percentage of hires that come from your employee referral program. Many applicant tracking systems can do this automatically, or your HRIS may have this capabil-ity or a module to do it.

5th Metric – Candidate SatisfactionMeasuring candidate satisfaction looks at the percentage of hires that are happy with your hiring pro-cess. This metric, collecting information from candidate surveys, yields information about how to im-prove recruiting, hiring, and orientation based on candidate answers. It also provides information about how to improve aspects of candidate experience and employer branding.

Surveying candidates not selected for hire and candidates who decline job offers and even visitors to your company’s career pages are other versions of the candidate satisfaction metric that illustrate what candidates think about how they are treated during recruitment and why you lose candidates at the end of the recruiting process.

6th Metric – Business ImpactBusiness impact metrics measure and illuminate the impact of recruiting on the business. Measuring as-pects of recruiting such as how many new hires are innovators, how many projects are delayed because of recruiting, and how many days key revenue-generating positions are vacant gives management and recruiting personnel important yardsticks and guideposts on what to focus on to directly improve busi-ness outcomes.

Business impact metrics allow recruiters and employers to really qualify how recruiting affects the busi-ness other than the administrative process of hiring. It goes beyond hiring paperwork and employee orientation to illuminate and explain recruiting processes and how they affect the business.

Tracking and reporting business impact metrics may be a manual process unless your ATS or HRIS has some advanced customization functions but this metric is very useful when you need to justify recruiting expenditures or campaign against recruiting budget cuts. Your company may not have a recruiting cul-ture (and the budget to go with it) like Google, but being able to show in black and white with solid data can help when you need to convince your CEO or other company principals of the value of recruiting.




ConclusionsUse recruiting metrics to analyze, understand, and improve your recruiting process. Measure recruiting results in important areas beyond costs and length of time by using surveys, examining where candi-dates come from, and keeping track of what recruiting activities result in the best hires. Metrics are a gauge of performance as well as a benchmark to take action.

Metrics with a strong connection to your business operations and tied to business objectives are most effective. Recruiting metrics have a multitude of practical applications, from serving as a basic efficiency measure to helping a business win contracts by providing bottom line information on existing staff and staff needed to perform contracted work. Recruiting metrics, as a subset of business operations metrics, help inform decision-makers and improve processes.

Use the information gained from recruiting metrics beyond mere reporting and make improvements to your recruiting process that mean better ROI, better use of resources, and better hiring results. Recruit-ing metrics matter because if you’re not measuring it, how can you improve it, or convince anyone else to fund improvements or not cut funding?

Recruiting metrics matter if you want to truly understand your recruiting processes, challenges, and op-portunities, and are ready to take action to improve them.

6 Recruiting Metrics that Matter...6 Recruiting Metrics that Matter pg 3 101 Eishenhower Parkway,...

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