23 Recruitment Metrics Every Employer Should Track in 2025

As an employer, it’s important to use recruitment metrics to track and evaluate your recruiting and hiring strategies.

By analyzing these measurements, you can identify areas that need improvement and make necessary changes.

This guide walks you through key recruitment metrics, how to calculate them, and how to implement an effective hiring strategy.

What Are Recruitment Metrics & Why Do They Matter?

Recruitment metrics are objective measurements used to track and evaluate the effectiveness of your hiring and recruitment strategies.

When you use objective measurements, you can gain insight into how well your recruitment strategies are performing, identify areas that need improvement, and take steps to optimize your hiring and recruitment processes.

Why They Matter

1. Data-Driven Decision Making

Recruitment metrics are objective, concrete evidence of your efforts’ effectiveness.

Hiring teams can evaluate what’s working and what isn’t and make informed decisions based on these indicators.

2. Process Optimization

Quantifiable measurements identify inefficiencies, bottlenecks, and other problems in your recruitment pipeline.

Metrics accurately pinpoint exactly what needs to be changed and optimized.

3. Resource Allocation

Understanding which recruitment channels, strategies, and team efforts yield the best results allows you to allocate budget and human resources more effectively.

4. Quality Improvement

Metrics help you hire better instead of just cheaper or faster.

You can refine your processes and selection criteria to attract top talent when you track candidate quality and performance.

5. Competitive Advantage

Organizations that leverage recruitment metrics often outperform competitors in attracting and retaining talent.

Data-driven recruitment strategies can be the difference between landing exceptional candidates and losing them to competitors.

6. Accountability and Transparency

Metrics make hiring teams more accountable and transparent about their performance.

They also help to justify investments in recruiting and demonstrate the value of your efforts.

23 Key Recruitment Metrics to Track

Speed & Efficiency

1. Time to Fill

Time to fill measures how long it takes from when a manager requests a hire to when a candidate accepts the offer.

Time to fill helps you understand your recruitment efforts’ effectiveness, identify inefficiencies, and reduce costs.

How to calculate: Count the number of days between the requisition and offer acceptance dates. Track time to fill across open positions and per department to get an average.

2. Time to Hire (aka Time to Accept)

Time to hire measures how long it takes to hire a candidate once they submit an application or resume.

This metric is important because it shows how well your recruitment team performs and where bottlenecks in your hiring process exist.

Streamlining your hiring process to reduce time to hire can help you maintain candidate interest.

How to calculate: Count the number of days that elapse between a candidate’s application and offer acceptance dates.

3. Time to Productivity

Time to productivity shows how long it takes a new employee to gain the skills, knowledge, and ability to perform their job independently.

Time to productivity can vary based on the industry and the job’s complexity, but you can use this to track employees within the same job level.

It’s important for evaluating your company’s onboarding and recruiting effectiveness and identifying skills gaps.

How to calculate: Count the time between the employee’s first day and when they fully contribute.

4. Fill Rate

In recruitment, your company’s fill rate tracks how quickly your company fills open jobs.

A high fill rate demonstrates that your recruitment team is effective at filling vacancies, while a low rate suggests your recruitment strategies or channels are ineffective.

How to calculate: Use the following formula: Fill rate percentage = Total jobs filled / Total job openings x 100

5. Recruitment Funnel Effectiveness

Your recruitment funnel effectiveness is a measurement of how effective your recruitment funnel is from start to finish.

Analyzing the effectiveness of your recruitment funnel can help identify issues in your specific recruiting and hiring process steps.

Many companies use AI and automated processes to handle the first couple of steps for a more streamlined process.

How to calculate:  Measure the yield ratio of each step in the process as follows:

Yield ratio = Number of candidates who completed the step / Total number of candidates who started the step

Some example steps to calculate yield ratios include:

• Number of resumes screened out of the total number of applicants
• Number of screened resumes forwarded to the hiring manager out of the total screened
• Number of candidates selected for an interview out of the total number of resumes forwarded
• Number of final interviews out of the total interviews conducted
• Number of final interviews that result in an offer
• Number of offers to total number of hires

6. Application Completion Rate

Your application completion rate is the percentage of candidates who finish an application once they start.

It helps you evaluate your application process. If the process is too complex or has an unwieldy user interface, you might have a low application completion rate.

How to calculate: Application completion rate = Number of applications completed / Total number of applications started

Your application completion rate helps you evaluate your application process. If it’s too complex or has an unwieldy user interface, you might have a low application completion rate.

7. Recruiter Performance Metrics

Recruiter performance metrics measure how well your recruiters perform their jobs and include things like their email open rates, response rates, and interview conversions.

How to calculate:

• Open email rate = Number of emails the recruiter opened / Total number of candidate emails received

• Response rate = Number of emails your recruiter replied to / Total number of candidate emails received
• Interview conversion rate = Number of emails that lead to interviews / Number of candidate emails received

Cost & ROI

8. Cost per Hire

Cost per hire measures the total costs your company invests in hiring, divided by the number of people you ultimately hire.

It helps you understand whether the money you spend on your recruitment and hiring efforts provides a good return on investment (ROI) or if you need to make adjustments.

How to calculate: Cost per hire = (Total internal recruiting costs + Total external recruiting costs) / Total number of candidates hired

Internal costs include:

• Administrative costs
• Compliance costs
• Hiring manager costs
• Training costs

External costs include:

• Job advertisement costs
• Sourcing costs
• Travel costs
• Employment background check costs

9. Sourcing Channel Cost

Your sourcing channel cost evaluates the effectiveness and cost efficiency of posting jobs on various platforms, such as Indeed, Monster, LinkedIn, etc.

This is important for identifying where it makes the most sense to post job vacancies so you can more efficiently allocate resources.

How to calculate: Sourcing channel cost = Money spent on job advertisements per platform / Number of new hires originating from each platform

10. Cost of Getting to Optimum Productivity Level (OPL)

The cost of getting to the optimum productivity level (OPL) measures how much your company spends on onboarding and training a new employee until they reach an optimal productivity level.

How to calculate: Add all of the costs involved, including onboarding, training, on-the-job training by co-workers and supervisors, etc.

Also include a percentage of the new employee’s salary in this metric until they reach 100% OPL.

11. Recruitment ROI

Your recruitment ROI measures your recruiting efforts’ overall financial return and effectiveness.

A positive ROI suggests that your recruitment efforts create more value than they cost.

In contrast, a negative ROI indicates that you spend more on recruitment than the value those activities create.

How to calculate: You need to track multiple key metrics to calculate recruitment ROI, including:

• Application completion rate

• Time to hire

• Time to fill

• Offer acceptance rate

• Quality of hire

• First-year attrition rate

You’ll also need to track your hard costs and the value your new hires bring, including:

• Revenue generated per new hire

• Productivity impact per new hire

• Internal hiring costs

• Onboarding/training costs

• Technology costs

• Replacement costs

You can then calculate the recruitment ROI by adding up your total costs and subtracting them from the total value added by your new hires.

If the result is positive, that means your recruitment efforts add more value than they cost.

Quality & Retention

12. Quality of Hire

The quality of hire measures how well a new candidate performs during their first year on the job.

A complex metric, it involves tracking the candidate’s performance, productivity, and retention.

Many employers calculate the quality of hire by using new employees’ first-year performance ratings.

If you have a lot of low performance ratings in the first year, it demonstrates that your company has made bad hiring decisions and should make some adjustments, including improving sourcing and screening, and implementing comprehensive employment background checks.

13. Success Ratio

Success ratio measures the number of new hires who perform well vs. the total number hired.

If your company has a high success ratio, it indicates you’ve made good hiring decisions.

By contrast, if you have a low success ratio, you need to adjust your selection process.

How to calculate: Success ratio = Number of new hires who perform well / Total number of people hired

14. First-Year Attrition

Your first-year attrition rate tells you the percentage of new hires who stay with your company versus those who leave.

It is important because people who leave early typically cost your company a lot of money.

A high first-year attrition rate indicates low employee morale, job description mismatches, or unrealistic expectations.

How to calculate: Number of employees leaving within the first year / total number of employees who stay

15. Hiring Manager Satisfaction

Hiring manager satisfaction is measured by surveying your hiring managers about their satisfaction with new hires.

Satisfied hiring managers are more likely to work well with new hires, and the new hires are more likely to be happy with their jobs and be motivated to succeed.

16. Candidate Job Satisfaction

A related metric is your candidate’s job satisfaction. You can measure this by conducting post-hire surveys about how well the candidates believe their expectations match their jobs.

If you have a low score, you might need to revise your job descriptions to match the positions better.

17. Offer Acceptance Rate

Offer acceptance rate measures how many candidates accept offers.

If you have a low rate, you might need to offer higher compensation or benefits.

You can avoid this problem by listing salary and benefits in your job postings and asking candidates about their salary expectations.

How to calculate: Offer acceptance rate = Number of offer acceptances / Total number of offers extended

18. Time to Productivity

While time to productivity was described earlier, it’s important to understand that it ties into your company’s onboarding quality and long-term performance.

If your employees have a short time to productivity, your company will enjoy higher profits and fewer losses involved with hiring.

Sourcing Effectiveness

19. Source of Hire

Source of hire involves tracking where your new hires originated from so that you can allocate more resources to sources that work vs. those that are less effective.

Some examples include your website’s career page, job boards, sourcing agencies, and social media.

20. Sourcing Channel Effectiveness

Measuring your sourcing channel effectiveness involves comparing traffic volume and conversion rates from each source.

This helps to evaluate the effectiveness of different sources.

You can use Google Analytics to track where applicants who viewed your website’s job posting came from and then concentrate your posts on the most effective channels.

21. Applicants per Opening

Looking at the number of applicants per job opening helps you understand the demand for different jobs within your organization and can be particularly useful if you engage in high-volume recruiting.

The total number of applicants doesn’t necessarily mean they’re all qualified and could indicate your job description is overbroad.

You can narrow your job description and include multiple required criteria to attract qualified applicants.

22. Selection Ratio

Your selection ratio helps you assess your company’s recruitment filters.

You can use it to identify better recruitment and assessment tools and evaluate your selection system.

How to calculate: Selection ratio = Number of hired applicants / Total number of applicants

DEI & Compliance

23. Adverse Impact (Four-Fifths Rule)

The adverse impact metric identifies bias against applicants with protected characteristics in your hiring process and should prompt you to make immediate changes.

If your hiring practices adversely impact members of a protected group, you could face litigation and liability.

The four-fifths rule can help you assess your hiring and selection processes for bias.

Under this rule, your selection rate of members of protected groups should be at least 80% of your selection rate of non-protected people.

For example, if you calculate that 8% of African-American candidates and 20% of Caucasian male candidates are selected for interviews, divide 8 by 20 to determine that you have an impact ratio of 40%.

In this case, African-American candidates are adversely impacted by your hiring process, which should prompt an immediate review and corrective action.

How to Implement a Metrics-Driven Hiring Strategy

1. Track Relevant Metrics

Identify the metrics most relevant to your company and track them.

For example, in fast-paced industries like tech, time to productivity or skill might be more relevant than in non-technical positions.

In a high-demand industry like healthcare, the offer acceptance rate might be important to assess how well you do with attracting top talent.

Once you have baseline numbers, assess your company’s performance and identify areas to improve.

2. Define Your Goals Based on Your Metrics

Define your company’s goals based on your metrics.

For example, you might need to improve the quality of hire, reduce time to hire, or achieve higher retention rates.

Once you’ve defined your goals, write down measurable action steps for how to achieve them.

3. Use an ATS or HRIS to Track Data

Use your company’s ATS or HRIS to track metrics throughout your hiring and recruiting processes.

This will make it easier to analyze the data and take action based on it.

4. Collaborate Across Teams

Involve members of multiple teams to improve your recruiting and hiring processes.

Key members might include your recruiters, hiring managers, and human resources personnel.

Include some representative employees to provide input.

Develop a hiring checklist to keep your processes on track.

5. Partner With a Reliable Background Check Provider

Comprehensive background checks can improve the quality of hire by identifying individuals who have the skills, experience, and characteristics best suited for the role.

For the best results, partner with a reliable provider like iprospectcheck that always complies with the FCRA and other relevant background check laws and returns results quickly.

6. Conduct Regular Audits of Your Hiring and Recruiting Practices

Schedule regular audits of your hiring and recruiting practices and compare results with your metrics.

Make changes whenever they’re needed to optimize your strategies.

Trust iprospectcheck as your Hiring Partner

Tracking recruitment metrics and evaluating your hiring and recruitment strategies can help your company identify issues and optimize its processes.

At iprospectcheck, we partner with employers across the US to help them optimize hiring by providing comprehensive employment background checks.

To learn more about how we can help, contact us for a free quote today: (888) 509-1979.

DISCLAIMER: The resources provided here are for educational purposes only and do not constitute legal advice. Consult your counsel if you have legal questions related to your specific practices and compliance with applicable laws.