The six metrics
- Time-to-hire (median). Per-role medians, not averages. Outliers will distort the mean.
- Offer-accept rate. Anything below 80% suggests comp issues, slow process, or weak close.
- Quality-of-hire (90-day manager rating). Single Likert (1–5) at 90 days. Track trend, not absolute.
- Source effectiveness. Hires per channel divided by spend. Most teams find 2–3 channels do 70% of the work.
- Pipeline conversion rates. Application → screen → interview → offer → hire, by stage. Find the bottleneck stage.
- 6-month retention. First-year retention is too late to react. Track 6-month and intervene at 3-month check-ins.
What to NOT track (or de-emphasize)
- Cost-per-hire — useful only when comparing channels, not as a single number.
- Applicants-per-hire — pumping it up is easy and meaningless.
- Time-to-fill (vs. time-to-hire) — they're different. Time-to-fill includes the lag from req-open to first-applicant; usually a hiring manager / signoff problem, not a recruiting problem.
How often to review
- Weekly: pipeline health (where are we stuck?)
- Monthly: time-to-hire, offer-accept, source effectiveness
- Quarterly: quality-of-hire, retention