Overview
How KPIs Make Your Organization Win
The primary objective of recruitment is securing the right candidate. To do that effectively, your recruitment strategy should rest on a structured and data-driven process. By using KPIs, you can strengthen your recruitment efforts while demonstrating HR's value to the organisation.
Key Performance Indicators gather data and measure the outcomes of defined processes. Several KPIs can give you insight into recruitment performance from different angles, and organisations should choose the metrics that match their specific needs.
Here's what you'll get from this overview:
- 12 concrete KPIs covering everything from candidate experience to cost per hire.
- What each metric actually measures, and why it matters.
- A starting point for choosing the metrics that fit your organisation's needs.
Why KPIs Matter
How long does recruitment take? Does the new hire actually fit the role? What does recruitment cost? Where do the best candidates come from? Gathering data throughout the entire recruitment process builds a solid foundation for informed decisions, and helps organisations avoid costly hiring mistakes.
Overview of the KPIs
The following twelve metrics each capture a different dimension of the recruitment process, from candidate satisfaction to hiring cost to long-term employee value, and together they give you a rounded, data-driven view of how well recruitment is really working.
Quality of Hire
Measures how well a new hire performs and fits the role over time, one of the clearest indicators of whether your recruitment process actually finds the right people.
New Hire Retention Rate
Tracks how many new hires are still with the organisation after a defined period, an early signal of whether expectations were aligned during recruitment.
New Hire Turnover Rate
The counterpart to retention: how many new hires leave within a given period, and why. High early turnover often points to a mismatch in the hiring process itself.
Hiring Manager Satisfaction
Captures how satisfied hiring managers are with the candidates and support they receive from the recruitment process, a direct line of feedback on recruitment quality.
Candidate Experience
Measures how candidates experience the recruitment process, from application to onboarding. A strong candidate experience protects your employer brand, regardless of outcome.
Job Performance
Looks at how new hires actually perform in the role once they've started, connecting recruitment decisions to real, on-the-job outcomes.
Employee Engagement
Tracks how engaged new hires are once onboarded, an indicator of whether the role and organisation matched expectations set during recruitment.
Job Offer Acceptance Rate
The share of job offers that are accepted. A low rate can point to issues with compensation, process speed, or candidate experience.
Time to Fill
The total time from a position opening to a candidate accepting the offer, a key efficiency measure for recruitment.
Time to Hire
The time from a candidate's first contact with the process to signing the offer, useful for identifying bottlenecks in the candidate journey.
Source of Hire
Tracks which channels your successful hires actually come from, so you can invest recruitment budget where it performs.
Qualified Candidates per Hire
Measures how many qualified candidates it takes to make one hire, an indicator of both sourcing quality and job requirement precision.
Cost per Hire
The total cost of filling a position, including both hard costs, such as advertising, tools and agency fees, and internal time spent.