Published byClinch

What are recruitment analytics? Unlock success with data-driven hiring

In a competitive job market, finding, attracting, and retaining the right talent is crucial for organisations.

But with competing priorities, how do you identify where best to focus your efforts? The answer lies in recruitment analytics. Let’s dive in to break down what recruitment analytics are, why they are essential for modern businesses and unpack the key metrics you need to track to supercharge your hiring strategy.

What makes recruitment analytics so important?

Recruitment analytics, also known as ‘recruitment metrics’, paint a picture of the effectiveness of your hiring strategies and the health of your talent acquisition efforts. These insights can help hiring teams to:

Improve efficiency: Time is of the essence in recruitment. By tracking key metrics, you can identify bottlenecks in your hiring process, streamline workflows, and reduce the time it takes to fill crucial positions. A shorter time-to-hire benefits both your organisation and your candidates, ensuring a swift and efficient hiring process.

Control costs: Recruitment can be costly, and an inefficient hiring process can easily lead to expenses skyrocketing. Cost-per-hire metrics allow you to gain a clear understanding of where your recruitment budget is going, enabling you to allocate resources more effectively.

Enhance candidate experience: Gathering feedback from candidates provides you with insights into your application process’s strengths and weaknesses. This data helps you make tweaks and changes to create a smoother, more engaging candidate journey.

Optimise sourcing: The source of hire metric helps you identify which channels are most effective in attracting high-quality candidates. That way, you know where to invest your resources —concentrating on the channels that yield the best results.

Ensure quality hires: The quality-of-hire metric evaluates an employee’s performance over time, giving you a comprehensive view of the effectiveness of your recruitment strategies. High-quality hires lead to better company performance and lower turnover rates.

Promote diversity: In today’s diverse world, businesses should strive to build teams and cultures that reflect this diversity. Tracking the diversity of your candidate pool at various stages of the hiring process helps you address biases and build a more inclusive work environment.

10 key recruitment metrics to track 

Let’s explore the top 10 key metrics that organisations should track to drive successful hiring efforts:

1. Time-to-hire

Time to hire measures the time from when a candidate applies for a role, to when they accept a job offer. A shorter time-to-hire is ideal —candidates aren’t left hanging, and your long-term recruiting costs are reduced. 

2. Time-to-fill

This metric is similar to time to hire, but focuses on the time taken to fill a position from the moment you identify the need for a new hire. Tracking time-to-fill enables you to identify areas of improvement in your pre-advertisement recruiting processes. It ensures your organisation acts quickly to address vacancies and maintain operational efficiency.

3. Source of hire

Understanding which channels are responsible for bringing in the best candidates is a valuable insight. Whether candidates come from job boards, referrals, social media, or other channels, tracking the source of hire helps you allocate your resources more effectively.

4. Cost-per-hire

This metric involves calculating all the expenses involved with bringing in a new hire. It includes recruitment advertising, staff hours, referral bonuses, and other costs. Accurate tracking of cost-per-hire helps your organisation understand where the recruitment budget is spent, and how it can be optimised.

5. Candidate experience

Gathering feedback from candidates about their experience with your hiring process is critical to making improvements. An exceptional candidate experience is not only appealing to candidates but also essential for maintaining your organisation’s reputation in the job market. Post-application surveys or NPS evaluations are two key ways to gather this data. 

6. Quality of hire

This metric assesses an employee’s performance over time. It helps your organisation understand the effectiveness of your recruitment strategies in finding, onboarding, and retaining high-quality candidates. Low-quality hires can result in higher training costs, increased turnover, and reduced productivity.

7. Offer acceptance rate

Tracking the number of candidates who accept a job offer provides insights into the attractiveness of your job packages and your candidate experience. An increase in declined offers may mean a need to reevaluate your compensation packages, or review the applicant experience throughout the recruitment process. 

8. First-year turnover rate 

Monitoring the turnover rate of employees within their first year of employment is crucial. A high first-year turnover rate suggests issues with hiring quality or could indicate problems with your organisation’s culture. Addressing such challenges head-on can help reduce the costs associated with high employee turnover in the long run.

9. Application completion rate 

This metric helps you assess the efficiency of your application process. By tracking how many potential applicants start an application and proceed to complete it, you can determine whether your application process is user-friendly or if it includes unnecessary barriers that deter candidates.

10. Diversity of hires

In today’s hiring landscape, diversity is not just a buzzword but a fundamental aspect of building high-performing, innovative teams. Tracking the demographics and backgrounds of candidates throughout the hiring process allows your recruiting team to identify areas of improvement and ensure equal opportunities for everyone. By recognising diversity as an asset, you can foster an inclusive workplace that welcomes a range of perspectives and experiences.

A clear understanding of these top 10 recruitment metrics equips your organisation to make data-driven decisions that enhance your hiring efforts. That way, you can provide a better candidate experience, and build a stronger, more productive workforce.

Want to take a deep-dive into your recruitment marketing metrics? With Clinch, you’ll have ready access to in-depth dashboards, heatmaps, and analytics —straight out of the box. Take control of your recruitment strategy: book a call today to get started.