A beginners' guide to recruitment analytics

When it comes to recruitment analytics, any organization has the option of tracking the entire hiring process from start to finish using an HRMS recruitment module, and the resulting data can potentially guide and improve your entire recruitment strategy. The key is knowing what data to collect and what metrics to measure.

Here’s what to measure and where to start.

1. Source of hire

Where do you advertise? Which talent pools are you fishing in? Where do your best recruits come from? Knowing the answers to questions like these can help focus your employee searches significantly. Like any organization, you’ll have your tried and true sources – particular jobs boards, email campaigns, agencies etc. – but when did you last check up on which sources are the most productive? Those longstanding perceptions may be driving how you use your hiring budget and in the meantime your best people are finding you on LinkedIn.

2. Time to hire

This is a classic metric, indicating the average amount of time it takes to fill an open position. According to Bersin by Deloitte’s Talent Acquisition Factbook 2015, in the US it takes an average of 52 days to fill an open position. How are you doing?

Find out what recruitment analytics can do for you with our guide to getting more out of your HRMS data

3. The time per stage

Breaking down the time to hire metric a little further, this area of recruitment analytics looks at how long candidates spend in each stage of your hiring process (e.g. advertising, screening, assessment, decision). Bottlenecks are dangerous because the best candidates are in demand and the longer the delay, the more likely they are to find a position elsewhere.

4. Referrals

Most agree that generally, new hires that were recommended by existing staff make for better employees. After all, a personal reference from someone who understands the organization is powerful. Besides, few people would make a recommendation they know will reflect badly on their judgement. If your referral rate is low, you may need to boost your incentive program or offer different incentives (or, if you don’t have a referral incentive program, start one). Use reports generated by your HRMS recruitment module to track how successful this is.

5. Turnover

Data that shows you which parts of the organization the most ‘through flow’ of people is invaluable, allowing you to investigate hot spots and where possible, plug the leak. Similarly, analysis can show you particular types of employee who may be prone to leaving.

6. Talent pool strength

These days, any organization of size doesn’t wait until it has a vacancy before it starts looking for recruits. Identifying talent pools (groups of potential employees defined by expertise, location, experience or other demographics) is key to keeping metrics such as ‘time to hire’ at a manageable level. Using a recruitment analytics tool to measure talent pool size, segmented according to different groups or families of jobs, is fundamental to taking control of your recruitment strategy.