Top Metrics for measuring the success of recruitment process
Identifying and analysing the key metrics to measure the success of the recruitment process can sometimes be challenging for human resource professionals. It is one of the major reasons why companies take help of external agencies for hiring executives and recruitment process outsourcing (RPO).
In fact, there are large numbers of metrics available in the industry for measuring the recruitment efficiency and so many choices can make professionals confused. In this article, we are going to discuss the most important 6 recruitment metrics that should be part of every recruiter's list.
1. Hiring Source
In today’s world, most companies use diversified platforms for posting jobs and sourcing the profiles of potential candidates. There are social media posts, job portals, recruitment blogs, peer referrals and many more. Have you been measuring the effectiveness of each platform and tuning your strategy accordingly? By doing a thorough analysis, you can increase the process efficiency. You can put more money on sources that are producing the best quality profiles as per the domain/industry and close the non- performing platforms.
2. Speed of Hire
The speed of hire is different from time to hire. “Time to hire” is a metric to measure the number of days between the date on which the job was first posted until it is filled. “Speed of hire” tell us the number of days a specific applicant is in the funnel between applying for the job to when he/she accepts the offer.
This second metric gives a better measure of the hiring efficiency and the experience of the candidate. The speed of hire can be further divided into other metrics like Time to make the first contact, Time to set up first interview, Time for feedback, Time for roll out offer, Acceptance and so forth. Close monitoring of this data will allow recruiters to fine-tune their internal processes.
3. Qualified applicants per hire
“Applicants per hire” give a measurement of the total number of applicants for every opening. It gives a good measure of the popularity of your opening but it doesn’t tell you much about the quality of these applicants.
So a better metric is “Qualified candidate per hire”. It tells you how many candidates have passed the first screening of your process. Keeping a track of this metric helps you adjust your pipeline flow.
5. Offer acceptance rate
Measuring the acceptance rate gives a good taste of the overall effectiveness of a company’s recruitment strategy. It gives a summary of several interrelated metrics like quality of offers, applicant satisfaction, quality of applicants etc.
The acceptance rate varies from industry to industry. It is on a lower side for IT/Software industry and quite high for traditional industries like manufacturing, HR etc. It is important to benchmark your company’s acceptance rate and take measures in case it falls below the expectations.
6. Retention Rate
Retention rate is one of the most valuable metrics for measuring hiring process success in a competitive job market. The cost of low retention rates is huge as it not only includes the direct recruitment expenses but also the time and productivity loss for a particular role. Low retention rate raises questions about the quality of the hiring process.
It is advisable for companies to get the recruitment process benchmarking done and take help of external agencies if need be. It can result in better processes and huge savings.