The five most important recruiting metrics are time-to-fill, time-to-hire, cost-per-hire, offer acceptance rate, and quality-of-hire. Together they reveal pipeline speed, efficiency, and outcome quality. Source of hire and candidate experience score (cNPS) round out a complete recruiting scorecard.
Time-to-fill (days from job open to offer accepted) and time-to-hire (days from application to offer accepted) measure pipeline velocity. Cost-per-hire captures total recruiting spend — advertising, tools, referral bonuses, agency fees, recruiter time — divided by number of hires. These three efficiency metrics should be tracked per role type and per department, because averages mask wide variation that points to specific process bottlenecks.
Quality-of-hire is typically calculated as a composite of new-hire performance scores at 90 days or 12 months, retention at one year, and hiring manager satisfaction ratings. Offer acceptance rate is a leading quality indicator: consistent acceptance below 80% signals a misalignment between candidate expectations and what you are presenting during the process. Source of hire lets you correlate which channels produce the highest-quality hires, not just the most applicants.
Time-to-fill and pipeline stage conversion rates should be reviewed weekly during active hiring to surface blockers early. Cost-per-hire and source-of-hire are best reviewed monthly. Quality-of-hire data requires a lag of 90 days to 12 months, so review it quarterly or annually and feed it back into sourcing and screening decisions. Avoid vanity metrics like total applications received, which inflate without indicating success.
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