Being able to track and measure your sourcing and recruiting metrics enables you to get insight into the efficiency and effectiveness of your recruiting process and track progress over time.

Many companies miss the opportunity to make their process measurable and risk getting stuck on repeat with a process that doesn’t work.

Sourcing metrics in recruiting are measurable units that indicate performance of (part of) the recruitment process. Examples are time to hire, time to fill, quality of hire, conversion time, offer acceptance rate and top sources of hire.

In this guide we’ll explain the following sourcing and recruiting metrics:

1. Time to hire
2. Time to fill
3. Quality of hire
4. Cost per hire
5. Candidate experience
6. Outreach conversions
7. Average number of applicants to fill
8. Funnel conversion
9. Conversion time
10. Offer acceptance rate
11. Top sources of hire
12. Top reasons for decline
13. Active/Passive ratio

1. Time to hire

Time to hire is the time it takes to hire a candidate measured from the initial touchpoint with the candidate to a signed employment contract. Time to hire is usually expressed in days. The goal of tracking time to hire is to learn about how long you as a company usually take to get to hire candidates. Also knowing the time to hire you can benchmark your average with competitors and you’re able to improve the time to hire by making the recruiting process more efficient.

How to calculate time to hire

date hired - date candidate engaged = Time to hire

Example of time to hire

X-Enterprise has an average time to hire of 45 days across all roles, and an average time of hire of 55 days for technical roles. 

2. Time to fill

Time to fill is the time it takes for you to hire someone for a new job position you have opened. Time to hire is usually expressed in days. The goal of tracking time to fill is to get insights into how efficient your recruiting process has been for the specific job position and getting an idea of hiring difficulty for certain positions. Knowing the time to fill helps you better estimate time needed in the future for your next hires, set realistic targets and bring more efficiency in the recruiting process.

How to calculate time to fill

date position filled - date opening position = time to fill

Example of time to fill

X-Enterprise had a time to fill of 32 days for the new sales executive position.

3. Quality of hire

Quality of hire is a measure of value of the candidates who are hired. Value in this case is the extent to which the candidate is expected to reach or exceed goals set for the positions. Quality of hire is usually expressed in a score from 0 to 10 given by one or more of the hiring managers. 

How to calculate quality of hire

score (0 - 10) = quality of hire

Example of quality of hire

X-Enterprise has had an average quality of hire of 7.7 in 2022, the quality of hire in 2022 was highest for the Python Engineer role.

4. Cost per hire

Cost per hire is the cost associated with hiring. The cost per hire is usually expressed as the total cost associated with hiring someone for a job position. The goal of measuring cost per hire is to get a better understanding of underlying internal recruitment costs (salaries of inhouse recruiters, internal HR and recruitment systems, etc.) and external recruitment costs (recruitment agency fees, employee dept payments, etc.) as well as pointing out points of improvement in the hiring process from an efficiency perspective.

How to calculate cost per hire

internal recruitment cost for position + external recruitment costs for position = cost per hire

Example of cost per hire

X-Enterprise has had an average cost of hire of $8.500 on average per position in 2022, the position with the highest cost of hire in 2022 was VP of Marketing with $45.800.