The goal of every employer is to fill open positions with the right people that will help take the business forward. It is also important that they do so within the shortest time and at the lowest cost possible. However, this is only possible with an optimized hiring process. And one way to optimize your hiring process is to track recruitment metrics.

These are measurements used to track the effectiveness of hiring strategies to identify areas that need improvement. This article explains why recruitment metrics are important when hiring and how you can identify key ones for your hiring strategy. 

Importance of using recruitment metrics

The main purpose of using recruitment metrics is to spot areas where you need to channel more effort to increase the effectiveness of your hiring process. Recruitment metrics also give you access to data to make informed hiring decisions. Ideally, tracking recruitment helps you to:

• Enhance candidate experience – By tracking candidate experience, you can see where you going wrong and improve to avoid candidates pulling off from the process.

• Create a strong team – You can track the quality of hire and diversity of candidates to help you make decisions that lead to a diverse team with the required skills.

• Design competitive offers – The war for talents is prevalent in business. But by tracking your offer acceptance rate, you can beat the competition and bag top talents by creating offers that match candidates’ expectations.

• Reduce employee turnover rate – You can track attrition and employee turnover rates to identify why employees leave. This helps you address any issues and create more effective retention strategies.

• Fill positions quickly – Filling positions quickly is essential to continue operating optimally. By tracking the time to fill and time to hire, you can identify stages where candidates stay longer than necessary and work on improving them.

Identifying key recruitment metrics

You can use numerous metrics to ensure a data-driven recruitment process. However, keeping track of every metric can redirect your focus from the actual hiring. It adds more value if you track the more effective recruitment metrics. How can you identify the key ones for your business? Choose metrics that align with your hiring goals.

Before deciding on the metrics to measure, ask yourself what you want to improve in your hiring process. Do you want to attract quality talent, or do you want to reduce the time taken to fill positions? Are you struggling with retaining talent within the first year of hire? Then, choose metrics that can help you measure the effectiveness of your strategies to achieve your hiring objectives. Some key recruitment metrics to consider include:

• Time to hire
• Quality of hire
• Channel sources effectiveness
• Cost per hire
• Offer acceptance rate
• First-year attrition
• Diversity of candidates 

Some direct changes you should make to improve your recruitment process

Outsource the hiring process

Outsourcing the process to a reliable PEO leaves your HR team with enough time to focus on key factors such as employee engagement and satisfaction. This helps improve the turnover rate. Besides this, a PEO can help source and onboard employees, ensuring an enhanced experience. However, ensuring you are working with the best is always good. Reviewing several providers can be a good start. 

Invest in an applicant tracking system

An ATS can come in handy in ensuring an efficient and effective recruitment process in various ways. One, it allows you to track the applicants throughout the process. It also scans the resume details with the help of HR technology and helps you to screen candidates quickly and find the right talent. Also, you can automate communication with candidates to keep them engaged throughout the process. In addition, an ATS can give you insights into the sources of your top applicants. This allows you to focus on sources with higher ROI. 

Build a talent pipeline

A ready pool of qualified individuals who can fill positions is a great way to improve your time-to-hire. This is especially important for roles that are hard to fill. Start engaging prospective talents even before the positions become vacant. You can start by eyeing passive candidates and starting communication with them early.

Conclusion

Recruitment metrics play an important role when hiring new talents. They are essential in ensuring an effective hiring process so you can hire quickly and cost-effectively. Consider your objectives so you can track metrics that matter to you. This way, you can gather valuable insights that can help make informed decisions.