21 Recruitment Metrics to Measure in 2023

Recruitment metrics are measurements used to evaluate and optimise your recruitment processes. By gathering vital data such as your cost per hire and sourcing channel effectiveness, you’ll have the opportunity to improve the candidate experience whilst ensuring you’re investing your resources into the right channels, ensuring you’re getting the best ROI for your organisation. 

Especially in the Life Science industry which remains highly competitive in 2022, you’ll need an efficient recruitment strategy that allows you to find high-quality talent and engage these candidates before your competitors, keeping you ahead of the game. In this article, we’ve put together 21 recruitment metrics for Life Science recruiters and hiring managers to measure in 2023…

Source of Hire

To ensure you’re investing your resources into the right recruitment channels, keep track of where your successful hires are coming from. For example, if your 3 most recent hires came from a job board like PharmiWeb.Jobs, you may want to amp up your activities on that platform and double down on less successful channels.

Cost per Hire

This can be calculated by dividing the total costs invested in hiring by the number of successful hires. Remember to track both internal costs (e.g., administrative costs) as well as external costs (e.g., travel expenses).

Cost of Sourcing Channel

Calculate the cost efficiency of your sourcing channels by dividing your ad spend by the number of visitors who applied through that channel. Remember to bring this in with your source of hire, as whilst you may get 100 applications on one platform and only 10 on another, what matters is where your successful hires are coming from, not just where the most traffic is.

Applicants per Opening

This is useful to gauge the level of demand for your jobs, giving insight into industry and employment trends, and helping to understand which roles you may need to invest more in. If you’re using PharmiWeb.Jobs, you may decide to upgrade job adverts for roles that are harder to fill, improving their visibility on the job board.

Application Completion Rate

This measures how many candidates completed a job application compared to the number that started. This can help to identify parts of your application process that are too long and convoluted, or that aren’t clear, accessible, and user-friendly.

Stage Completion Rate

Measuring how many applicants complete each stage of your recruitment process compared to those who were moved to each stage can also help to identify any steps that aren’t working. For example, you might see a sudden drop off in the number of people who complete an online assessment which can help identify any technical issues with your platform.

Interview to Hire Ratio

Knowing the average number of interviews etc. needed for a hiring manager to be able to send out an offer can help to set hiring timelines and manage recruiting costs effectively.

Candidates per Hire

Keep track of the number of candidates the hiring manager generally interviews before a candidate is hired. If too much time is spent interviewing for one role, it may be time to look at other metrics such as the effectiveness of your sourcing channels if you’re struggling to find the right candidates within your predicted timeframe.

Quality of Hire

Measure the first-year performance of your new starters to gauge the quality of the hire and compare this with your source of hire metrics to understand where your best – and worst – candidates are coming from.

Manager Satisfaction

The success of a hire can also be measured by how satisfied the hiring manager/line manager is with the candidate, although a process should be in place to ensure that this is measured objectively and without conscious or unconscious bias.

Candidate Satisfaction

Find out how satisfied your new starters are with the job. Find out if it has met their expectations and gather feedback on how you could improve the entire candidate experience. You should also gather feedback from unsuccessful applicants to understand how to improve the experience at all stages.

Time to Fill

This is the amount of time taken to find, interview, and hire a new candidate. For example, you could measure the time taken between posting a job advert and the applicant accepting their offer, or even the time taken from getting the new role approved to the applicant’s first day.

Time to Hire

This is the amount of time between a candidate applying for a role and accepting the job offer. This is a valuable metric to understand the candidate's experience and identify any bottleneck areas.

New Starter Turnover Rate

You should keep track of the number of new starters who leave in their first year of work. A high new starter turnover rate could be indicative of things such as mismatched job expectations or poor employee satisfaction, both of which need to be managed to consistently attract and retain talent.

Offer Acceptance Rate

Measuring the number of applicants who accepted a job offer compared to those who received an offer can help to identify areas where there is a drop-off in engagement, or if the applicant feels they have been misled during the application process.

Cost of Training and Development

Different applicants will require different levels of training, so this is another important metric to keep in mind. Having an estimate for the total cost involved in getting a new starter to the point where they are positively contributing to the company can help you plan your onboarding and training process and understand the cost of replacing your new employee.

Time to Productivity

Measure the average time it takes for your new starters to begin being productive. This may help you to gauge the quality of the hire as well as how well you’re keeping new employees engaged and motivated. The point at which an employee begins being productive is dependent on their role. For example, for a sales role, this may be their first independent sales pitch.

Employee Referral Rate

This is the number of successful hires who came from employee referrals. Referrals can be a cheaper and quicker way to recruit and have also been found to produce a better hire. If very few new hires come from referrals, then it might be time to reassess your existing referral scheme or implement one if you haven’t already.

Time to Inform

To improve the candidate experience, keep track of the average length of time between an applicant completing a step in the hiring process to when the applicant is informed of the outcome of that step. This is important whether the applicant is being rejected or invited to the next stage.

Talent Pool Growth

As well as measuring the number of applicants you get from each sourcing channel, you can also measure the growth of your talent pool. For example, although a candidate may click on your job advert on a job board, when they go through to your site they might not apply for that role, but they may create a jobseeker account on your website. When using a job board such as PharmiWeb.Jobs, you can also grow your talent pool by searching for ideal candidates in our CV database, and by making the most of our targeted email campaigns which take your roles straight to your target audience.

Social Media and Advertising Metrics

Social media platforms like LinkedIn are becoming ever more integral to the hiring process. If you post a job advert on social media, you need to be tracking any engagement you get from there. Whilst things such as likes, comments, and shares aren’t indicative of how many successful applicants you have, they can help to gauge which platforms work best for your roles, and where your target audience of candidates are.