The recruitment process can be monitored using more and more metrics. Various recruitment management systems provide increasingly accurate information on the resources, time and costs used in the recruitment process. The process improvements brought by AI will also bring new data sources, metrics and A/B testing, increasing the amount of data that can be analysed. As a result, HR teams may find themselves in situations where there are too many metrics to analyze, which can make it difficult to focus on the most important ones and report on useful metrics. What metrics are worth tracking?
What are recruitment metrics?
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are metrics that can be used to monitor, measure and evaluate the effectiveness of a company’s recruitment process. They help to better understand how the different stages of the recruitment process are performing. These KPIs are usually based on the time and cost spent on the different stages of the recruitment process, or the quality of the final result.
The use of a recruitment metrics framework helps companies to make data-driven decisions and thus better optimise the different stages of the process to achieve successful recruitment, candidate experience and retention.
What recruitment metrics to monitor in 2024?
The indicators chosen should always be selected on an organisational basis. They should take into account the company’s objectives, its recruitment strategy and any problem areas already identified that need to be improved. However, the following indicators will serve as a starting point for several strategies:
Candidate satisfaction
Candidate satisfaction measures the opinion of candidates involved in the recruitment process on the success of the recruitment process – in other words, it is an assessment of how positive the recruitment experience has been from the candidate’s perspective. Key metrics for monitoring candidate experience can cover a range of factors, including ease of application, role and organisational profile, communication with the recruitment consultant and recruiting manager, interview experience, feedback and overall smoothness of the process.
Employers generally measure candidate satisfaction through questionnaires such as the NPS survey. These detailed questions can provide valuable insights into the candidate experience, and objectively take into account both those who have been rejected in the recruitment process and the evaluations of candidates who have been hired. Listening to and analysing the feedback from all candidates will help to identify potential problems at different stages of the recruitment process. The information gathered will help to make the necessary improvements and changes to ensure a positive candidate experience.
According to LinkedIn research, candidate experience will become an increasingly important metric in the coming years. For example, social media has lowered the threshold for reporting a poor candidate experience, which in turn creates more pressure to ensure a good candidate experience for everyone.
Time spent on recruitment (time-to-fill & time-to-hire)
Time-to-hire is an important metric for both companies and candidates, which is why in 2024 it will be even more important to monitor it. In a challenging market environment, many organisations have sought to manage recruitment resources from a cost perspective. For this reason, it is worth looking more closely at the metrics related to the time of recruitment.
In general, there is a desire to promote recruitment in an agile and rapid manner, but without rash decisions, as these can lead to wrong recruitment decisions later on. In turn, a prolonged process has a negative impact on the candidate experience and can contribute to the success of the recruitment process, as the most potential candidates may be involved in more than one process and accept an offer from elsewhere due to a time-consuming process. This should be taken into account, especially when recruiting for roles in challenging industries where competition for skilled employees is high.
Time-to-fill usually refers to the total time spent on recruitment from an organisational perspective, for example from the publication of an advertisement or the start of direct search to the signed employment contract. Time-to-hire, on the other hand, refers to the process a candidate goes through. This can include, for example, the time between the first contact in a direct search and a potential job offer.
The lead time and the time-to-hire can therefore be used to measure the smoothness of the recruitment process. The data collected can also help to identify which stages of the process tend to cause difficulties, slow down the process, or where potential candidates withdraw.
The cost of recruitment (cost-per-hire)
The cost of recruitment is an average estimate of how much money is spent on hiring new employees. The cost can be calculated by adding up all the costs associated with hiring over a given period and dividing this amount by the number of recruitments made. Costs consist of internal costs, such as salaries of different stakeholders, time spent, and external costs, such as marketing and advertising costs, and costs paid for the services of a potential recruitment partner.
As indicated in the previous section, the monitoring of resources spent on recruitment has become more important in the past year. The general economic downturn has tightened the resources of many organisations and the investment in recruitment has had to be more closely monitored.
The general starting point for a measure of the cost of recruitment is: the lower the average cost of recruitment, the fewer resources a company has to hire more people. By following this metric, different trends and approaches can be identified to optimise costs.
However, sometimes the opposite can be true – for example, if it is found that costs are relatively low but recruitment is not delivering the desired results in terms of candidate skills or, for example, engagement, the metrics can be used to see where investing in a wider range of recruitment channels or direct search, for example, would deliver better results.
Quality of recruitment
As a final metric, we wanted to raise the measurement of the quality of recruitment. This indicator is not directly quantifiable, which may make it more challenging to analyse objectively. However, quality is influenced by the following factors: the performance of the recruit in the role, retention rate, cultural and workplace fit, and employee satisfaction with their job and work environment.
This measure allows an organisation to measure the overall success rate of recruitment and how successful the hiring process is in terms of both job performance and job satisfaction. Successful recruitment leads to better business results and increases job satisfaction. Employees who are committed to the organisation are more productive and do not incur the additional costs of multiple compensation recruitments.
To measure the quality of recruitment, organisations can use a range of job satisfaction measures and post-recruitment effectiveness measures. For example, at the end of the probationary period, it is useful to survey the recruitment manager’s thoughts on how successfully the key objectives set for the role have been achieved. Job satisfaction and development interviews can be used to gauge the satisfaction and commitment levels of the selected employee as a measure of quality.
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