Recruiting metrics

34 CANDIDATES
Sourced
12 CANDIDATES
Referred

117 CANDIDATES
From job boards
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Publisher: Workable

Writer: Nikoletta Bika

Editors: Christina Pavlou, Keith MacKenzie

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Recruiting metrics
Introduction

6 What are recruiting metrics and why are they important?

7 A list of common recruiting metrics

Chapter 1: Candidate experience

9 How to measure candidate experience

10 Application abandonment rate

Chapter 2: Time to fill

12 How to measure time to fill

13 How to calculate average time to fill

13 Benchmarks for time to fill

15 How to reduce time to fill

16 Time to hire: a complementary metric

17 Benchmark for time to hire

17 How to improve time to hire

Chapter 3: Cost per hire

20 Internal VS external costs

22 Cost-per-hire comparable (CPHC) VS Cost per hire Internal

22 How do you determine total number of hires?

23 Recruiting cost rate (RCR)

24 Is cost per hire really an important metric?

Chapter 4: Quality of hire

26 Measuring QoH

31 Pre-hire quality

31 How to collect data

32 Use QoH to make comparisons

Chapter 5: Source of hire

35 How to measure SoH

36 The limitations of SoH

37 SoH focuses on hires and overlooks finalists

37 SoH may not always justify reallocation of resources

38 SoH may encourage bias and bias influences SoH

Chapter 6: Flesh out your plan

39 A common theme across all recruiting metrics

INTRO

What are recruiting

metrics and why are
they important?
In every organization, the recruiting process generates data: how long it
took to fill one role, how many candidates progressed to the final hiring
stage or how many comments hiring teams exchanged until they made
a hire. This data, in the form of recruiting metrics or Key Performance
Indicators (KPIs), indicate how effectively and efficiently your organization
is hiring.

Through tracking metrics, you can get tangible evidence of how

successful your recruiting process is, rather than relying on intuition.
For example, hiring teams may believe a particular job board brings
them many good candidates, but data might show that this job board is
actually underperforming. Metrics can also help you identify problems
and provide direction for you to find the right fixes.

In this guide, we put together everything you need to know to start

making the most out of your recruiting data.

You’ll find:

A list of common recruiting metrics to track.

A detailed look into five of the most important KPIs.

How to collect data and track metrics consistently over time.

6 Recruiting metrics
A list of common recruiting metrics

Each company has different needs so it makes sense for each to track
different metrics. Choose which metrics to track based on the areas you’d
like to improve or the information you want to give to senior manage-
ment. Usually, you’ll find it useful to track one or more of these metrics:

Cost per hire

Time to hire

Time to fill

Hiring velocity

Recruiting yield ratios (including interviews per hire)

Qualified candidates per hire

Candidate experience

Offer acceptance rate

Recruiting email open and click-through rates

Quality of hire

Source of hire

Qualified candidate sources

Hiring team productivity

Hires to goals

Diversity ratios

Recruiting metrics 7
All these metrics give you valuable information on your hiring process.
Here’s how to get started with five metrics that give you a good idea on
how effectively you hire:

Candidate experience

Time to fill

Cost per hire

Quality of hire

Source of hire

Each one of those metrics may include other metrics that you can
combine to create the big picture. Let’s delve a bit deeper.

8 Recruiting metrics
CHAPTER 1

Candidate experience
“Candidate experience” refers to
candidates’ overall impression of your
recruitment process.

From the moment candidates browse your careers page, until they
receive a job offer or rejection email (or not hear back at all), they’re
forming an opinion about your company and how you generally treat
candidates.

Why is that important? Many candidates share their opinions with

friends and colleagues or on sites like Glassdoor, which can impact your
reputation among job seekers. Treating people properly throughout
the hiring process speaks to the culture of your company and makes
you more attractive as an employer to both future applicants and your
candidate finalists.

How to measure candidate experience

Candidate experience is a collection of different measures. The most

important one is straightforward: candidates’ direct opinions. If possible,
send a short, voluntary survey to every candidate once the hiring process
is over to ask them about their impressions. Include questions such as:

Recruiting metrics 9
 Did the job description help you understand the role?

What did you like/dislike about your interview process?

How would you characterize your communication with recruiters/

hiring managers through email or phone?

Would you apply for a future opening at our company?

Would you encourage a friend to apply to work at our company?

When you get responses from several candidates you can aggregate
results and create reports. For example, “70% of our candidates say
they’d apply for a future opening at our company.” You could also create
bar charts or pie charts indicating all the complaints cited about the
hiring process or other factors.

The position didn’t reflect

the job ad

Communication
was slow

There were too many

interviews/ assessment stages

Because not every candidate will complete the survey, think of other
ways you can complement your insight. Consider the journey of your
candidates during your hiring process and try to identify critical moments
in their interactions with your company and the metrics associated with
them. For example, one important metric is when candidates apply and
don’t follow through; this is the “application abandonment rate.”

Application abandonment rate

Your application abandonment rate measures the effectiveness of your

job application forms. This metric shows the percentage of candidates
who started filling out your forms but never actually applied:

10 Recruiting metrics
 Number of candidates that quit
the application process
Application
abandoment rate % = x100
Number of candidates that
began filling out an application

If this metric is higher than you’d expect, you can apply some fixes.
Shortening your application process may help. Use fewer or more
relevant questions and measure how those changes affect your
application abandonment rate. Also, you could aim to optimize your
application forms for mobile since many candidates use their phones
to search and apply to jobs. Make sure your application form is easy
to navigate and quick to complete. Test the loading times of your
application forms and careers page on different devices to make sure
they’re suitable for various screens.

Pro tip: Candidate experience metrics help you see the

hiring process through your candidates’ eyes. If you notice
problems, make sure to communicate them to your hiring
teams and listen to their side of the story. They might have
trouble getting back to candidates in time because they don’t
have a way to quickly see who they haven’t contacted yet.
Offer to help them with training or implement other solutions
including applications, software or new efficient processes.

Recruiting metrics 11
CHAPTER 2

Time to fill
“Time to fill” is the amount of time you
need to fill a position.

This metric helps you plan your hiring better and also helps identify
warning signs of an overlong hiring process.

How to measure time to fill

It’s quite straightforward to calculate time to fill: count the calendar days
from the start of your hiring process until your company fills a position.

While the start of your hiring process is often ambiguous, many

companies start counting from the moment a job ad is published. If you
want to compare time to fill internally only, you can define a different
time period to frame your measurements. For example, your starting
point could be the moment a hiring manager submits a job opening
for approval or the moment the finance department approves a job
opening.

Choose what makes the most sense for your company, but make sure
that you count time to fill consistently for all positions and teams.

12 Recruiting metrics
How to calculate average time to fill

Calculate your company’s average time to fill for a given period (e.g. a
year) by adding all time to fill measurements for each position you filled
during this period and then divide by the number of roles. For example, if
you hired for three roles, with 20, 30 and 40 days time to fill respectively,
then your average time to fill is 20+30+40/3 = 30 days. This calculation
should refer to the same time period.

If you have positions that are always open (e.g. for entry-level
salespeople), don’t include them in your time to fill calculations. This is
because these positions would greatly inflate your average time to fill
without reflecting the efficiency of your hiring process.

Benchmarks for time to fill

The Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM) reports an

average time to fill of 42 days. Workable’s Benchmark tool, which gathers
anonymized data from thousands of hiring processes in our system,
presents time to fill categorized by industry and location. Here’s the
average time to fill globally and in North America:

Recruiting metrics 13
 Business Global US & Canada
function time to fill time to fill

Administrative / HR 40 35

Analyst / Consulting 57 54

Customer Service 40 38

Engineering 62 60

Finance /
46 45
Accounting

Information
56 51
Technology / Design

Marketing /
Advertising / 54 50
Creative

Sales / Business
52 48
Development

14 Recruiting metrics
Also, we have collected data for different positions to show granular
variations within the same industry. For example, the global average
for hiring a Data Scientist is 60 days (less than the global average in
Engineering) while hiring a Senior Data Scientist takes 70.5 days:

Industry 70.5
Average
60
....................................................................................
62

Data scientist Senior

How to reduce time to fill

If you want to reduce time to fill, think of using more efficient recruiting
strategies. Here are a few ideas:

Build a candidate database. You don’t have to look for candidates

from scratch every time a position opens. Your ATS already
has many qualified candidates who may have made it to the
final stages of a hiring process, or applied after a position was
filled. (Make sure that you’re GDPR-compliant when keeping EU
candidate data).

Source actively. Reach out to passive candidates and connect

with them. Even if you don’t have an immediate opening, lay the
foundation for a strong professional relationship with people you
meet at events or forums so you can contact them in the future
when the right job opens up.

Recruiting metrics 15
 Scrutinize your time to fill. Your time to fill has many layers:
time to begin the interview phase, time from application to phone
screen and more. Find which stage takes too long and think about
how you can improve it.

Create an effective referral program. Send your colleagues an

email with the job description of your open role and ask them to
recommend qualified candidates. This process reduces the time
spent on job advertising and resume screening.

Time to hire: a complementary metric

Time to hire and time to fill are often used interchangeably. But, you
can also treat them as separate metrics and gain different insights. The
difference between time to fill and time to hire is the point you start
counting. You may start counting time to fill before a job is published.
But your time to hire timeline starts when your best candidate applies or
gets sourced. So, this metric shows the time between the moment your
eventual hire entered your pipeline and the moment they accepted your
job offer.

Time to fill tells you how fast your hiring process moves. Time to hire tells
you how quickly you were able to identify the best candidate and moved
them through the job’s pipeline. It’s an indication of how effective your
hiring team is.

To calculate time to hire, imagine that the day you opened a specific
position is Day 1. Then, if your best candidate applied on Day 10 and
accepted your job offer on Day 25, your time to hire is 25-10 = 15 days.

16 Recruiting metrics
 Time to Hire = Day candidate accepted offer - Day candidate entered the pipeline

Benchmark for time to hire

If your evaluation processes are effective, you’ll be able to identify the

best candidate. Considering that the most talented people are off the
market in 10 days, it’s best to aim for the shortest time to hire possible.

How to improve time to hire

The more efficient your hiring process is, the shorter your time to hire
will be. To reduce your time to hire, start by identifying what caused it to
be higher than you’d expect.

Break down your hiring process. Measure how much time it took
to move candidates from one stage to another. That way, you can
discover whether your hiring team spends too much time on a
particular phase.

Calculate time to hire per team. If there’s one particular team

that inflated your average time to hire, talk to the hiring manager
to discover the cause.

Train hiring teams. Both recruiters and hiring managers benefit

from interview training, which can help them spot the best
candidates for a role more quickly.

Use templates. Templates can help you craft effective emails to

candidates more quickly. This can shorten the time you spend on
communicating with candidates (like when scheduling interviews)
and will also reduce your time to fill.

Recruiting metrics 17
 Pro tip: It’s useful to track time to fill and find ways to optimize
it. But, optimizing doesn’t always mean shortening it as much as
possible. Quality of hire matters, and often, you need to spend
a healthy amount of time evaluating and selecting candidates -
especially when it comes to high-impact roles where making a bad
hire incurs serious costs. Don’t rush into hiring; take as much time
as you need to make a good decision.

18 Recruiting metrics
CHAPTER 3

Cost per hire

“Cost per hire (CPH)” is the average amount of
money your company spends to make one hire.

This is one of the most intriguing recruiting metrics. It’s simple to

understand, but can be time-consuming to calculate. It’s clear to some,
but opaque to others.

The way companies calculated cost per hire varied until HR leaders
created a standard formula in 2012. The Society of Human Resource
Management (SHRM) and the American National Standards Institute
(ANSI) were both involved.

Their cost per hire formula is quite simple:

Internal Recruiting Costs + External Recruiting Costs

CPH=
Total number of hires

Costs and number of hires both refer to a certain measurement period

(e.g. on a month or a year).

Recruiting metrics 19
Internal vs. external costs

Internal costs refer to “internal staff, capital and organizational costs of

the recruitment function.” For example, these costs include in-house
talent acquisition team salaries. Internal costs can include resource
allocation from one team to another for recruitment purposes, even if
money stays in the company.

External costs refer to any “expense that is incurred to external vendors

or individuals during the course of recruiting.” For example, these costs
include external agency fees and job board posting.

Here’s a list of common external and internal recruiting costs. You’ll

notice some of the costs have asterisks. See the next section to learn
their meaning.

External recruiting costs

Cost of Recruiting Staff (Salary and benefits for

full-time and contract recruiters)

Cost of Sourcing Staff (Salary and benefits for

full-time and contract sourcers)

Internal Overhead for Government Compliance*

Non-labor Office Costs

Recruiting Learning and Development Expenses

Hiring Manager Cost of Time for Events*

Hiring Manager Cost of Time for Recruiting*

20 Recruiting metrics
 Internal recruiting costs

Advertising and Marketing

Background Checks and Eligibility to Work

Campus Recruiting

Consulting Services*

Contingency Fees*

Drug Testing

Employee Referral Awards/ Payments

Immigration*

Job Fair/Recruiting Event

Pre-hire Health Screens*

Assessment Fees*

Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO)

Relocation Fees*

Sign-on Bonuses*

Sourcing Costs

Travel and Expenses, Candidate

Travel and Expenses, Recruiter

Technology Costs

Third-party Agency Fees

Internal recruiting costs

Recruiting metrics 21
Cost per hire comparable (CPHC) VS Cost
per hire Internal

Notice that some costs in the previous table have asterisks; these are
costs that you shouldn’t include in your calculations when comparing
your cost per hire to other organizations’. These costs aren’t commonly
used in calculations, so they might inflate your cost per hire and give you
inaccurate indications on where you stand compared with others.

When you want to make internal comparisons, calculate ‘cost per hire
internal’ by including any costs that make sense to your company.
Conversely, when you want to make comparisons within your industry,
calculate cost per hire comparable (CPHC) by including any cost except
the ones with the asterisks. For example, CPHC includes job board fees
but excludes immigration expenses.

How do you determine total number

of hires?

Total number of hires might be measured differently across companies.

But, generally, companies could include all internal or external hires,
both full-time and part-time, who:

Went through a hiring process led by a hiring manager

Were on payroll as temporary staff and promoted into a full-time

position

Have fixed term contracts of more than a year and are on the
company’s payroll

22 Recruiting metrics
Calculations could exclude:

External workers (consultants, contractors etc.)

Internal transfers

New employees from mergers or acquisitions

Employees who are on a third party’s payroll

Recruiting cost rate (RCR)

SHRM and ANSI define this additional cost per hire metric. It can be more
useful than CPH because it takes into account market conditions and
other external factors that can impact compensation levels. The RCR
formula is:

Total internal and expternal costs

RCR= %
Total annual compensation of new hire in their first year

You may include total annual compensation before new hires complete
their first year. In this case, total annual compensation will be the amount
agreed on through the employee’s employment contract.

For example, imagine you spent $10,000 while recruiting for

a position. If the new hire’s compensation is $60,000 then
RCR=(10,000/60,000)*100%=16%. This means that for every dollar your
new hire makes, you’ve spent 16 cents to secure them for your team.
Obviously the lower the ratio, the better it is for your company. Any HR
team would be happy to secure higher-paid, senior-level employees with
lower recruitment costs.

Recruiting metrics 23
If you need information about data collection and segmentation, you can
take a look at the SHRM/ANSI standard guide.

Is cost per hire really an important

metric?

Companies that use this metric consistently have one great advantage in
mind. Tracking internal and external costs helps talent acquisition teams
create budgets and adhere to them. It’s easy to spend where you don’t
need to, if you don’t consistently quantify your recruiting expenses. So in
that sense, it’s vital to have an indication of cost per hire every year.

But, there are disadvantages to this metric. HR thought leader and

author Dr. John Sullivan, who specializes in strategic talent management,
has long opposed use of cost per hire, calling it an “evil” metric. He cites
many reasonable arguments like the fact that it distracts from strategic
recruiting and quality of hire.

Spending with quality in mind, instead of costs, makes sense. The best
people might be expensive or take longer to acquire, but they’re a
guarantee for long-term success. For example, if this year’s cost per hire
has tripled from last year, that doesn’t necessarily mean a bad thing. You
might have hired better (and more highly-paid) recruiters, advertised
in paid (in addition to free) job boards, or invested in a good Applicant
Tracking System (ATS) - all of which can result in better hires, despite
their cost.

Another problem with the cost per hire metric is that you have to take
into account complementary metrics. For example, there’s some value in
knowing that, in 2015, the average cost per hire was $4,000. But, is that
a little or a lot? Should companies try to reduce their spend? To draw an
actionable conclusion, you need to have other information too, like time

24 Recruiting metrics
to fill or industry benchmark data. Cost per hire is a start, but you need
much more to gain insight on efficiency.

Pro tip: It’s important to remember that cost per hire is only
one piece in a puzzle of metrics. It’s useful, but not on its own.
Companies should choose a number of metrics that work best
for them, trying to see the big picture and avoid obsessing
over a single metric. Don’t let high cost per hire scare you. Dig
deeper and you may find that costs are high because your
recruitment process is sophisticated and effective.

Recruiting metrics 25
CHAPTER 4

Quality of hire
“Quality of hire (QoH)” measures the value new
hires bring to a company.

In this context, “value” usually means how much a new hire contributes
to their company’s long-term success by completing tasks, improving
their work and helping others.

Unsurprisingly, quality of hire is at the top of the list of useful

performance KPIs. According to LinkedIn’s 2016 global trends report,
it’s a priority for 40% of big companies worldwide (and 45% of small
businesses). Efficiency recruiting metrics, like time to fill, are trending up,
but there are obvious reasons for why quality of hire is still so important.

Quality is what makes the recruiting process worthwhile. Many

companies focus on building a fast and cost-effective recruiting process,
but hiring for efficiency doesn’t necessarily translate into good hires and
business success.

Measuring QoH

QoH is a difficult metric. It has a long-term horizon and you can only
measure it many months after you’ve made a hire. Also, reliable
measurements need standardized formulas. Quality, in contrast, is often

26 Recruiting metrics
vague and subjective. In fact, most companies that LinkedIn surveyed for
its recent global trends report, don’t really feel confident about the way
they measure QoH:

A good way to measure QoH is by proxy. There are quantifiable

recruitment metrics that indicate quality. Let’s call those metrics
‘indicators.’

According to LinkedIn’s report, these are the three most common

indicators that companies use:

New hire performance metrics are used by 51% of companies.

They are the most popular way of measuring quality of hire.
Performance metrics include any kind of measurements that
indicate a new hire adds value, like meeting X sales quota,
delivering Y number of product units or achieving Z customer
satisfaction ratings.

Recruiting metrics 27
 Turnover and retention metrics are used by 48% of
companies. They give an indication of whether new hires are
good fits. They’re risky metrics though, because attrition might
have other causes like a subpar onboarding process or ineffective
management practices.

Hiring manager satisfaction ratings are used by 41% of

companies. They show how impressed hiring managers are with
the quality of their company’s hiring process and their eventual
hires.

Some companies use other indicators like percentage of new hires who
were promoted (within a certain time period) or ramp up time (the time it
takes for a new hire to reach full productivity compared with the average
time).

With your chosen indicators in mind, you could calculate QoH for a
new hire through a formula that produces the average of a number of
indicators:

(Indicator 1% + ... + Indicator N%)

QoH=
N

For example:

QoH = (New hire performance + new hire engagement + culture fit)/3

QoH = (80% + 85% + 90%)/3
QoH = 85%

28 Recruiting metrics
Note that, turnover and retention rates refer to the entire organization,
so they aren’t used to measure individual quality of hire.

You can also measure overall QoH, through the QoH index. This index
will reflect overall quality of hires within your company in the past
year. It’s a good way to discover whether your general recruiting and
onboarding processes work well. The following formula calculates an
average. It takes into account the average QoH of all new hires and the
new hire retention rate:

(Average QoH + new hire retention rate) %

QoH index=
2

Retention rate can be easily calculated on its own or as a function of

turnover rate:

Retention rate (%) = 100 – turnover rate

A common variation of the QoH index is:

(PR + HP +HR)
QoH= %
N

Recruiting metrics 29
Captions: Variation of the formula for average quality of hire

Where:

PR: Average job performance of new hires (e.g. 80 out of 100 based
on quantifiable targets or hiring managers’ feedback)

HP: percentage of new hires reaching acceptable productivity

within a determined period

HR: retention rate after a year

N: number of indicators (in this case, N=3)

An example QoH index could be calculated like this:

(70 + 80 + 90)
QoH index= %
3

where PR=70, HP=80, HR=90

This indicates the average quality of all new hires in a given period
(usually a year).

Note that retention and turnover rates can be deceptive. They might not
indicate quality of hire, but rather the quality of workplace, manager or
onboarding process.

30 Recruiting metrics
Pre-hire quality

So far we’ve looked into how to measure post-hire quality of hire.

It’s essential to measure this in the long term, so that you learn how
successful your new hires are.

But, QoH has another dimension: pre-hire quality. Pre-hire quality

assessments are short-term and are meant to predict quality of hire.
They are the basis of an effective interview process and reflect everything
companies can do to select the best candidates. Lou Adler, author and
founder of The Lou Adler Group, a consultancy firm that helps companies
use performance-based hiring, says that all factors of QoH can be
assessed before companies make a hire. He has developed a talent
scorecard that helps companies predict QoH.

Other factors help predict QoH too. For example, candidates who score
well on tests and assessments are more likely to be successful hires.
Also, optimizing recruiting metrics, like cost per hire and candidate per
hire, can make the process more efficient and help recruiters and hiring
managers focus on quality.

How to collect data

Collecting data on turnover and retention rates is relatively easy. So is

quantifying concrete performance goals, like “this new hire generated X
sales leads in a year.”

But, other calculations can be less transparent. For example, hiring

manager satisfaction surveys aren’t normally recorded as part of
everyday operations. And calculating time to full productivity (which
companies can use in quality of hire calculations) requires companies to
clearly define what ‘time to full productivity’ means and consistently keep
track of new hires’ work from the start.

Recruiting metrics 31
Surveys can be a good solution to gather necessary data. They come in
various forms:

Hiring manager satisfaction surveys (focusing on the recruitment

process)

Surveys asking managers to rate a new hire’s performance (e.g. 6-

and 9-month performance surveys)

Employee engagement surveys for new hires

Surveys asking managers, peers and team members about a new

hire’s culture fit and performance

Candidate experience surveys from new hires and rejected

candidates

As expected, there’s a great deal of subjectivity in all of these surveys.

But, quality is often subjective by default.

Use QoH to make comparisons

QoH can be useful on its own. For example, if your QoH was 65% last
year and it jumped up to 90% this year, you have grounds for celebration.

But, you can use QoH to make even more useful comparisons. For
example, if you connect QoH with other metrics like source of hire you
could adjust recruiting strategies to get more return on investment (ROI)
from different sources. If the hires with the highest QoH come from X
job board or Y recruiting agency, you’ll be able to make a sound business
case for investing more in those recruiting channels. Conversely, you
could also justify a decision to stop collaborating with an agency that
consistently sends you lower quality hires.

You can also use QoH to determine the strategic impact of the recruiting

32 Recruiting metrics
process. For example, you can determine whether QoH translates into
increased revenue or higher overall productivity. And HR metrics like
revenue per employee can help you get more granular.

Industry comparisons aren’t likely to work for this metric, though. There’s
too much inconsistency in how each company measures QoH. Also, it
wouldn’t really matter if your company had the highest QoH in your
sector, if the overall quality level in the sector was low.

Pro tip: Quality of hire is the most important outcome of the

hiring process. To promote higher quality of hire, you should:

Define objectives for each position and communicate

them clearly to candidates and new hires, through a well-
written job description.

Build an effective onboarding process.

Train managers to coach and motivate new hires.

Decide which indicators you’ll use to measure QoH so you

can more easily spot trends.

Choose, craft and administer effective surveys.

Make a commitment to communicate metrics to your

entire company.

Recruiting metrics 33
CHAPTER 5

Source of hire
“Source of hire (SoH)” shows what percent-
age of your overall hires entered your pipeline
from each recruiting channel or source (e.g. job
boards, referrals, direct sourcing.)

Tracking source of hire (SoH) helps you distribute your hiring resources
to the most effective recruiting channels.

For example, imagine you’ve hired 50 people in the past six months from
external sources. Data from your Applicant Tracking System (ATS) shows
that 20 of them were referred (40%), 15 applied through job boards
(30%), 12 were contacted through direct sourcing efforts (24%) and three
came from career fairs (6%.) This distribution can be presented in a pie
chart:

REFERRED

50
JOB BOARDS

CANDIDATES SOURCING

CAREER FAIRS

34 Recruiting metrics
Companies may use this information to allocate their recruiting budget
more effectively and refine their processes. At a minimum, tracking
source of hire helps recruiters:

Direct more resources to the most valuable channels. For

example, based on the previous report, referrals represent a
significant percentage of hires. If you don’t have a formal referral
program, it may be time to create one. Or, if you already have a
program, you could justify purchasing a dedicated tool to make the
process more efficient and help drive more referrals.

Drop or adjust consistently lagging sources. In our current

example, career fairs seem to be the least fruitful source of hire.
If they remain at the bottom of the distribution for a long time,
experiment with other sources or rethink the way you engage with
candidates during career fairs.

How to measure SoH

First determine what a “source” is. You could track individual sources (job
board 1, job board 2 etc.) and/or their overall categories (e.g. job boards,
referrals, agencies.) A broader taxonomy (like inbound, outbound and
familiar) is useful to separate internal and external hiring. Also, decide
whether you will only track hires or gather data on candidate sources too.
Define what you will measure and measure it consistently.

To gather data:

Use surveys. A common method is to ask a relevant question (e.g.

“How did you find out about this position?”) on job applications.
Also, companies often administer a short questionnaire to new
hires (through a tool like Typeform or an in-person discussion.) For
best results, compare candidate data (pre-hire) to new hire data
(post-hire) to spot discrepancies. Standardize the questions you

Recruiting metrics 35
 ask in surveys and account for all possible channels (even
print advertising.)

Use your Applicant Tracking System’s reporting features. Your

ATS automatically records the source a candidate entered your
pipeline from. Extract a report to view the distribution of candidates
and hires among different sources.

Examine web analytics. Recruiting marketing platforms (e.g.

SmashFly, Symphony Talent) can help you track candidate
engagement across channels. You could also assign UTM codes to
your job ads when you post them on job boards or social media.
Then, track with Google Analytics how much traffic each posting
brings in.

Ask for data from all members of your recruiting team.

Recruiters and sourcers may document the candidates they
sourced, or engaged with, via social media. Hiring managers may
also have recommended a source that could yield good hires for a
role (e.g. a company that employs great developers.) Compile these
different data points to paint a clearer picture of your sources of
hire.

These methods aren’t mutually exclusive. Collect and combine data using
various methods to increase SoH’s accuracy.

The limitations of SoH

SoH is more complicated than it seems, because:

Candidates pass through multiple sources

Sources are interdependent. The source from which candidates entered
the hiring pipeline may not be the one where they initially found the job ad
or even the one that persuaded them to apply. Social media networks are

36 Recruiting metrics
particularly important sources of influence that help attract candidates
and get them to apply through other sources.

A POSSIBLE FIX
A recruitment marketing platform can give you insight into candidates’
interaction with your brand before they apply. Another idea is to
complement the reports from your ATS by sending a survey to new hires.
Ask various questions like:

Which source did you apply from?

How were you made aware of this job opportunity?

What most influenced your decision to consider the role?

Ask the same questions each time and cross-validate data from your
collection methods for more accurate reporting.

SoH focuses on hires and overlooks finalists

If your screening processes are effective, the eventual hire will emerge
from a group of stellar candidates. Paying attention only to the source
the hire came from diminishes other sources that were equally effective
in attracting good candidates.

A POSSIBLE FIX
Track candidate sources along with sources of hire. Break down your SoH
by hiring stage. For example, look into the sources of qualified candidates
who advanced to a first interview and the sources of qualified candidates
who advanced to the final round.

SoH may not always justify reallocation of resources

For example, referrals are often seen as the top source of hire. But,
investing too much in them may negatively affect diversity. Similarly, your
sourcing efforts may bring a lower percentage of hires, but these hires

Recruiting metrics 37
may be the highest quality or highest revenue-generating ones, who are
well worth the investment.

A POSSIBLE FIX
Segment your data to distinguish what kind of candidate each source
brings in. For example, you may find that your best engineers come
from referrals, while your best marketing people come from job boards.
Always track quality of hire and source of hire jointly. Also, connect
recruiting metrics to other results (e.g. diversity) and experiment
frequently with how you allocate resources.

SoH may encourage bias and bias influences SoH

Imagine your hiring managers have hired a few good employees through
a particular external recruiter. The recruiter’s previous success may
prejudice hiring teams to always turn to them. SoH will be influenced in
favor of that recruiter, but your company may be missing out on talent
from other sources.

A POSSIBLE FIX
Aim for a diverse mix of sources when opening a requisition. Invest in
training to help hiring teams combat their biases and make better
hiring decisions.

Pro tip: Collect data carefully and always pair SoH with other
metrics, like quality of hire and time to fill. That way, you will
be able to extract valuable insights to help you enhance your
recruiting efforts.

38 Recruiting metrics
 CHAPTER 6

Flesh out your plan

A common theme across all recruiting

metrics

What we’ve seen by exploring these five recruiting metrics is that drawing
definite conclusions from absolute numbers or percentages is risky.
Comparisons matter more and, often, you may also need to segment data
or look for factors that may be skewing results.

So when examining each metric, consider:

Whether this metric is trending up or down across time.

Whether a complementary metric is changing in the same direction.

Whether you need to calculate this metric per team or department

to better understand problems that may arise.

When you decide which metrics to track, think of a structured, strategic

way to do it. You might need to track some metrics jointly (like cost per
hire and quality of hire) or find sources of reliable industry benchmarks to
make comparisons. But most importantly, you’ll need to make sure your

Recruiting metrics 39
company collects data consistently. Write down:

The formula and method you use for data collection.

The period you decided on to report on each metric (e.g. quarterly

offer acceptance rate.)

The time range you use to calculate each metric (e.g. the day a job
is advertised as the day that time to fill starts counting.)

Once you have that information put on paper, you can use these insights
to identify areas in the recruitment pipeline that can be either fine-
tuned or improved. This will help you build a recruiting strategy that will
ultimately lead to a powerful and long-lasting employee base in your
company.

40 Recruiting metrics
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Recruiting metrics 41