Recruitment Metrics You Should Track in 2021

The data that you (recruitment and hiring team) regularly report and the data your executive team is interested in is not often the same. So how can you better demonstrate to your leadership that recruiting is moving the needle for the business — without drowning them with unnecessary data and reports
To help you give a clear picture and true value of your recruiting efforts, here’s a list of ten recruitment metrics your C-suite wants to see. Use it to drive more partnership with the business and build up trust in your function’s ability to hire the best people for the company.

1. Effectiveness of sourcing channel

Recruiters rely on multiple sourcing channels to hire talent. It is important to know which channels are working best for you and the ones that are not giving good results. According to a survey, a high percentage of applications come from job boards, but the percentage hired from job boards is actually less as compared to internal job referrals, despite a much less percentage of applications being received by referrals. Job referrals are 34X more effective than job boards.

Sourcing channel effectiveness – Total number of application/Total of hires via channel

If you want to know the effectiveness of your sourcing channels? Ask yourself the following questions:

  • Where do most applicants come from?
  • Where do most hires come from?
  • What is the cost per hire per channel?
  • How should you change your sourcing strategy change based on the insights?
2. Increased adoption of mobile Apps and time to apply rates

The trend of applying for jobs through mobile apps is increasing. Talent seekers need to understand this trend and offer an experience that matches the user expectations. The mobile app also influences the time to apply for a job.

Mobile applications and time to apply rates are two important recruitment metrics, but they work collectively to give an important insight that might otherwise be overlooked.
You can calculate these metrics as follows-

Mobile apply rate = (Number of applications submitted via a mobile app/Total number of applications submitted)X100

Time to apply = Total time it takes to submit job application form.

Check if your mobile application and time to apply rates are in line with industry standards? Ask yourself the following questions:

  • Is your career page/career site mobile-optimized?
  • Do you offer applicants the opportunity to pre-fill the application form from their google account/social sites/CVs?
  • Are your job application forms appropriate for mobile usage?
3. Offer acceptance rate

Recruitment is cost-intensive and every candidate that turns down a job offer costs money to your organization.
It takes a lot of time and effort to find that ideal candidate that is the perfect fit for your organization. They come through a long process of screening, interviewing, assessment, and background verification. Once you ensure that they have the right skills, experience, attitude and cultural alignment that matches your expectations. But do you know if they really want to work for your organization? Tracking your offer acceptance rate will help you understand how you are performing as an organization.

The industry bench mark was 95% in 2020. Organizations performing well have an average 99% offer acceptance rate.

Calculated as: Offer acceptance rate – (Number of offers accepted/Number of offers made) X100

If your offer acceptance rate is below the industry benchmark, you need to ask yourself these questions:

  • Are you an employer of choice?
  • Is your compensation competitive?
  • Is your recruitment process efficient enough to secure talent?
  • What is candidate feedback about the entire recruitment process?
4. Applicant to hire rate

This metrics gives an important insight into the effectiveness of your job listings. With hundreds of applicants in the market and applying for the same role, you don’t want to be paddling through irrelevant applications.

Tracking applicant-to-hire rates depict whether your job ads are targeted enough to reach and engage the right audience. It is especially important in the current scenario of a global pandemic, and one simple rule to follow is to focus on quality more than quantity.

This can be calculated as follows –

% of applicants to hire = (Total number of hires/Total number of applications) X100

According to 2020 data, 4% was the applicant to hire rate. However, one aspect to note here is if your application volumes are too high, your applicant to hire ratio will be lower. It can mean either of these – your job ads are not targeted enough, you are not using the most effective sourcing channels, or you need to re-look your sourcing methods.

To get better fit applicants, you need to –

  • Understand the job requirements better/ create clearly defined job descriptions
  • Create highly targeted job ads with clear role requirements
  • Identify and focus on the most effective sourcing channels and methods
5. Candidate to hire ratio

With more applications received for a role, it can be tempting for certain recruiters to put more candidates to the interview stage. This can cost an organization a lot of hours and waste thousands of dollars. Plus, it will lead to the high percentage of candidate rejection. Over the long run, it will negatively impact your employer brand.

Candidates to hire rate = (Total number of hires/ Total number of candidates)X100

The average industry standard is 10%, i.e. 1 out of 10 candidates are hired and 9 are rejected.

The trend is reasonable when more people are applying for the same role; there is a temptation on part of recruiters to put more candidates through the recruitment funnel. But there are multiple issues with this approach:

  • It is costly and time-consuming for interviewers and hiring managers to screen and interview high volumes of candidates
  • It becomes challenging to keeping hiring managers engaged with the recruitment process
  • A higher number of candidates stretches the recruitment process which runs the risk of losing candidates to competitors
6. Quality of hire

Keep a check on the quality of hires made over a fixed period of time. Quality of hire gives a quick index on a new hire’s adjustment, acclimation, and performance in their role since joining your company.
Quality can be measured in many different ways, and can be quite subjective. However, it is arguably the most important thing to measure.

It doesn’t matter if you fill a role quickly and cost-effectively, if you don’t have a good candidate to show for it.
Some of the common indicators of quality of hire are –

  1. Job performance
  2. Retention
  3. Productivity/Ramp-up time
  4. Employee lifetime value
7. Attrition rate

Replacing your best workers is quite a cost. There is considerable time and money involved in sourcing, interviewing and hiring , as well as onboarding new employees. No brainer, so many organizations are prioritizing retaining employees over hiring new ones to get ahead of costly turnover or attrition rate.

(Attrition Rate % = (No. of resignations/no of employees)X100)

To keep a check on this number, an understanding of the reason behind employee resignations is important. Keep a record of the findings from employee exit interviews and further take steps towards eliminating these causes. Such efforts over a period of time will help reduce the attrition rate.

8. Impact of vacant roles

Vacant positions can have a considerable impact on your business. Surprisingly, many businesses do not even realize the serious impact it can have on their operations and bottom line.

You can calculate the impact of vacant employees as –
Revenue impact per employee = (Total yearly corporate revenue($)/number of full-time employees

Apart from this, there are other damaging factors in the form of existing employee burnout due to excessive workload, diminished morale of the existing employees, weakened customer confidence, increased business risk.

9. New Hire Failure

Many of you will be shocked to know that the recruiting process often has a failure rate of 50 percent. Such an astonishing failure rate occurs at every job level, from hourly employees to managers, and even at the executive level. Tracking this metric enables you to see how many hires fail in their first year either because they were asked to leave or resigned within 6 months of hiring.
It is another good metrics to track the effectiveness of your screening, interview, and onboarding processes.

10. Diversity of hired candidates

According to a recent Gartner survey, diversity and inclusion are the number 1 talent management priority for C-suite. Yet only 36% of D&I managers report building a diverse workforce.
Improving D&I efforts could give you an advantage over competitors.

Understanding which recruitment metrics to track helps you identify the most effective ways to attract the best talent in an ever-evolving recruitment landscape.

To find the best candidate, these metrics will help accelerate the recruitment process, with an added bonus of reducing recruitment costs also. Therefore, these metrics are a quantifiable tool for evaluating how your organization’s efficiency and accuracy for attracting and retaining top talent. We at AgreeYa are helping our clients achieve

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