We’re all familiar with the basics of hiring: you post a job description, interview candidates, and choose the person who seems best suited for the position. The process sounds simple enough on paper, but what is it about hiring that trips up even the most successful companies? In this article, we’ll explore some of the more complex issues that arise when you’re trying to hire new people and how they can be managed with data—specifically, recruitment metrics.
What are recruitment metrics?
Recruitment metrics are a set of tools that allow you to measure the effectiveness of your recruitment efforts. They let you know how many candidates you’re attracting, how many of them convert into interviews and offers, and how many new employees stay on board for at least 6 months after their first day on the job. This can make the difference between a successful recruitment strategy and one that’s costing you money.
These metrics are important because they give you a clear picture of how well your recruitment strategies are working. You can use the data to make adjustments to your recruiting strategy and increase the number of qualified candidates who apply for jobs at your company.
Recruitment metrics are important because they help you understand what’s working and what isn’t—and then help you make adjustments as necessary. This is the first step toward creating a more effective hiring process.
Time to fill
Time-to-fill is the number of days it takes to fill a position. It’s an important metric because it demonstrates how quickly you can fill your open positions, which affects your bottom line.
According to the Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM), the average time-to-fill is 36 days; however, there are many factors that affect this number and make it difficult to compare across companies or industries. For example:
- A small business with fewer than 50 employees may have difficulty finding candidates who meet all of their requirements, so they might need to offer more perks or benefits than larger companies do in order to attract talent (which could increase their costs).
- A company that hires seasonal workers may have higher turnover rates during slow periods due to low demand for their products/services–and thus will have longer hiring cycles when demand rises again later on down the road!
A company that hires a lot of interns may have longer time-to-fill rates because their requirements are more relaxed than those of other companies. A company with a high turnover rate might need to hire more quickly due to high demand in order to keep from losing clients.
In the end, time-to-fill is an important metric to track, but it shouldn’t be the only one you look at when trying to determine whether your staffing levels are adequate. It’s also important to consider: How many applicants do you receive per open position? What percentage of those applicants are qualified candidates? How long does it take for someone new on staff to reach full productivity? How long does it take for an employee to leave the company?
Quality of hire
The quality of hire is a measure of how well the new hires are performing. The higher their performance, the better their chances for success, and vice versa.
The quality of hire is measured by their performance against their role description. If they’re not performing up to expectations, then you have a couple options: either let them go or work with them so that they can improve their skills and become more effective in their roles.
The quality of hire is also a key measure in determining how well the company is doing at attracting and retaining talent. If new hires are performing poorly, then it means that there’s something wrong with either the hiring process or the culture. If you’re not getting the quality of hire that you want, then it’s time to reevaluate your hiring practices and make sure that they’re on point.
Without great people, you can’t build a great company. In order to attract and retain the best talent, you need to have an effective hiring process in place that gives candidates plenty of reasons to come work for your company. You also need to have a strong culture that supports employees’ personal and professional growth—both individually and as a team.
Interview-to-hire ratio
Another metric to consider is the interview-to-hire ratio. This is simply the number of people you interview for each person you hire, and it can be calculated by dividing the total number of candidates interviewed by your total hires. For example, if your company has hired 10 employees over a period of time and interviewed 50 candidates during that same period, then your interview-to-hire ratio would be 20%.
A good interview-to-hire ratio will depend on what kind of business you’re running: if yours is an organization that requires lots of customer service or sales representatives (think call centers), then having more interviews than hires could be valuable because it means there were lots of qualified applicants available in order to get through all those phone calls! But if you’re hiring engineers who build robots at SpaceX but don’t speak English very well (just kidding), then maybe one or two interviews per hire would suffice instead?
The best way to determine your ideal interview-to-hire ratio is by tracking your own data. At the end of each week, record how many interviews you had and how many hires you made; if there’s a big discrepancy between those numbers, then it’s time to do some analysis!
Offer acceptance rate
The offer acceptance rate is the percentage of candidates who accept the job offer. The higher the offer acceptance rate, the better.
The lower it is, the worse.
The offer acceptance rate is a good indicator of how many candidates the company will have to interview and hire in order to fill the position. If you’re applying for jobs at companies that have low offer acceptance rates, it means there are plenty of other candidates who want those jobs and that competition will be tough.
The offer acceptance rate can vary from industry to industry. For example, some companies may be able to hire candidates who aren’t actively looking for jobs because they have a strong reputation that attracts top talent. On the other hand, if you’re applying for jobs at companies with low offer acceptance rates, it means there are plenty of other candidates who want those jobs and that competition will be tough.
Application drop off rate
The application drop off rate is the percentage of applicants who drop off at different stages of the application process.
The higher this number, the more time and effort you need to put into recruiting. As a general rule, if your drop-off rate exceeds 10%, it means that too many people are not completing their applications. This could be due to any number of factors: poor design or usability issues; confusing questions; poor communication with candidates about what happens next in the process etc., but whatever it is, it needs fixing!
The application drop-off rate is influenced by a number of factors, including the design and usability of your application form; the ease with which candidates can complete it; how well it communicates what happens next in the process; etc.
It’s also worth looking at where people are dropping off: if it’s early in the process then you need to improve your pre-application communications with candidates (such as sending them more information about what they should expect from your company); if most people are dropping off at a later stage in the process, then this could be due to any number of issues: poor candidate experience during interviews; not enough feedback being given on applications ; etc.
Finally, it’s worth looking at the numbers of applicants who are moving forward in your process: if they’re dropping off at each stage, then you need to look at each one and see what can be done differently so that people don’t drop out.
Cost to fill
Cost-to-fill is the total cost of hiring a new employee. It includes all expenses related to advertising and screening candidates, interviewing them, and finally making an offer.
This metric is useful for benchmarking purposes because it allows you to compare your costs with other organizations in your industry who are also using it as a measuring stick. You can break down cost-to-fill into individual categories such as advertising costs or recruiter fees so that you can determine which areas are most expensive for you versus others in your industry–and then adjust accordingly if necessary!
Cost-to-fill is a popular metric because it can help you determine whether or not your hiring process is efficient. If it’s too expensive, consider streamlining it to make it more cost-effective!
Conclusion
As you can see, there are many ways to measure your recruitment process. It’s important to collect the right metrics and analyze them so that you can improve them over time. The key takeaway here is that hiring is a long-term investment in your company; if you aren’t measuring what matters, then how will you know when something goes wrong or right?
At the end of the day, it’s important to remember that your recruitment process is unique. There are no universal metrics that work for every company, but there are some commonalities across industries. By understanding what these metrics mean and how to use them, you’ll be able to improve your hiring process in no time!
