There are many recruiting tools—from AI chatbots to applicant tracking systems—that help recruiters make better, more strategic hiring decisions.

One of the best tools you can use is a recruiting metrics dashboard. A great dashboard can feel like a superpower for talent acquisition teams: You can use it to dig into the available data and learn how you can attract higher-quality candidates in greater numbers while making life easier for your team.

Let’s explore how you can use a recruitment dashboard to gain a competitive edge.

What is a recruiting metrics dashboard?

A recruiting metrics dashboard is one consolidated spot where you can see all the key performance indicators (KPIs) you’re tracking. This view should help you determine the size of your talent pipeline and how well your recruitment strategy is working.

What does a recruiting metrics dashboard look like?

A great dashboard will have visualized data that adjusts when you change variables so that you can dive deeper into each KPI it tracks.

What roles benefit most from a recruiting metrics dashboard?

Just about anyone involved in the hiring process will benefit from a recruiting dashboard:

• Hiring managers can see the results of their recruitment strategies and use that information to refine their team’s campaigns.
• Recruiters can use KPIs (like candidate and hire by source) to find the best sources for candidates.
• Talent acquisition can use a dashboard to monitor the pipeline volume and adjust their recruitment strategies as needed 
• HR leadership can use data like cost per hire, time to fill, and time to hire to keep track of budgets, time spent recruiting, and more.

How does a recruiting dashboard inform your recruiting strategy?

Because recruiting dashboards provide many analytics tools in real-time, they help your recruiting strategy in several key ways, including:

Utilizing a recruiting dashboard can move your team from reactive to proactive. Here are a few ways a dashboard can inform your recruiting strategy:

Measuring KPIs and identifying trends

The biggest advantage of a recruiting dashboard is that it allows you to see all your recruiting data in one view, and share those visualizations with other stakeholders. A dashboard will help you measure the success of various marketing campaigns, the number of candidates that come from each source, the costs involved per candidate and per source, and the quality of hire; you can use all of this information to fine-tune your recruitment process.

A recruiting dashboard will give you a graphical look at your KPIs, which will help you spot trends. Are certain sources becoming less productive over time? A declining chart will point that out so you can investigate why. Meanwhile, your KPIs will also indicate which sources produce top talent.

Analyzing your recruiting funnel

Seeing how candidates convert (or don’t) across the recruitment funnel is essential to determine the effectiveness of your recruiting efforts. A recruiting metrics dashboard can help you analyze every aspect of the funnel. When you can compare numbers and see data visualizations, it means that you can spot problems quickly and refine your recruitment strategy as needed.

For example, if your job postings aren’t getting many clicks, candidates never enter the first stage of your funnel: awareness. On the other hand, if your postings get several clicks but very few applications, you’re losing them in the attraction or interest stages—which means you may want to revisit your job ad to make sure it’s appealing (but honest).

10 KPIs to track in a recruiting metrics dashboard

Now that you know why it’s important to track KPIs—and how to get actionable insights using a dashboard—let’s get into the top metrics you should be measuring.

1. Time to hire

Time to hire measures the time between a candidate applying for a job and accepting a job. This is one way to evaluate the effectiveness of the hiring process. 

Faster, more efficient hiring processes tend to draw in higher-quality candidates, resulting in a better outcome for both companies and candidates.

2. Time to fill

Time to fill differs from time to hire in that it measures how long a role remains open. If your time to fill is consistently higher than average, then there may be a gap in the recruitment process. Often, when time to fill is long, it indicates issues within your recruitment strategy like bottlenecks or inefficient manual processes. These issues take valuable time away from your human resources teams and hiring departments and slow down the hiring process, leading to fewer hires and a longer fill time. 

Using automation tools is one way to mitigate these issues, as they can greatly reduce tedious manual work for hiring teams. For example, recruitment technology can help hiring teams screen candidates more effectively, automatically send out screening assessments to qualified candidates, and schedule interviews faster using chatbots.

3. Candidate by funnel stage

Measuring candidates by funnel stage tells you which parts of your recruitment funnel need refinement. A typical recruitment funnel consists of seven stages: awareness, attraction, interest, application, pre-screening, interviewing, and hiring. 

While the tapering off of available candidates is normal between each phase, a sharp drop-off between one funnel stage and the next can spell trouble, so it’s important to monitor your funnel. Every business is different, so measure your candidate drop-off consistently; this will give you a baseline for your organization and can help your hiring team pinpoint and address conversion issues.

Are people quitting before they can complete the application? This could mean you need to make the application process easier. Are you getting loads of views on social media but no click-throughs to apply? Something about your reputation or branding could be pushing people away.

4. Candidate and hire by source

Candidate sourcing refers to the places that attract candidates to apply, such as job fairs to LinkedIn, Facebook, or employee referrals. Basically, anything that gets a candidate to discover the employer brand and apply.

Measure the number of candidates by source to determine which sources are bringing in the least and most candidates. With that, make certain to measure hires by source, too. You may find that while one source brings in twice as many candidates, it also generates very few hires, making it an inefficient source.

5. Candidate satisfaction score

The candidate satisfaction score (CSS) is sometimes also referred to as the “candidate experience score.” CSS is a measure of how job seekers feel about the overall candidate experience, from discovering your brand to onboarding.  

6. Rejection reason by category

When people drop out of the application or interview process, or when the recruiting team rejects candidates, it’s important to ask why.

Applicants can reject job offers for multiple reasons—it might not meet their desired pay, or maybe the application was too difficult to fill out. If you can start to identify trends in rejection reasons, it'll help you pinpoint exactly what to fix.

On the company side, hiring managers may reject candidates for reasons including not the right skill set, poor interview, or differing salary or benefit expectations. 

Regardless of the reason or the party that initiates the rejection, it’s important to track the feedback to identify areas of opportunity. For example, if you’re getting several people who don’t have the right skill set for a particular role, the problem could be that your job description doesn't adequately describe the role.

7. Role and location

Pay attention to where roles reopen most frequently, and which teams are often understaffed. If one department or team stands out as needing more new hires than others, it’s time to investigate what factors could be leading to higher turnover rates and more significant hiring needs.

Tracking location allows you to geo-target your recruitment campaigns. Just like you can track which sources are most effective, you can track which geographical areas bring in the most candidates—and refocus your recruitment efforts on those areas. 

8. Cost per hire

When you calculate cost per hire, make sure to evaluate it by source, department, and employee level. This will highlight where things are going well, but will also reveal where inefficiencies are if any. For instance, if a hiring channel is costly and brings in fewer new employees (or lesser quality hires), perhaps it’s time to abandon it. Or, you may notice Facebook or LinkedIn costs increasing, indicating that it’s time to examine recruitment analytics by platform to figure out how to get the most bang for your buck.

9. Recruiting conversion rate

Conversion rates track how many people make it through one stage of the hiring process to the next. Low conversion rates might mean you’re investing heavily (or not heavily enough), but not reaping a return on that investment in the form of a higher number of applicants or hires.

For reference, one survey shows that in 2021, view-to-application rates were just 3% on average, while the application-to-interview rate was 20%, and the interview-to-hire rate was 11%. Keep in mind that this is an average across all industries—specifics will vary between industries.

10. Offer acceptance rate

Your offer acceptance rate (OAR) is a crucial metric to track because it can help you identify problems within your talent funnel. What if you’re doing all the work to interview and send out offers only to have many of those offers rejected?

You may need to do some digging to see why candidates are rejecting your offers. Gather as much feedback from candidates as possible about their experience and to discover which part of the overall experience is pushing qualified candidates away: 

• Communication skills
• Job messaging
• Interview process

Benefits of using an (effective) recruiting metrics dashboard

An effective hiring dashboard will help you make data-driven decisions and develop benchmarks.We’ll outline some of the top benefits below.

Improve retention and reduce turnover rates

Tracking recruitment data with the right tools can improve retention and reduce turnover rates. This happens for the following reasons:

First, it allows you to improve the candidate experience—which leads to candidates being overall more satisfied with your organization and more likely to stay long term.

The second reason is that open positions place less strain on other employees when you have a recruitment process that consistently fills roles quickly. 

Sometimes turnover rises simply because too many vacancies left for too long leads stressed workers to look elsewhere for a job.   

Increase productivity and efficiency

A recruitment dashboard not only points out inefficiencies in the hiring process but also in your hiring managers' day-to-day work. Use the data you collect to find out where you can automate low-value tasks. Greater productivity and efficiency will save you time and money, as a refined strategy means better performance for the same investment.    

Build your recruiting metrics dashboard with Emi

Looking for a platform to help you build an awesome recruiting dashboard featuring all the metrics you need? Emi helps teams refine their recruitment strategy to attract best-fit talent continuously. Request a demo here to learn more about our platform and get a first-hand look at sample dashboards.

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