Recruitment key performance indicators (KPIs), are metrics that talent acquisition teams use to measure their performance and predict their likelihood of meeting different goals. Recruiting KPIs act as signals of what’s going well, where there’s room for improvement and what might need further investigation.

There are a few general elements that define a KPI. They are key, which means they focus on the most important metrics. They’re performance-related, which means they’re tied to business objectives. And they’re indicators, which means you should think of them as headlines rather than the whole story.

Some disciplines, like sales and marketing, already have industry-wide measures of success and opportunities they set goals against. This makes it easier to benchmark across an organisation and against peers in other companies.

Within recruiting, we don’t tend to see the same standardisation, but Greenhouse does have some recruitment KPIs we recommend to help you address each stage of the recruiting funnel.

Top recruitment KPIs you should know

KPI #1: Qualified candidates per opening

Just like marketing and sales measure qualified leads, recruiters can measure the number of qualified candidates who have reached the first milestone of their interview process. This is a leading indicator that the interview funnel is filling up with potential recruits. At Greenhouse, we measure it by how many candidates make it out of application review to the second stage in our interview process, a phone call with a recruiter. To learn more about this KPI, check out this blog post.

KPI #2: Candidate survey results

You can measure candidate survey results by the proportion of candidates who answer “Yes” or “Strong Yes” to the prompt “Overall, my candidate experience was a positive one” in a post-interview survey, like the one offered through Greenhouse. You can learn more about this KPI and why it’s so important to prioritise the candidate experience in this blog post.

KPI #3: Days to offer

Days to offer allows you to track how quickly candidates move through your recruiting and interview process. This KPI measures the number of days that pass between when people apply and when they ultimately accept or reject an offer. You can average this across all roles to get a sense of the true average speed of your interview process. Learn more about this KPI here.

KPI #4: Offer acceptance rate

Offer acceptance rate (OAR) is the percentage of extended offers that are accepted. A strong OAR usually indicates that the team has successfully filled a pipeline with qualified candidates, created an efficient and thorough interview process, put thought into the candidate experience and helped get the right offers to the right candidates. Learn more about how to measure OAR – and some common mistakes to avoid – here.

KPI #5: Recruits to goal

Recruits to goal measures how well you are meeting your hiring objectives overall. At the outset of every year and quarter (or maybe even every month), your team sets a specific goal for the number of recruits required. The goal set should consider how long it takes to build a job req, fill a funnel with quality candidates, move these candidates through the process and close an offer. The output of that analysis is a number, like 32 recruits in Q3. Tracking and reporting on your organisation’s progress toward the goal is a critical component of measuring your recruiting success. Read more about this KPI here.

Greenhouse report dashboards highlight recruitment KPIs

If you’re already a Greenhouse customer, report dashboards enable you to:

• Get instant answers to your most important questions on hiring stages, recruiting efficiency, talent sourcing and pipeline health

• Save time with greater clarity and discoverability across any data point filtered by department, office, role and/or date range, without the hassle of selecting individual reports

• Optimise team performance with hiring insights accessible to any team member, unlocking actions to improve your hiring process while easing the burden on recruiting operations

Learn more about Greenhouse report dashboards here.