A plain recruiting metrics glossary with formulas and worked examples
Use this recruiting metrics glossary to get the formula and a worked example for each common hiring metric, plus the five worth tracking first.
9 min read
Key takeaways
- Write down the start event and stop event for every time-based metric before you report it.
- Time to fill measures how long a job stays open, while time to hire measures how long the hired person spent in your process.
- Stage conversion rates show where candidates leave your funnel, so fix the weakest stage first.
- Use the median instead of the average for time metrics so one slow requisition does not distort the number.
- Start with five metrics you can act on each week, and add more only when someone will use them.
A recruiting metrics glossary gives everyone on your team, and every hiring manager or client, the same definition for the same number. Below are plain definitions and formulas for the metrics recruiters use most, grouped by what they measure: speed, funnel conversion, cost, quality, staffing performance, and candidate experience.
Each entry says where the clock starts and stops. In practice, that detail causes more disagreement than the math does.
Recruiting metrics at a glance
Use this table as a quick reference. The sections after it explain the metrics that cause the most confusion.
| Metric | What it tells you | Formula |
|---|---|---|
| Time to fill | How long a job stays open | Offer accepted date minus requisition approved date |
| Time to hire | How long the hired person spent in your process | Offer accepted date minus date the candidate entered the pipeline |
| Time to submit | How fast a staffing desk sends candidates to a client | First submittal date minus job order received date |
| Time to first contact | How fast you respond to applicants | First recruiter contact minus application time |
| Application completion rate | How many people finish the application they start | Completed applications / started applications x 100 |
| Screen pass rate | How many screened candidates are qualified | Passed screen / screened x 100 |
| Interview completion rate | How many invited candidates finish an interview | Completed interviews / invitations sent x 100 |
| Submittal to interview ratio | How well your submittals match what the client wants | Client interviews / submittals |
| Interview to offer ratio | How many interviews it takes to produce one offer | Interviews / offers |
| Offer acceptance rate | How often candidates say yes | Offers accepted / offers extended x 100 |
| Fill rate | How many openings you actually fill | Positions filled / positions opened x 100 |
| Cost per hire | What each hire costs you | (Internal costs + external costs) / hires |
| Source of hire | Which channels produce hires | Hires from a source / total hires x 100 |
| Quality of hire | How well hires perform | A score you define, often manager rating plus retention |
| 90-day retention | How many hires stay through the early period | Hires still employed at day 90 / hires x 100 |
| No-show rate | How often candidates miss scheduled steps | No-shows / scheduled events x 100 |
| Requisitions per recruiter | Workload | Open requisitions / recruiters |
What is the difference between time to fill and time to hire?
These two get mixed up often, and they point to different problems.
How time to fill is measured
Time to fill starts when the requisition is approved, or when the job order arrives, and stops when a candidate accepts the offer. It measures how long the business went without someone in the seat. Hiring managers and finance care most about this one.
Some teams stop the clock at the start date instead of the acceptance date. Either works if you pick one and write it down.
How time to hire is measured
Time to hire starts when the person you eventually hired entered your pipeline, usually their application date or the day you sourced them. It stops at offer acceptance. It measures how fast your process moves a good candidate once you have one.
Here is an example. A requisition is approved on March 1. The person you hire applies on March 10 and accepts on March 24. Time to fill is 23 days and time to hire is 14 days. The nine-day gap is the time it took to find that candidate. A long time to fill with a short time to hire points to a sourcing problem. A long time to hire points to a slow process, usually waiting on interview scheduling or manager feedback.
How time to submit works for staffing desks
Staffing desks watch this one closely. It starts when the job order comes in and stops when the first qualified candidate goes to the client. Clients often give the same order to several agencies, so the first strong submittal has an advantage. If you want to shorten it, our staffing video interview workflow from job order to submittal walks through each step.
How time to first contact is measured
This starts when an application arrives and stops at the first real recruiter touch, such as a phone call or an interview invitation sent by text. An automated confirmation email does not count. In hourly and high-volume hiring, candidates often take another job while they wait to hear back, so check this number daily.
How do you measure conversion through the hiring funnel?
A conversion rate is the share of candidates who move from one stage to the next. Divide the number who reached the later stage by the number in the earlier stage, then multiply by 100.
The example below uses made-up numbers for one requisition so you can see the math.
| Stage | Candidates | Conversion from previous stage |
|---|---|---|
| Started application | 300 | |
| Completed application | 200 | 67% |
| Passed screen | 80 | 40% |
| Completed video interview | 64 | 80% |
| Submitted to hiring manager | 20 | 31% |
| Hiring manager interview | 10 | 50% |
| Offer extended | 4 | 40% |
| Offer accepted | 3 | 75% |
A table like this tells you where to look. Losing a third of candidates during the application is often a form problem, especially on phones, and the mobile-friendly job application checklist covers the usual causes. A low screen pass rate usually means the job ad is attracting the wrong people, or the knockout questions come too late.
Track conversion by role type. A warehouse associate funnel and a nurse funnel will never look alike, and averaging them hides problems in both.
How do you calculate cost per hire?
Add internal and external recruiting costs for a period, then divide by the number of hires in that same period.
Internal costs include recruiter and coordinator pay for the time spent recruiting, referral bonuses, and the tools your team pays for. External costs include job board spend, agency fees, background checks, assessments, career fairs, and candidate travel.
Decide up front what goes in. The usual sticking point is whether to include recruiter salaries. Including them gives a truer cost, while leaving them out makes the number easier to gather each month. Either can work, but you cannot compare a month calculated one way with a month calculated the other way.
Two related metrics are often more useful day to day. Cost per applicant is channel spend divided by applicants from that channel. Cost per qualified candidate is channel spend divided by candidates from that channel who passed the screen. A job board that sends lots of cheap applicants and few qualified ones looks good on the first number and bad on the second.
How do you measure quality of hire?
There is no single standard formula. Most teams build a simple score from two or three inputs they can actually collect:
- A hiring manager rating of the new hire at a set checkpoint such as 90 days, on a fixed scale
- Whether the hire is still employed at 90 days
- Time to reach full productivity, for roles where that is measurable
- Attendance, for hourly roles
Keep it simple enough that managers will fill it in. They are far more likely to answer one rating question than a ten-question survey.
Quality of hire gets more useful when you can connect it to what you saw during screening. If you score candidates the same way every time, you can later check whether high scorers became strong employees. Our guide to building an hourly candidate scorecard includes a template you can copy.
Which metrics matter most for staffing agencies?
Staffing desks track most of the metrics above, plus a few of their own.
| Metric | Formula | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Fill rate | Positions filled / positions ordered x 100 | Shows how reliable you are to a client |
| Submittal to interview ratio | Client interviews / submittals | Shows how well you understand the order |
| Submittal to placement ratio | Placements / submittals | Shows how much recruiter effort each placement takes |
| Time to submit | First submittal minus order received | Shows speed against competing agencies |
| Redeployment rate | Workers placed again after an assignment ends / assignments ended x 100 | Shows how well you keep good workers busy |
| Assignment completion rate | Assignments completed / assignments started x 100 | Shows early quits and no-call no-shows |
| Gross margin per placement | (Bill rate minus pay rate and burden costs) x hours billed | Shows what each placement earns |
If your submittal to interview ratio drops for one client, call them before sending more candidates. The order may have changed without anyone telling you.
What candidate experience metrics should you track?
Much of candidate experience can be measured with counts you already collect.
Drop-off rate is the share of candidates who leave at a given stage without being rejected. No-show rate covers any missed scheduled step, from a phone screen through a first day on the job. Interview completion rate is the share of invited candidates who finish an interview. It matters most if you use one-way video interviews, where candidates record answers on their own time. Keeping the question set short helps. So does a clear deadline backed by reminders. DeepHire, for example, sends automated reminders at intervals such as 24 and 48 hours and reports an interview completion rate of about 97%.
A short survey after the process ends can add context. Ask one or two questions, such as how clear the process was and whether they would apply again, and send it to rejected candidates too.
How do you define a metric so everyone agrees?
Write a one-page definition card for each metric before you share it. Here is the template, filled in for time to fill.
| Field | Example |
|---|---|
| Metric name | Time to fill |
| Question it answers | How long do our openings stay unfilled? |
| Start event | Requisition marked approved in the ATS |
| Stop event | Offer marked accepted in the ATS |
| Formula | Stop date minus start date, in calendar days |
| Excluded | Requisitions put on hold, evergreen requisitions |
| How it is summarized | Median, by role family, per month |
| Data source | ATS requisition report |
| Owner | Recruiting operations lead |
The exclusions line prevents most surprises. A requisition that sat on hold for two months will wreck your time to fill unless you decide in advance how to treat it.
Which recruiting metrics should a recruiter track first?
If you track nothing today, start with these five:
- Time to first contact, because it is fully in your control
- The conversion rate for your weakest funnel stage
- Time to fill, or time to submit if you work a staffing desk
- Offer acceptance rate
- 90-day retention for your hires
Review them weekly for your own desk and monthly with your manager or clients. Add a metric only when you know what you would do if it moved. Otherwise it is one more report to pull with nothing to show for it.
Be wary of benchmarks you find online unless you know how they were defined. Wait until you have enough hires to see a pattern before drawing conclusions from your own numbers. When you report a metric, put the date range and role type next to it, because the same number means different things for a seasonal warehouse push and a single engineering search.
Frequently asked questions
Is time to hire the same as time to fill?
No. Time to fill runs from requisition approval to offer acceptance and shows how long the job was open. Time to hire runs from when the hired candidate entered your pipeline to offer acceptance and shows how fast your process moved once you found them.
What is a good offer acceptance rate?
It depends on the role and the market, and on how well you set expectations before the offer. Track your own rate by role type over time and investigate when it drops, since a decline often points to pay or slow offers, or to a mismatch discovered late in the process.
Should I use average or median for recruiting time metrics?
Use the median for most time-based metrics. A few requisitions that stay open for months can pull the average far above what is typical, while the median shows what usually happens.
What is a submittal to interview ratio in staffing?
It is the number of client interviews divided by the number of candidates you submitted. A falling ratio usually means your submittals no longer match what the client wants, so confirm the order details before sending more people.
How often should recruiters review their metrics?
Look at your own desk metrics weekly so you can fix problems while requisitions are still open. Review trends monthly with your manager or clients, and always report the date range and role type alongside each number.