Building an excelling tech team requires more than posting job ads and hoping for the best. To truly optimize your hiring process, you need to track specific metrics that provide insight into your recruitment strategies' effectiveness, efficiency, and impact.

This guide will help you understand why these metrics matter and how to track them effectively.

Why Recruiting Metrics Matter

Recruiting metrics are crucial for understanding and improving your hiring process. They help identify strengths and weaknesses, make data-driven decisions, and ensure you attract and retain the right talent.

When you know what's working, you can focus on practical strategies and pivot away from those that are not yielding results.

Here are eight key metrics and how you can track them:

1. Volume by Channel

Tracking candidate volume by channel helps you identify your candidates' origin, including outbound sourcing, applicants, and referrals. This information allows you to determine the most effective sources and allocate resources accordingly.

How to Track: Categorize incoming candidates by their source. Monitor the number of technical screens scheduled weekly, aiming for one per day to maintain a healthy pipeline. Set weekly goals to measure recruitment momentum.

For instance, you’re sourcing candidates from LinkedIn, job boards, and employee referrals. You notice that referrals yield the highest quality candidates, but LinkedIn provides the most volume. By breaking this down, you can focus on boosting referral incentives while maintaining a solid presence on LinkedIn.

Additional Tips:

• Use an applicant tracking system (ATS) to automate and simplify this tracking.
• Regularly review and adjust your channel strategy based on performance data.

2. Passthrough Rate

Volume is only valuable if candidates meet your hiring standards efficiently. Tracking the passthrough rate from initial submission to later interview stages measures this efficiency.

How to Track: Monitor how many candidates progress from technical phone screens to further interviews. Track rejection reasons to diagnose why candidates drop out at different stages and find ways to improve early-stage screening.

For example, if 50 candidates are screened and only 10 make it to the interview stage, analyze why this is happening. Are they lacking specific skills? Are they not fitting the company culture? Identifying these trends helps improve the initial screening process.

Additional Tips:

• Develop a feedback loop with your hiring managers to understand why candidates are rejected.
• Adjust your job descriptions or initial screening questions based on rejection patterns.

3. Speed (Time to Fill)

Speed metrics, like time to fill, measure the time it takes from opening a role to accepting a candidate's offer. This assesses the efficiency of your hiring process.

How to Track: Track the days from job posting to candidate acceptance. Measure the time spent in each hiring stage to identify bottlenecks and improve process flow.

For instance, if your average time to fill is 60 days, but the industry benchmark is 45 days, examine where delays occur. Is it in scheduling interviews? Is the approval process too lengthy? Simplifying these steps can reduce your time to fill.

Additional Tips:

• Use project management tools to track and manage timelines.
• Implement automated scheduling tools to reduce back-and-forth communications.

4. Candidate Experience

Candidate experience measures how candidates perceive your hiring process. A positive experience enhances your brand and attracts top talent.

How to Track: Use surveys to gather candidate feedback at various stages. Analyze feedback to identify areas for improvement and conduct direct conversations with candidates to gather qualitative insights.

After completing the hiring process, send candidates a survey asking about their experience. Were they informed throughout the process? Was the communication timely and precise? Use this feedback to refine your approach.

Additional Tips:

• Regularly update candidates on their application status to keep them engaged.
• Provide resources and support to candidates who advance to later stages to help them prepare.

5. Retention Rate

Retention rate measures how long employees stay with your company. High turnover can be costly and disruptive.

How to Track: Track the number of employees who leave within a specific period and divide it by the total number of employees at the start. This gives you the turnover rate, which can be subtracted from 100% to get the retention rate.

If your retention rate is low, conduct exit interviews to understand why employees leave. Are there common themes, such as lack of growth opportunities or dissatisfaction with management? Address these issues to improve retention.

Additional Tips:

• Implement robust onboarding programs to help new hires acclimate quickly.
• Offer career development opportunities and regular performance reviews to engage employees.

6. Quality of Hire

Quality of hire measures the value new hires bring to your company. It can be assessed through performance reviews, retention rates, and feedback from managers.

How to Track: Evaluate new hires based on their performance reviews after a set period (e.g., six months). Use surveys to gather feedback from managers and team members about the new hire’s contribution and fit.

If new hires are not meeting performance expectations, revisit your hiring criteria. Are the job descriptions clear and accurate? Are the interview questions aligned with the skills and behaviors needed for the role?

Additional Tips:

• Use competency-based interviews to assess candidates’ abilities against required job skills.
• Provide ongoing training and support to help new hires succeed.

7. Offer Acceptance Rate

The offer acceptance rate measures the percentage of job offers accepted by candidates. A low acceptance rate can indicate issues with your offer package or hiring process.

How to Track: Divide the number of accepted offers by the total number of offers extended. This percentage gives you a clear picture of how attractive your offers are.

If candidates frequently decline offers, review your compensation packages, benefits, and company culture. Are you competitive with industry standards? Is something in the process deterring candidates?

Additional Tips:

• Gather feedback from candidates who decline offers to understand their reasons.
• Regularly benchmark your offers against industry standards to remain competitive.

8. Candidate Diversity

Candidate diversity tracks the variety of candidates you attract and hire, focusing on aspects like gender, ethnicity, and background. Diverse teams are more innovative and perform better.

How to Track: Record demographic data during the application process. Ensure compliance with local laws and regulations when collecting this data. Analyze the data to see how diverse your candidate pool is and where improvements can be made.

If you notice a lack of diversity in your candidate pool, reassess your sourcing strategies. Are your job postings reaching diverse audiences? Are there biases in your screening processes?

Additional Tips:

• Partner with organizations that support underrepresented groups to broaden your candidate pool.
• Provide unconscious bias training for your recruiting team and hiring managers.

9. Application Completion Rate

This metric measures the percentage of candidates who complete your application process. A low completion rate can indicate that your application process is too lengthy or complicated.

How to Track: Compare the number of candidates who start the application with those who complete it. Use an ATS to track these numbers automatically.

If many candidates start but don’t finish the application, analyze the process. Is it too long or complex? Simplify the application form and ensure it’s user-friendly, especially on mobile devices.

Additional Tips:

• Provide clear instructions and set expectations for the application process.
• Test the application process yourself to identify potential pain points.

Using Technicorns for Enhanced Performance

Technicorns acts as an applicant tracking system, providing a talent pool of top tech talent, making it easy to track candidate applications. Quality of talent is assured, given the talent pool is pre-vetted this means we’ve already met our candidates and sifted through their skills, experiences and behaviors to ensure they are the right fit for our clients.

Analytics tools monitor candidate progress, helping you identify trends and improve efficiency. Technicorns offers a built in analytics module measuring speed, conversion and retention to name a few. Access to these metrics allows you to immediately benchmark your hiring process against the rest of the ecosystem and industry, which provides useful information as to where improvements might be needed in your process.

Technicorns offers a frictionless application process and scheduling tools to reduce the time to fill and increase completion rate within positions posted. Automated updates and feedback keeps candidates informed throughout the hiring process.

With Technicorns, your recruiting process becomes smoother and more effective, helping you find and keep great talent in an inclusive environment.

Conclusion

Tracking essential recruiting metrics provides a comprehensive view of your hiring efforts, allowing you to make data-driven decisions that improve your process and outcomes.

Review and adjust your strategies regularly based on these metrics to build a team that fills roles efficiently and contributes to your company's growth and success.

Whether it’s improving the time to hire, reducing costs, or enhancing the quality of hires, these metrics will provide the insights needed to fine-tune your approach and achieve better results.

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