The 5 Most Popular Recruitment Efficiency Metrics

Together with eRecruiter, we have recently asked over 500 employers how they measure the efficiency of the undertaken recruitment activities. Here are the 5 most popular recruitment efficiency metrics. What do they tell us about how recruitment is handled? I will explain everything in the post below.

All of the data quoted is from the “Candidate experience in Poland 2019” report by eRecruiter and Great Digital prepared on the basis of the results of the research in which HR persons from 504 companies in Poland participated, as well as almost 2000 candidates, of which 1570 white-collar workers and 328 blue-collar workers. Are the most popular indicators in recruitment different in your company and in your region? Please do let us know!

Metric 1. The time to hire – applied by 36% of the companies

The recruitment time from job order to employment (counted in days) is an indicator currently applied by every third company.

What is the advantage of this metric? It allows communicating with a business, managing its expectations and undertaking recruitment activities well in advance.

If the average recruitment time at our company is on average 45 days, but 70 days in the case of a programmer – the managers at the company should know about this.

What disadvantages may be brought by the pressure to optimize these metrics? It may have a negative impact on the quality of the new hire and on the degree to which the employed candidate matches the job. This is why it should be analyzed along with the metrics regarding strictly the quality of employment (e.g. the percentage of contracts prolonged after the trial period).

Metric 2. How long an employee stays at the company after being employed – indicated by 30% of the companies.

In other words, an employee’s tenure. One of the basic types of data in HR. Can it prove the quality of employment? Especially, of course, in the case of employee groups with the shortest employment history.

It is worth to monitor which employee groups stay after the trial period, which part works through the first year in the company, as well as through the following years.

What should worry us here? Some exceptions and anomalies, for example, a rapid decrease in the indicator for some employee groups and differences between the teams and departments which we have not observed so far. It is then worth determining what the changes result from.

Metric 3. Manager satisfaction with the recruitment – a metric applied by 28%

This indicator – similar to the first one that has been discussed – shows the alignment between the job and the hire. It focuses on the implementation of the needs of the internal customer, in this case of the managers who are in need of employees.

This metric can act as a source for improvements that can be introduced in the recruitment process so that the manager is more satisfied. Doing this does require qualitative conversations with the manager.

Attention! In the case of this indicator, it is very easy to create the impression that only the recruiters are responsible for the result of the recruitment, the quickness of employment and the quality of matching the candidate. We know that this is not the case. In fact, the better the mutual cooperation (between the manager and the recruiter), the better the results of the recruitment process are. This is why a much better indicator will be the assessment of the satisfaction of the candidates with the recruitment process.

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When asked about their recruitment experience, the candidates talk about the behaviors of the recruiters and of the managers, about the speed of the recruitment and about the quality of the communication with them. All of this is a good incentive to jointly ensure the quality of the recruitment processes, the recruiters, and the managers.

Metric 4. The number of applications for a given position – a metric applied by 28% of the companies

The number of applications for a given position is a metric with a very long history in recruitment, applied for years to assess the most effective sources of recruitment. Unfortunately, this metric assesses quick and superficial recruitment. After all, are we really impressed by the information that 100 applications come from source X, compared with the 10 applications from source Y without any assessment of the quality of these applications?

We should check the match between the candidates needed and the actual job. 100 candidates from source A can have a lower likelihood of providing you with a match than 5 candidates from source B. If you happen to use this metric to assess the efficiency of your sources (and the reasonableness of money spent), forget about it quickly.

Metric 5. The percentage of contract renewals after the trial period – a metric used by 22% of the companies

One of the so-called qualitative indicators of the recruitment process tells a lot about the quality of the recruitment process. Did the employer and the employee have a chance to get to know each other, to assess their mutual matching and needs? Was there an honest and reliable presentation of working conditions, or did the proverbial “painting the grass green” apply? Our research found that this is currently the most important aspect of recruitment important to 9 out of 10 candidates.

This measurement is an indicator that is definitely worth watching. In case the percentage of contract renewals drops, you should examine why, both on the employer’s and on the employee’s part.

What more do our data show?

First of all, even though we have asked over 500 employers in our research about several various recruitment efficiency metrics (please find the full list in the chart above), surprisingly in every fourth company, none of the above recruitment metrics are currently applied. In addition, amongst the most frequently applied metrics, there are only a few about the quality of the recruitment and the experience of the candidates.

Although the recruitment duration time for the employer is measured by 36% of companies, the recruitment duration time for a candidate is only measured by 21% of companies. The candidate satisfaction with the recruitment is only measured by 14% of the companies, and the NPS ratio, allowing to assess the inclination of the candidates to recommend recruitment at a given employer, is only measured by 8% of the companies so far. The companies which are actively measuring and improving these, genuinely change the experience of the candidates and win on the labor market. Maybe it is time to join them?

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